Climate Change Explained: What You Need to Know
Talk about climate change is unavoidable these days. In the 2020 election, the top 3 concerns of voters were the economy, coronavirus, and climate change. In part due to the record-breaking heatwaves, wildfires, and hurricanes experienced by Americans, the concern over climate change has grown considerably. Unfortunately, although fundamentally a non-political issue, it has been made political by the fossil fuel interests and politicians. It has been made out to be a scientifically unsettled, economically unfeasible problem to solve, when nothing could be farther from the truth.
Climate change has nothing to do with politics and is, at its very essence, a relatively simple, easy-to-underderstand problem, having solutions that we are ready to implement, and will provide benefits to all. But before we talk about what could come of climate change or what kind of options we have to solve it, we first need to discuss…What is climate change?
The Carbon Cycle
To understand climate change, we first need to understand the carbon cycle. Much like the water cycle we all learned in elementary school, the carbon cycle is the process that carbon goes through as it circulates through various systems.
In a very simplified model, carbon is first emitted by animals and people into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2). It is then absorbed by plants, trees, and the ocean through photosynthesis. The carbon then reenters animals as the plants/algae/etc. are eaten and eventually gets re-expelled again into the atmosphere.
This is completely natural and a process that has been happening for hundreds of millions of years, and for about the last 10 million years, the amount of carbon that existed in this cycle was approximately the same.
We’ve broken the natural carbon cycle
The problem comes because within the past 250 years, there has been a steep growth in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
Not surprisingly, that steep growth began precisely when humans began extracting and burning billions of tons of carbon in the form of fossil fuels, oil, and coal that had been buried deep unground for hundreds of million years. That fossil fuel carbon was NOT part of the natural carbon cycle, and by burning it, we have added it to the atmosphere and the carbon cycle. This began the Industrial Era approximately in 1750. The amount of carbon that exists in the air now is very usual and not a natural phenomenon, and plants and trees are not equipped to process the large amount of carbon in the atmosphere today.
CO2 leads to temperature increase, and even small temperature increase means big effects.
The carbon in the atmosphere acts like a blanket that traps heat from the sun in the atmosphere and leads to an overall average higher global temperature. This is called the greenhouse effect, and even small differences in temperature can lead to large effects. Most people would say that a change of 2-3°C would barely be noticeable. After all, in just one day, we sometimes experience temperature differences of 10-15°C between afternoon and night. What difference would 2-3°C make?
As a global average, 2-3°C is huge. Just to illustrate how sensitive the climate is to temperature changes, at +5°C, New York City would be completely submerged in the ocean, and at -5°C, New York City would be completely frozen in ice. 2-3°C doesn’t sound like much, but to the climate, it’s huge.
It’s also important to note that humanity has placed most of its population on coasts, meaning that the 2-3°C of warming would most likely raise the ocean enough to displace a huge portion of the human population, including people living in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and many others.
The transition to renewable energy is inevitable: we WILL run out of fossil fuels.
There is an important note that many often forget when thinking about climate change: there is a limited amount of fossil fuels; eventually, we will run out of coal and oil. Eventually, we will deplete the fossil fuel stores within planet earth and be required to switch to renewable, sustainable forms of energy. Therefore, much like learning to swim before you are facing a drowning situation, it’s best that we exit the fossil fuel era and begin the sustainable energy era before the potential disasters begin.
“We still have oil! Why not just use all the fossil fuels first? What’s the rush to transition?” you may ask. Let’s examine the two extreme cases of what could happen if we wait until we run out of fossil fuels:
Worst-Case Scenario:
- The energy transition to renewable energy occurs, just at a later time.
- Oceans rise causing mass displacement of the human race, causing mass migrations, leading to food and water shortages, national tension and possibly war.
- Air quality issues and increased heat lead to more susceptibility to disease, and we see pandemics occur more often.
- The added heat disproportionately affects minority groups, which historically do not have the same resources to pay for air conditioning or other safety nets from the effects of climate change. They will suffer more, leading to increased racial/political/economic tension.
- Reduction in rainfall and increased drought, leading to global water shortages.
- Extinction of a large percentage of animal species and the desertification of much of the currently populated, livable land.
- Unprecedented hurricanes, wildfires, and natural disasters that will kill millions of people year-round.
Best-Case Scenario:
- The energy transition to renewable energy occurs, just at a later time.
- Climate change is a hoax, nothing bad occurs.
Looking at the possible outcomes of climate change, it’s quite obvious that one outcome is much more terrifying than the other, so we should ensure we do everything we can to ensure the terrifying outcome doesn’t happen. It is therefore imperative that we transition to sustainable forms of energy quickly. The renewable energy transition will and must happen, so the sooner we transition, the better.
Why isn’t the transition happening faster? Companies aren’t paying to take out the trash.
Imagine if the online superstore Amazon.com never paid to have their trash picked up, and instead just dumped it onto the streets and into the oceans. Someone would end up having to pick up the trash, or just let it go on destroying the environment. Someone would pay the price for their pollution. This is why we all pay to have our trash collected: it serves the greater good and means that we can have clean, trash-free neighborhoods to live in.
In the case of CO2 emissions, this is exactly what is happening. Every company is currently free to dump as much polluting CO2 into the air as they want, with no repercussions, which has a negative impact on the entire planet. In total, 35 gigatons of carbon (35,000,000,000 tons) are emitted every year. This is unrealistic, and companies are profiting unfairly: would you be okay with companies making large profits while not paying for their trash collection? Probably not. The same should go for CO2. This ends up being a kind of ‘hidden subsidy’ to companies to freely pollute and emit CO2 endlessly.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) actually calculated how much the fossil fuel industry profits from this “hidden subsidy.” Their report found that the fossil fuel industry alone receives approximately $5.3 trillion dollars for their unpunished carbon emissions.
One solution: The Carbon Tax
One way to solve this problem would be to require companies to pay for their CO2 emissions, just like their trash collection: A “carbon tax,” that could be slowly phased in over a 5- or 10-year period to give companies time to adapt to the change. This would be sending a clear message from the government: “we want fewer carbon emissions and we want to encourage companies to move to net-zero carbon emissions. You don’t have to, but you will pay for your pollution, just like your trash.”
By taxing carbon emissions, it would incentivize companies to move towards renewable, cleaner sources of energy for their operations. With a carbon tax, every company would have an aligned goal to switch away from fossil fuels for energy production as quickly as possible. This is not a tax that would benefit the political left nor right. It is not a political issue any more than trash pickup is. It is simply incentivizing to encourage cleaner behavior from industries across the country.
Note that this is not the only possible solution, but it is one that is potentially the most realistic.
How The Fossil Fuel Industry is Fighting
The fossil fuel industry fights renewable energy and disputes the science of climate change much in the same way the tobacco industry did for decades: by finding a few scientists that disagree and saying simply that “scientists disagree about climate change,” without mentioning that the ratio of scientists that agree is much larger than the scientists who disagree: 97% of all climate scientists agree that climate change is happening and that it is human-caused. By suggesting that scientists disagree, it sows doubt in the minds of ordinary people, obscuring the issue, and allowing the fossil fuel industry to remain strong in the manipulation of government.
Some Damage is Already Done
The carbon we have emitted up until now has already entered the atmosphere; unfortunately, we are probably already locked into a world of +2°C. We are almost certainly going to see the global loss of coral reefs, massive drought across many 1st world countries, unprecedented heatwaves, hurricanes, and wildfires, the collapse of most glaciers, and the extinction of hundreds of species of animals within our lifetime. The big question is how much more warming we are going to see. That is something that will be up to us, and dependent on our actions over the next 10-15 years.
The good news is that we don’t have to wait for a new, miracle technology to come save us. We have all the technology we need right now: solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy can definitely replace most, if not all, energy production needs for the entire human race. We have developed carbon capture technologies to begin drawing carbon out of the air. The great news is that we have the solutions we need to stop climate change. We just need the will to implement them.
Here’s what you can do
We need a combination of individual action and action from our governments and industries. In order to enact that change, there are many things you can do to help save ourselves from climate change:
- Talk to politicians: ask them to enact a carbon tax.
- Talk to your friends and family: studies have shown that people who have had meaningful conversations with people who are near to them about climate change are far more likely to act on climate issues.
- Don’t allow the fossil fuel industry to cloud the issues and hold us back from change that will benefit us all. Speak out against propaganda.
- Find out some things you can do to reduce your own impact: reducing meat consumption, driving/flying less, and getting your energy from renewable sources are some of the best things you can do!
