“ nothing is lost until it has been abandoned”
– Goethe
Are there reasons to hope for serious action?
“The prospect of thousands and even millions of cancer deaths led to the Montreal Protocol. The Cuyahoga River catching on fire, giant algae blooms in lakes and rivers, and widespread contamination of municipal water supplies led to the Clean Water Act of 1972. Oppressive inner-city smog — so bad you could nearly taste it — as well as mounting respiratory illnesses, and dead and dying trees, streams and lakes, helped overcome political and industry foot-dragging and created the landmark 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act and its innovative cap-and-trade system for controlling ground-level pollutants.”
“In addition, there were no relatively expeditious technological fixes for carbon emissions, as there were for fluorocarbons, and as there were for the pollutants addressed in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, like scrubbers for power plants, and catalytic converters and cleaner fuels for cars and light trucks. The global warming problem requires a whole suite of fixes, some of them mammoth, as Mr. Moynihan intuited a half-century ago — carbon-free alternatives to produce electricity; an all-electric vehicle fleet; an end to deforestation; climate-friendly agricultural practices; large-scale dietary changes; and, quite possibly, advanced technologies to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Reimagining the world economy means turning around a very big ship. Not to mention global buy-in”.
“Finally, despite predictable industry warnings of economic ruin, the efforts to protect the ozone layer and clean up the nation’s waters and air faced nowhere near the campaign of denial and disinformation mounted by Exxon Mobil and other big fossil fuel companies — companies that knew perfectly well what their products were doing to the atmosphere — to confuse the public about climate change and to derail serious attempts to address them. This cascade of phony science was not the only reason legislation aimed at reducing carbon pollution foundered in Congress. As Bill Clinton and Mr. Gore discovered after signing the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, there was little enthusiasm in either party for a treaty that essentially required America and other industrial nations to do most of the heavy lifting while giving other big emitters, among them China and India, a far easier path. Still, industry’s relentless obfuscation played a big role, especially among Tea Party Republicans.”
In answer to: Is there hope?
“Yes: a trifecta of frightening reports in the last year from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the need to act before things spin out of control, on deforestation and other damaging land-use practices, on dying reefs and rising sea levels. Plus: a cascade of natural disasters, including catastrophic wildfires and hurricanes. Plus: the dramatic drop in the cost of producing carbon-free energy like wind and solar power. Plus: well-publicized concerns on the part of every contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, and equally well-publicized efforts by state and local officials, to fill the global leadership vacuum left by President Trump.”
