A Decade of Disruption by Garrett Peck

Author:Garrett Peck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2020-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Climate Change: A Decade of Procrastination

By the mid-1990s, the scientific community had reached consensus that our hydrocarbon-fueled society was damaging the environment through greenhouse gas emissions. Man-made climate change was rapidly warming the planet, and scientists warned that we had to take constructive steps to curb carbon emissions. A global framework was mapped out in 1997 called the Kyoto Protocol, but the United States largely ignored it.

In 2001, climate scientists charted how the world’s climate had evolved from 1000 C.E. on, noting the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. The temperature fluctuated slightly but was largely stable. And then the Industrial Revolution began in the 1800s, fueled by burning coal. The world’s temperature rose steeply in the 20th century. Climate scientists called it the “hockey stick,” a graphic representation of the warming climate.13

Former vice president and presidential candidate Al Gore had long fought to raise public awareness about climate change. Gore produced and starred in an influential 2006 documentary called An Inconvenient Truth, which noted the scientific evidence behind climate change and called for action. So much of what he noted was political procrastination: climate change was happening, an observable event to many people, yet slow enough that people were adjusting to it. It was far down the list of issues for politicians to tackle.

The following year, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its fourth assessment. It stated that the scientific evidence that human actions were warming the planet was “unequivocal.” The IPCC report, signed off by delegates from more than one hundred countries, called for the world to wean itself off fossil fuels if it hoped to mitigate climate change. The clock was ticking, and action was needed. For their work fighting climate change, Al Gore and the IPCC were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.14

Eric Pooley, who published the landmark book The Climate War, noted how difficult the obstacles were in confronting climate change, as Americans tended only to react when an emergency was thrust upon them. “The obstacles weren’t only political. They were psychological,” he wrote. “Human beings didn’t respond well to big, slow-moving, seemingly abstract future threats, even if signs of impending doom were visible. We weren’t good at paying now to stave off catastrophe later.”15

Climate change could be observed in the United States during the first decade. The tule fog that once engulfed California’s Central Valley virtually disappeared as winter days grew warmer. The snowpack upon which the state depends for its summer water supply melted quicker, or fell as rain instead of snow. The Rocky Mountains were similarly seeing their snowcaps disappear. The glaciers of Glacier National Park in Montana retreated to a fraction of themselves. Seven states of the desert Southwest depend on the Colorado River for their water needs, a river that was drying up, creating a long-term water crisis. The greater heat parched forests nationwide, leading to ever-greater wildfires. Vast tracts of trees died from beetle infestations, as the beetles could now survive at warmer, higher altitudes.

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