Climate Solutions in the Age of Consequences - Notes & Video from the July First Tuesday

Notes by high-school intern Erik Ellis
Video (1 hour 20 minutes, see below) by high-school intern Ella Hall.

The July 2013 First Tuesday Program featured speaker KC Golden, from Climate Solutions, presenting a lecture entitled Climate Solutions in the Age of Consequences at the Merc Playhouse in Twisp.

Video of KC Golden Climate Solutions Talk

The first topic that was presented was that climate change is not just an environmental issue, that  it affects mostly every aspect of our lives, economic and social effects included. This means that we need to limit the adverse impacts of our society, and we need to clean things up a bit. This issue is too small to solve by just changing some aspects of our lifestyle. It requires complete, innovative re-engineering to build stronger, healthier, more compatible communities. A success story in Washington regards the Coal Plant, which produced 10% of Washington’s carbon emissions. In 2011, plans to phase out of coal passed with unanimous support from workers, company, and community. This was one of the biggest energy success stories, as it saved 5 Seattle-sized cities worth of power and $2 billion in electrical bills.

A Time Magazine headline from read “Be Worried, Be Very Worried.”  But the time to be worried was approximately 100 years ago when the first theories on carbon emissions came out. Changing ourselves and doing something about our impact on the environment is NOT optional, it is something that we have to do. What we are facing is either an inconvenient truth or a reassuring lie, and the truth does not lie in the middle of the two extremes. Right now everything is at stake, and if we continue on our current path, we will soon be likely to be beyond adaptation, so something must be done.
  

It is time to be the solution. Although this is a global scale, much of the impacts are local. For example, snow cover is projected to drastically decline. Forest disturbance will occur and at the end of the 21st Century there will be twice as much forest burned in Washington as in the 20th Century.  Sea level rise presents a problem. With just a 1 foot rise of sea level, an event like Hurricane Sandy, which may only occur every 100 years, becomes a once in 10 years event. With a rise of 2 feet, that even will happen yearly. Ocean acidification is rising, it is at 30% now but expected to be at 100-150% by 2100.

The problem is a cycle. Many people face this challenge with denial and confusion, which leads to inaction. We need to break this and turn this into a circle of practical economic solutions leading to results-oriented policies. Although it is called “Global Warming” much of the action must be local. By 2017, continuing with no action taken to stop this, emissions will be “locked in” and it will be increasingly harder to turn back. The Keystone Principle presents one answer: Stop Making it Irrevocably Worse!  Huge long-term mistakes we have the opportunity to not make. Clean Energy Revolution is good for us, but bad for the coal industries, who are turning to building coal plants in less developed countries. This can lead to a great climate disruption if it isn’t stopped.   

This is a technological and moral issue. A solution is to transition out of fossil fuels to more renewable resources. Also using biocarbon and scaling up carbon storage, taking back some of the carbon we’ve released. This leads to a bioeconomy. In the May 10th issue of the New York Times, it was being described as “game over for climate.” It isn’t a game, and it isn’t over. Adaptation and resilience is a must, limits on carbon pollutions, energy efficiency and renewables, international leadership, will help to tell everyone that someone’s doing something about it.

Helpful websites:
climatesolutions.org
powerpastcoal.com
Stop keystone XL: 350.org
Divest: Gofossilfree.org