NY Dispatch 9/21/2020: With the onslaught of eye-popping headlines endlessly competing for our attention, it is easy to be distracted from climate change. Our plant changes naturally over millennia, and sometimes occurs rapidly over centuries, but humanity, always seeking efficiency, has radically changed the environment in decades. We emit more greenhouse gases (GHG) than our environment can absorb and we generate too much pollution. Fighting to protect the planet and all living things can be a thankless and frustrating job, especially since so much of our time is spent trying to prove that it is happening and counter the billions spent by big business to keep things status quo. Instead of funding our citizen scientists they create disinformation campaigns to convince people there is no crisis to help protect their quarterly profits.
As we have seen in the last few years, climate change is happening in real time outside our windows whether you believe in it or not. By all accounts it is the largest and most complex crisis humanity has ever faced. While we are being honest, it is only going to get worse from here on out unless we take action. It is easy to get despondent, but we can’t give up. This is why it is so important to stay motivated, learn from each other, and plan for our future.
Climate Week kicked off today, and like many events in the age of COVID-19, it has moved entirely online. It is timed to coincide with the United Nation’s General Assembly; the UN provided the blueprint to measure the tangible and intangible things to help us track our progress toward saving our planet. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of aspirational targets to help us help each other. There are a lot of opportunities to achieve multiple goals if we invest our time and resources wisely.
For instance, developing countries who contributed the least to climate change but will face the most challenging consequences, are looking to build infrastructure, create jobs, and strengthen their economies. Many countries have the opportunity to leapfrog over their more developed peers by building sustainably from scratch, including greener building methods, renewable sources, and organic smallholder farms. They do not need to repeat the methods that the developed countries used, which we know are destroying the planet. They can do this in the same way that India led the digital revolution by starting with fiber optics instead of replacing the old copper phone lines.
Similarly developed countries looking to jumpstart their pandemic-inflicted economies can create whole sectors of jobs by investing in renewable energy, redesigning the electricity grid, and retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient. Start with the regions most impacted by wild fires and storms; they will need to replace what was destroyed, why not use this opportunity to upgrade to the future? We don’t need to rebuild what was there with something we know doesn’t work.
Dealing with the linked crises of the pandemic and climate change requires a global response. We must collaborate rather than go our own way. We no longer have the luxury of pretending it isn’t happening or that someone will fix it. It is up to us, collectively, to change.
Today I am grateful for Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Originally published in 1962, the book has been credited with midwifing the environmental movement and showed that an individual can drive positive change by delivering the right message at the right time. Carson helped spawn a grassroots movement that pushed for environmental regulations including the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, both of which were signed by Republican president, Richard Nixon. Carson, a marine biologist by training, lays out an argument against the broadscale use of insecticides, notably DDT. In example after example of government sanctioned drives to eradicate one specific invasive species through chemical means that ends up being counterproductive; the target species is able to adapt to the chemical agents, but the spraying kills off their natural predators. Worse, their methods are more expensive than established biological means, especially in terms of environmental impact and loss of life. While Carson does not make a case for the complete elimination of pesticides (thought she hardly makes an argument for them), she suggests taking a more informed approach using nature’s own tools first (natural predators, thoughtful plantings) before taking the step to use targeted and limited spraying. Note that nature has been at this game for millions of years; the industrial chemical industry got started in WWII.