You know it’s bad when . . .

You know it’s bad when the AARP Bulletin has an article entitled "What you Need to Know About Climate Change” with a subtitle of “How it’s already affecting your health, home and safety – and what you can do about it.”

You know it’s bad when Consumer Reports has an article entitled “Best Air Purifiers for Wildfire Smoke.”

The articles are not bad in and of themselves. What they reveal is that the impacts of climate change are finally making their way into people’s everyday lives. Of course, the articles don’t say anything about what you can do to slow or stop climate change, just what you can do to deal with it.

The articles suggest ways to adapt. Your air is choked with wildfire soot? Get a better air conditioner filter. Planning to retire in the sunbelt? Maybe Toledo is a safer place. Possibility of power loss is growing? Buy a backup generator. Your bucket list travel destinations are endangered (think Glacier National Park)? Don’t put that trip off. The list goes on.

What these recommendations all have in common is the assumption that you can afford to do any of these things - that you have retirement savings, that you have an air conditioner, that you can move or buy a backup generator. The list goes on.

According to Market Watch, the median American household has $11,700 in savings. The bottom 20% of households have no savings. The Economic Policy Institute states that about 50% of families have no retirement savings. Of course, the numbers skew even lower the less education you have or your race. Picking up and moving, or buying a better air conditioner (let alone having one in the first place) is a luxury for a lot of Americans.

There is no doubt that people lower on the economic rungs of our country are now struggling with the social and economic impacts of the long-predicted increase in extreme weather events. Second and third world countries have been dealing with impacts for a couple of decades now. We just don’t hear about it much.

But the affluent are no longer immune. Take this headline from the July 18th edition of the Boston Globe: “’No one is safe’: Extreme weather batters the wealthy world.” A sentence in the article struck me: “The extreme weather disasters across Europe and North America have driven home two essential facts of science and history: The world as a whole is neither prepared to slow down climate change nor live with it.”

Seattle, home of Amazon, broiled at the end of June, with temperatures exceeding 35 F above normal. Germany, the most affluent and industrialized country in Europe, suffered extreme flooding unlike any in living memory. Both were due to stagnant weather systems which used to be rare but not anymore. Both caused the deaths of hundreds of people.

Most of us living in the fairly affluent suburbs and exurbs of Boston are probably not too concerned about catastrophic floods, raging wildfires or deadly heat waves, but as events of the last few weeks demonstrate, we cannot be complacent.

As I write this, the skies above Westborough are hazy with smoke from wildfires 3,000 miles away in Oregon. Commonwealth officials have issued an air quality alert for Eastern Massachusetts. Clearly we are not immune to far-away events.

Events elsewhere can impact the flow of electricity to our homes, the food delivered to our supermarkets, the fuel for our SUVs, the cost of our insurance, and all the other little things we take for granted in our comfortable lives.

Complacency got us into this mess. It won’t get us out of it. 

Published in the Village News, Westborough, MA, July30th, 2021

It All Comes Down to Sweat

My cousin Steph and I constantly needle each other on Facebook about the climates where each of us live. She’s in Tucson, AZ. She’ll remark about how the cold water coming out of the tap is the same temperature as the hot or how her backyard weather station said yesterday’s maximum temperature 127 F. I will ask her to tell me again why she lives there. Steph replies that “you can’t shovel sunshine and besides it’s dry heat.” My comeback: “The inside of an oven set to broil is also dry heat.”

In Tucson, summer average high temperatures are in the low 100’s. Residents don’t bat an eyelash because that is the climate in the desert southwest. And it’s dry. If the relative humidity exceeds 50%, that’s sticky. Normal humidity is less than 25%. But as a friend of mine in Las Vegas tells me, “I don’t care if it’s dry heat. When it’s 120 F, it’s just [expletive] hot.” 120 F is definitely heatwave territory out that way, even if it’s dry as dust.

Here in the humid Northeast, it’s a heatwave when the temperature exceeds 90 F for three days. What gives? To paraphrase James Carville – “It’s the humidity, stupid.” 

If it’s 92 F and 10% humidity, the heat index or real feel temperature is 87 F. Change the humidity to 89% and the real feel temperature is 130 F, extreme danger, heat stroke territory. We can get both during a New England heatwave.

Of course, high temperatures with or without humidity will kill you. It’s the combination of both that determines deadly conditions. It all comes down to sweat.

When our distant ancestors lived in Africa 3 million years ago as it became more arid, they evolved to efficiently dissipate heat by losing body hair and increasing the number of sweat glands. As sweat evaporates from our bodies, it cools our skin. Problem is, sweat is mostly water. Since we cannot store water like a camel, when it’s hot, we need to constantly replenish the water we lose to cool ourselves.

Humans are between 55 and 65 percent water. If you sweat without replenishing water, bad things start to happen pretty quickly. If you exercise vigorously, you can sweat two pounds of water in an hour (a pound is equivalent to about a 16-oz glass of water). This means that dehydration can occur very quickly, especially if sweat rapidly evaporates. The more water you lose, the less you can regulate your body temperature. You lose 10 glasses of water; you’ll damage major organs. 14 glasses and you're dead.

You can also die from heatstroke just by sitting outside doing nothing when the real feel is 130 F. Sweat cannot evaporate, so your body temperature can rise to fatal levels in minutes.

According to an article in the Boston Globe, using data from NOAA, Massachusetts had about 4 days above 90 per year until the year 2000. Now, it’s 10. Projections range to an additional 6 to 22 days by 2050 and an additional 9 to 52 days by 2100. Imagine up to two months per year above 90. This is basically the climate of Atlanta, Georgia now and the future climate of southern New England.

These shifts are not limited to the Northeastern US. We already know what’s going on in the American Southwest. Blistering high temperatures leading to long-term drought and longer and more vicious wildfire seasons are the norm. Siberia is in a heatwave for the second year in a row, with hundreds of wildfires.

Worldwide, the projections get even uglier. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science:

“. . . depending on scenarios of population growth and warming, over the coming 50 y, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to be left outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 y. Absent climate mitigation or migration, a substantial part of humanity will be exposed to mean annual temperatures warmer than nearly anywhere today.”

The increase in land area subject to heat/humidity levels which make it life threatening just to be outdoors will span major portions of southern Asia within the next few decades, where clean water and air conditioning are an extreme luxury. Currently, we see a few days of such conditions in this region, but they are predicted to span weeks in the coming decades. Those billions in less developed countries will simply not be able to adapt. They will move. 

What could possibly go wrong?

Published in the Village News (Massachusetts), July 1, 2021

Wither the Monarch

 

Photo attribution:  By Kenneth Dwain Harrelson, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14917505

The other night, I watched a short documentary about John J. Audubon, after whom the National Audubon Society is named. His life’s work was to make a complete pictorial record of all species of North American birds. He was a detailed observer of nature, keenly aware of the world around him.

One portion of the film struck me. During his later journeys, Audubon noted how rapidly the American landscape was changing, how clearing and development of former wildlands had led to habitat fragmentation and disappearance of formerly abundant bird species in the space of a few decades during the early 19th century. It was the story then; it is the story now. This is what we do.

Which brings me to the Monarch butterfly. North American Monarchs are famous for their continent-spanning migrations. The eastern population mostly migrates south to Mexico and parts of Florida. The Western population flies to coastal sites in California as well as Mexico. It takes three generations of Monarchs to make the roundtrip journey. Why do North American Monarchs migrate in the first place? Scientists are still not sure. Monarchs elsewhere on the planet don’t migrate.

Monarchs are thought to have evolved in Central America over a million years ago. Their longevity means that the species survived at least eight glacial epochs during their time on Earth AND have been around longer than modern humans.

Sadly, as with many species on the planet, North American Monarchs are now dealing with the same pressures we have subjected to many other lifeforms over the centuries, because … that is what we do.

Their steep decline in North America is alarming. In Mexico, the eastern population’s overwintering number from last winter was about 45 million, compared to 250 million just 25 years ago. The Western population was down to 2,000 from 1.2 million just 24 years earlier.

What are we doing to cause this decline? Lots of things: GMO crops resistant to herbicides used to kill weeds which kill milkweed, the only plant on which Monarchs will lay their eggs; long-term drought along their migratory routes and habitat loss at their overwintering sites in Mexico, the result of illegal logging in sanctuary areas. Our rapidly changing climate also features prominently.

Although Monarchs have been able to weather climate change in the past, the rapidity of change now is another thing entirely. Monarchs are among 450 butterfly species whose Western U.S. populations have been steadily dropping for the last 40 years, according to research recently published in the journal Science. The paper concludes that warmer autumns are a significant contributor to this decline. Furthermore, it’s not enough to preserve open space, create butterfly gardens and in the case of Monarchs, plant milkweed.

The good news for Monarchs, such as it is, comes from other newly published research which noted that despite the jaw-dropping decline of Western US Monarchs observed in their historical overwintering sites, “... large populations of monarchs were found breeding in San Francisco and Los Angeles areas ...” Normally, Monarchs don’t breed at that time of year and not in those locations. The author stated that "It seems that Monarchs are evolving or adapting, likely to the changing climate, by changing their breeding patterns."  The author thought that the Monarchs could be adapting and doing it quickly.

The article also stated that Monarchs in Australia saw precipitous population declines in the 1970s. However, the species did not go extinct, it just adapted. Furthermore, this result occurred without any overt attempt at preservation, since Monarchs are not native to Australia. That’s the good news.

The bad news?

According to a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) life on Earth is being challenged in ways not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs. The authors stated that “Nature is under siege [and that] most biologists agree that the world has entered its sixth mass extinction event.” The paper concluded that “… a biodiversity crisis is accelerating as the planet’s human population grows, increasingly exacerbated by unprecedented recent climate changes and other anthropogenic stressors. Time is not on our side, and urgent action is needed on behalf of nature.”

The beautiful, delicate Monarch may be able to dodge the extinction bullet, but that may end up being cold comfort in the grand scheme of things.

Published in the Village News, June 4th, 2021

Think Circular not Linear

I have some T-shirts that I probably got over 20 years ago. I don’t replace my blue jeans until the knees are worn out (which for some would be a fashion statement) When I was a kid, I used to patch them up with denim from even older jeans. In the 70s, that was an OK thing to do.

I try not to buy clothes unless I really need them, which maybe makes me unusual (or just a typical American male?). Even so, I think I still have more clothes than I need when I look in my closet.

Why am I telling you about my sartorial deficiencies? 

What inspired this column were studies done by Patagonia, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the United Nations and others which estimate that the amount of clothing manufactured worldwide doubled between 2000 and 2015, but the number of times an item was worn has actually decreased by 36%. Clothing is considered disposable. Worldwide, over $500 Billion in perfectly good clothing is thrown away each year, one garbage-truck every second.  73% of clothing ends up landfilled or incinerated. By any measure – this is an insane waste.

$500 Billion is just the retail price. Then you have to consider the factors like raw material to make the fabrics, the dyes, the energy to manufacture the clothing, the transportation costs. Environmental impacts, detailed in a peer-reviewed post in Climate Feedback, include “’ . . . intensive water use, water pollution through dying and textile production, and pesticide and herbicide pollution through the agricultural production of cotton. Microplastics, which are shed primarily from synthetic textiles during washing, are also polluting the oceans, potentially negatively impacting human health and natural ecosystems.”

According to the study, “total greenhouse gas emissions from textiles production, at 1.2 billion metric tons annually, are more than those of all international flights and maritime shipping combined” which is between 8 and 10% of global annual emissions.

So, what’s the solution? A rethink of the whole textile and fashion industry: “Making Fashion Circular”. The three components of this concept are 1 -design products to be used more, 2 – make them in a way “to be made again” and 3 - make them from safe, recyclable or renewable material.

“Used more” means “manufactured to last”. Garments should be easier to repair and users should have the ability to maintain their purchases.  You can extend this concept to renting instead of owning clothing.

“Made to be made again” means that garments should be made to be easily disassembled, allowing material reuse, remanufacture, recycling and ultimately, composting. The fashion and textile business would need to support the infrastructure to make this process happen.  Governments would also have to support this concept via regulation, policies and promotion of the recycling infrastructure.

“Made from safe, recyclable or renewable material” means textiles do not contain or are made from hazardous materials which can make their way into the environment. The manufacturing process, supply chain and associated technologies would focus on optimizing resources and minimizing waste, including use of recycled material.

This transition would require a partnership of both the fashion business and government, a lot of innovation, “transparency and traceability” and of course, money, also known as “investment”.

But as I think about it - why stop with clothing? The circular model could apply to cars, electronics, appliances and most any other consumer good you can think of.

Our modern material economy is linear. Raw material to product to waste. The manufacturer has no responsibility once the product leaves the factory. That’s up to us consumers. In this linear model, resources to make stuff are considered infinite.  Places to dispose of them as well. The problem is, they aren’t.

A circular economy would be material to product to material until the material could no longer be used. Waste would be minimized. Manufacturers would be on the hook to work with government to recycle products, and vice versa. On the flip side, manufacturers would get a head start on the fabrication process because they would not have to start with raw material, they’d just have to reprocess what they’d already made before.

We would no longer be “consumers”, we would be “users”. We would be part of the process, but so would businesses and governments.

A circular economy is an alien concept, but with the world’s population at 7.8 billion today and 10.9 billion by 2100, and everyone wanting the kind of lifestyle we Americans take for granted, a linear economy is no longer an option.  It’s not sustainable. 

Published in the Village News, April 23, 2021

Freezing in the Dark

 Minot, ND, has brutal winters with temperatures of twenty below for days on end, before adding in the wind chill. Interesting thing about Minot and the rest of North Dakota, it’s rare that they lose power for more than an hour or so when it gets that cold. Strain on the grid can lead to rolling black outs, but total grid failure? No (Full disclosure, my son is stationed at Minot AFB).

The reasons are several: North Dakota power plants and gas pipelines are hardened against cold weather; its electric grid is part of the Eastern Interconnect, which is regulated by the Federal Government; interstate electric grids have to meet certain standards, like being able to operate in cold weather; and the interconnect allows North Dakota to get power from elsewhere in the country if needed.

Texas, as I am sure you have heard by now, doesn’t want to be regulated by the Federal Government, so most of its grid has no connection to the rest of the country. No regulations, no standards. No dependency on anyone else. It’s Texas after all. Had the state been connected, the power outages might have still occurred, but the grid probably would not have almost collapsed.

Also keep in mind that contrary to assertions by Governor Abbot, it wasn’t the Texas wind turbine shut downs which lead to the electric grid collapse, it was frozen gas line valves and infrastructure failures at nuclear power plants.

The disaster Texas experienced last month also happened in 2011, yet Texas did nothing to prepare for this one. To quote Winston Churchill, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Then there were all the burst water pipes, both in homes and below the streets, not only in Texas, but in many locales across the Deep South. It’s routine in the South for residential water pipes to be routed through uninsulated attics and municipal water pipes to be laid above what we hardy New Englanders would consider the frost line.

If the world is warming up, why does the subtropical US need to be prepared for cold snaps as brutal as the one last month?

Relative to the rest of the planet, the Arctic is warming much faster. It still gets extremely cold in the winters, because well, it’s the Arctic after all. With a warming planet, the polar vortex, a 600-mile wide low pressure area that sits above the North Pole, periodically destabilizes. When it does, the jet stream, the high altitude fast moving winds which circle the planet, weaken as well. Loops and waves appear in the jet stream, which allows cold air to “leak” out of the Arctic and spread south. This winter’s vortex breakdown was predicted by a European weather forecast team last October.

An unstable jet stream causes problems in other seasons. A wave or loop in the jet stream can stop moving, causing areas of high and low pressure to stay in place. If a high pressure system doesn’t move in the summer, the stagnant warm air can suck the water out of the soil leading to drought and cause persistent heat waves as well. Large storms systems skirt the edges of a jet stream loop, leading to more frequent torrential rainfalls and consequent flooding.

We are seeing more and more of what researchers call unstable weather. Not all of it can be directly tied to our warming world, according to scientists who are studying the links between extreme weather events and climate change, but a lot of it is.

Last month’s cold disaster provides a few lessons.

First, the Southern US is not prepared for cold spells any more than it is for the increasing frequency of extended droughts, floods, or heat waves.

Second, governments at all levels, national to municipal, need to plan for the kind of weather we have now and not prepare based on weather data from even a 25 years ago. We need to upgrade our infrastructure, which has been sorely neglected for decades.

Third, we need to remember that people AND governments have to depend on each other.

Former Texas Governor (and former Secretary of Energy) Rick Perry said that “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” Irony is that Texas was glad to have FEMA in “their business” after last month’s disaster. I wonder how many Texans Mr. Perry speaks for these days.

Fourth, the conveniences of our modern world, like reliable electric power when we flick a light switch and clean running water when we open a faucet, should not be taken for granted. Our society depends on these basic services. When they stop and the government cannot effectively step in to fill the gap, people find out that the veneer of civilization can be pretty thin.

That folks, is not a good thing.

Published in the Village News, 03/12/2021
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Where had all the plastic gone?

 Today, I continue to discuss assertions made entitled “Apocalypse Never” by environmental policy commentator Michael Schellenberger, whose main thesis is that our environmental problems are not really that bad.

Another topic he discussed was the impact of plastics in our environment. His main thesis is that plastics degrade quickly in sunlight (a phenomenon called photo-dissociation), because ultraviolet light breaks down the bonds that hold plastic together. 

 I will note that “degrade” is not the same as “disappear”. Plastic stuff becomes microplastic stuff. Plastics never go away, they just break apart and become small - less than 5 mm (1/8 inch), or even less, a few microns, where they become known as nanoplastics.

 Schellenberger cited a scientific study where researchers found 95% less plastic at the ocean’s surface than they expected. Where had all the plastic gone? It was broken down to microplastics onto which small plankton and bacteria attached, making the particles weigh enough to sink to the ocean floor – problem solved. Turtles with straws up their noses, sea birds and whales with stomachs containing plastic junk are an excuse for alarmism, not real problems.

 Not so fast. The amount of plastic on the seafloor is now estimated at almost 200 MILLION tons. The amount of plastic entering the oceans every year is roughly 8 million tons, equivalent to 90 aircraft carriers. Most of it will break down into microplastic or nanoplastic particles. Estimates are that about 5.25 trillion microplastic particles now float in the oceans from the surface to the depths.

 But it is only in the last few years that detailed ecological risk assessments of microplastics in the oceans or coastal areas have been performed. A risk assessment determines at what concentration a substance becomes a risk to human or ecological health. 

 One study I read found no discernible risk to life in the open ocean at current concentrations, with the caveat that the concentrations are increasing and will exceed levels which will cause problems for ocean life by mid-century. In some coastal environments, those levels have already been exceeded.

 Another study stated that microplastics can be small enough to pass into the bloodstream through the intestines, even as larger particles pass through the gut undigested. Microplastics become more and more concentrated in body tissues as they pass up the food chain from plankton to crustaceans to fish to seabirds. Limited evidence suggests that microplastics are a threat to marine animals. “Suggest” is not the same as “unequivocally demonstrate” so therein hangs the problem.

 But what about us? As microplastics are now ubiquitous in the environment, we ingest about one credit card’s worth every week or half a pound every year, the equivalent of about three smartphones. 

 Eating credit cards like Doritos, even with guacamole, goes under the heading of really bad idea, but are microplastic particles actually harmful to us? We don’t know for sure.

 Research into the toxicity of microplastics is just getting started. We do not know the effects of plastics on the human body in detail because we haven’t gone looking for them in detail. 

 Plastics are more than just the polymers. They contain several thousand other chemicals, even flame retardants. In the environment, plastics adsorb toxic man made chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, bisphenol A, and organochlorine pesticides, all of which go under the heading of “really bad for you”. We get exposed to these chemicals every day, but microplastics present a new pathway into the human body.

 Once very small microplastics are ingested, they can pass into the lymph system, and get deposited in the liver, penetrate the placenta and blood-brain barrier and the lungs. Once there, the particles will accumulate. Plastic particles can cause inflammation and inflammation underlies many human ailments. Cause and effect? We don't know.

 Initial studies in labs indicate that microplastics are indeed toxic to lung, liver and brain cells, but that’s a far cry from fully understanding their interactions within the human body. As one article stated, “It could be that, as with many pollutants, there is a threshold beyond which microplastics become toxic to humans or other species.” We just don’t know what it is yet.

 So, what are we to do? Every article and study I read had the same recommendations: First, fully understand what micro and nanoplastics do to wildlife and humans. Second, stop putting plastics into the environment. Third, start using less plastic, much less. I know, easier said than done. 

 We are in a situation where we have absence of evidence. That is not the same as evidence of absence. Ignorance is not an excuse for inaction.

“It is also within our power to change cultures so that litter created on land does not become an environmental hazard in our oceans, both now and for future generations." 

- Jason Hall-Spencer, PhD, Marine Biology

Published in the Westborough Village News, 11/14/2020

A Tale of Two Visions

 

Two significant headlines last week in the Washington Post caught my eye because they indicate diametrically opposed visions of the future:

“As Biden vows monumental action on climate change, a fight with the fossil fuel industry has only begun.”

“General Motors to eliminate gasoline and diesel light-duty cars and SUVs by 2035.”

It’s hard to discuss the implications of these headlines without looking at the numbers, but it’s what you have to do to understand what’s going on.

The oil industry is pissed off because the Biden Administration froze petroleum exploration leasing on federal lands and waters. I think it’s much ado about nothing, because the industry is not using 53% of the onshore and 77% of the offshore leases they already hold. Not only that, but the oil industry shunned the first auction of oil and gas development leases along the coastal plain of the Alaska National Wildlife refuge. Only half the parcels were sold, most to the State of Alaska.

Consider also that oil companies comprised 28% of the U.S. stock market in 1980, but a tenth of that now, according to the Post. Investors are always looking at future return on investment and it’s clear they think the oil industry’s future is grim.

So, what’s with GM? In the 2000s, they experimented with electric cars, but ended up buying them back and destroying all but two. Now they want to throw $27 billion by 2025 in electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing and battery production, with a goal of converting 40% of their entire line of cars, vans, SUVs, and light trucks to electric by 2026 and 100% by 2035.

GM is actually a new comer here, according to the Post article. Ford is spending $11.5 billion on EVs such as the Mustang Mach E by 2022. VW will build 70 different models of EVs by 2031.

GM’s decision is hardly altruistic. The Post noted that the California economy, the fifth largest in the world, is going to prohibit sales of gasoline-engine cars by 2036. England will do so by 2030. Biden’s plans to electrify the Federal fleet of light vehicles is another incentive. The worldwide market for EVs is expected to go from 5 million today to 140 million by the end of the decade. EV sales increased during 2020, even as auto sales overall took a huge beating.

The other thing to note is that the cost of alternative energy, EV, and battery technology is declining at a rapid rate as the technology advances and commercial production scales up. The lifetime cost of EV ownership is on par or even cheaper than gasoline-powered vehicles.

You may ask why we should go electric if most of our electric power is generated by gas, coal and oil. Aren’t we just shifting the carbon pollution elsewhere? Good questions, but consider these trends:

First, The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that 39.7 gigawatts of wind and solar will “account for most new U.S. electricity generating capacity in 2021” while 9.1 gigawatts of “nuclear and coal will account for [the] majority of U.S. generating capacity retirements in 2021.” The EIA expects renewables to outpace natural gas by 2050.

Second, grid-scale wind and solar now account for 8.7% of U.S. power generation, up from about 0.16% in 2000. A new study indicates that they could provide 70% by 2035, especially, as is projected, the cost of grid scale energy storage continues to decline.

Bottom line - as EVs replace conventional vehicles, they will be recharged by an increasing amount of alternative energy.

The switch to EVs will not happen overnight. I expect it will take over a decade. It cannot come soon enough.

Whether you accept it or not, we are now in a climate crisis. The rate of global temperature rise, ice sheet melting, sea level rise, as well as the frequency of heat waves and wildfires are accelerating faster than projected even a few years ago. There were 22 “billion-dollar” weather-related disasters in the US alone in 2020, compared to 6 in 2010, 4 in 2000, and 3 in 1990 (numbers inflation adjusted). All these trends go under the heading of “wrong direction.”

Both the fossil fuel and auto industries see the writing on the wall. One is fighting a rear-guard action to hang on to the past and the other has decided to look towards the future.

2020 in Review - A Different Perspective

On January 21, 2020, I posted a link on Facebook to a Washington Post Article entitled “Chinese officials urge people not to travel in and out of the city at the center of the virus outbreak.” I commented “Is it just me or are current events starting to seem like the plot of a dystopian science fiction novel?”

Eleven months on, the answer is . . . yes.

It is getting harder and harder to find subjects about which to write that don’t sound like the plot of a dystopian science fiction novel. Case in point - Earlier this year, my son sent me a set of pictures comparing the fictional Los Angeles of Bladerunner 2049 to San Francisco during the height of last summer’s wildfires, which covered the region in thick blankets of smoke. It was hard to tell the difference between fictional pollution-choked skies and the real smoke-choked skies.

The pandemic and, to put it mildly, the extended and chaotic political season, drowned out what was happening in the larger world beyond the 24-hour news cycle.

From Spring to November, the US simultaneously drowned and burned.

The 2020 North Atlantic hurricane season was the most active on record, with 30 named storms, 12 of which made landfall in the US. Lake Charles, Louisiana was hit twice. The very last storm, Iota, reached Category 5. Four others reached Category 4.

Why all the storms? The heat stored in the North Atlantic is almost three times what it was five decades ago, about the equivalent to the energy released by almost half a million modern nuclear weapons. For comparison purposes, the US currently has 5,800 nuclear weapons.

The decade ending in 2020 had 25 Category 4 and 5 North Atlantic Hurricanes, three times as many as the decade ending in 1980, which correlates very closely with the increasing temperature trend of the North Atlantic Ocean.

As of the end of this year, about 14 million acres burned across the US, double the 10-year average. In the Western US, 10 million acres burned, three times the previous annual record. Average annual temperatures in the Western US are 1.8 degrees hotter than they were 40 years ago.

The Earth had the warmest November on record, despite the fact that the planet should be in a periodic cooling cycle called La Nina. On an annual basis, 2020 may be the second warmest year on record. 2016 so far has been the hottest, but that year was during an El Nino warming cycle. Does this mean that we will break another global temperature record when we have the next El Nino? I can’t say for sure, but the trends suggest we could.

According to NOAA, last summer was the fourth hottest on record with July the second hottest on record. The southwestern US states all had their warmest August. Average August precipitation across the US was a mere 2.35 inches, making it the third driest on record.

The extent of the summer Arctic sea ice was the second lowest on record, 23% below average. The lowest? 2016, when the world average temperature was the highest on record. The last major ice shelf (expanse of floating ice attached to land) in Canada broke up on August 6th.

The annual Arctic Report Card stated that the average Arctic air temperature was the second highest on record since record keeping started in 1900. All other record highs have occurred during the last 6 years. High temperature records were broken throughout the Arctic. As I wrote in a column earlier this year, Siberia had over 18,000 wildfires which collectively burned an area the size of New York State.

Last February, the furthest north peninsula of Antarctica had a heatwave, with temperatures equivalent to Los Angeles during the same period. It was the third such heatwave of the 2019-2020 Antarctic summer. “If you think about this one event in February, it isn’t that significant. It’s more significant that these events are coming more frequently,” said one research scientist.

I could keep going with the numbers, but I hope you get the picture.

The number of sick and dead from Covid in the US are now staggering and unrelenting, but a vaccine is on the way. An end is in sight.

The ongoing changes to our planet are also staggering and unrelenting, but unlike Covid, there is no end in sight.

Happy New Year.

Published in the Village News, January 8th, 2021

Are Wildfires Really as Bad as They Seem?

 

This year, environmental policy commentator Michael Schellenberger wrote a book called “Apocalypse Never” whose main thesis is that our environmental problems really are not that bad. He had the arrogance to apologize to the world on behalf of all environmentalists for exaggerating our environmental problems. I’ll write more about this book in future columns.

Among the topics he discussed is the prevalence of wildfires. Are there really more now than there used to be? He points to a 2014 study that says globally, fires have actually been decreasing. What he didn’t say was that the biggest declines were in the tropics. Other areas of the world? Not so much.

Even the study Schellenberger cited stated “Rising temperature and frequent droughts are becoming increasingly important and expected to increase wildfire activity in many regions of the world”. His rhetorical tactic is called taking facts out of context.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, in the US, twice as much land area burned per year in the last 18 years than the period from 1985 to 1999. Even worse, wildfires CO2 emissions were equivalent to 22% of carbon dioxide put in the atmosphere between 1997 and 2016 from fossil fuel combustion.

Schellenberger also stated that climate change does not cause wildfires. That’s true, but no credible scientist has actually ever made the assertion that it does, a rhetorical tactic called a strawman argument. Wildfires are started by lightning or people. What is happening is that the conditions conducive to wildfires have been exacerbated by a warming planet. 

The key to a good conflagration is fuel aridity. The drier the wood, the easier it is for a fire to start and spread out of control. So, if you have an extreme drought combined with low humidity, the moisture in wood and grass essentially go to zero. 

Our President says the problem is that we need to better manage our forests (you know, rake the leaves and twigs), but it doesn’t matter if a forest is well or poorly managed, if the forest floor is free of undergrowth or the forest is thinned, as the logging industry insists is the only method to manage forests. If the entire region has turned into a tinderbox, any spark, combined with high winds, will cause the kinds of fires we have seen all over the world during the last decade. 

Twenty five percent of the Earth’ surface has a longer fire season now. Conditions have doubled the amount of land susceptible to fire. There is a strong linkage between a warming planet and occurrence of fires. Less moisture, more and larger fires. 

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, as of October 16th, there were still 63 wildfires burning in 11 states, only 7 of them contained, which burned over 4.6 million acres, 2.5 million of them in California alone. Total US area burned this year is over 8.3 million acres. This year isn’t yet the worst on record for the US, but it’s close and the year isn’t over yet.

And this is just the Western US, from Colorado to California.

The Pantanal region of South America is the world largest tropical wetland. This year twenty two percent of it burned, an area the size of Maryland. Fires in the Pantanal are not unusual. During the dry season lightning-triggered fires burn in the grasslands of the region. But this year, according to an article in Nature, the Pantanal is suffering from its worst drought in 47 years. Given the long-term trend of temperature increase and precipitation decrease, the region’s ecosystem could collapse.

Along the Arctic Circle in Siberia, a six-month drought and heat wave starting early this year led to over 18,000 fires, which collectively burned an area the size of New York state. It’s the second year in a row these fires have occurred. The fire risk in Siberia is only expected to increase with a warming climate. A US scientist who studies Arctic fires stated: “What you would expect is already happening, and in some cases faster than we would have expected.” 

You see the pattern here. Increased temperatures lead to increased fuel aridity increasing the fire risk and the length of the fire season, from Australia to Alaska, from the Amazon to the Arctic Circle.

And all we do is react - More fires, more firefighting. Adaption and relocation may be the only options given seemingly inexorable trends and hear-see-speak-no-evil government policies. Maybe grab a rake and head for the woods while we are at it.

Published in the Village New, September 25th, 2020

End of Oil? Not Yet

 Today, various environmental groups are dancing on the grave of the petroleum industry. 

The pandemic has driven demand through the floor. We have a huge glut of crude oil. Tankers with as much as 20 million barrels of oil sit off the U.S. west coast, acting as floating storage tanks because onshore tanks are full to the brim. At the same time, oil producing countries have not cut back on production hoping to capture what limited market share there still is. Crude oil prices have collapsed to $36/barrel. Daily demand for oil dropped 29 million barrels per day last April compared to 2019.

In the US, small independent oil and gas companies are declaring bankruptcy in job lots. A few years back, there was not enough housing for oil field workers in the boom towns around the shale oil fields of the Dakotas. The boom towns are now ghost towns. Rigs rust and oil field workers are collecting unemployment. 

Most of these companies started up during the fracking boom and were never profitable. They were over-leveraged, owing millions to investors to keep them going. When prices collapsed, they did too. 

Even the majors, like Exxon Mobil, Shell and Chevron, are hurting. Their stock prices have tumbled by 50% in the last year.  Exxon has been dropped from the Dow Index. Oil and gas reserves have been devalued dramatically. Large investors are no longer interested in loaning them the funds to find new fields, let alone keep existing fields producing. Drilling in the Arctic or Atlantic is off the table.

Oil has always been a boom and bust industry. In the 1970s, oil was cheap at $25/barrel in today’s dollars. Then the price shocks starting in 1973 doubled the price in a matter of months, due to Middle Eastern wars and political instability. Everything changed - lines at gas stations, worries that the world would soon run out of oil. The “Energy Crisis” loomed over everything for many years.

In economic terms, oil demand appeared inelastic. We needed it at any price. 

In 1981, I went to work for Shell Oil when I graduated from college. A barrel of oil sold for $100. However, it soon turned out that oil demand was stretchier than we thought.

By 1986, the price of crude oil plummeted to $31/barrel. Everything had changed - fuel efficiency became a major selling point for cars. The national speed limit was set at 55 mph. Saudi Arabia flooded the market to gain market share. No surprise, I joined the ranks of unemployed oil workers and decided it was time to change careers. 

It boomed again in the 2000s. Recruiters even contacted me even though I’d been out of the industry 30 years at that point. I told them they were nuts.

The boom and the bust cycle has occurred at least 5 times since oil was first discovered 160 years ago, but this bust is a very big one. 

Is it over for the petroleum industry? Currently, the International Energy Agency predicts that demand will recover to 2019 levels within a year. Worldwide oil demand has almost always increased over time, doubling over the last 50 years from 343 to 647 million barrels a year. The question is whether this trend will continue forever. 

Oil companies themselves apparently think not. Many petroleum companies are writing off reserves, increasing investments in alternative energy and even saying that peak oil demand may soon occur. According to the IEA, even if government policies do not change, demand will flatten. If sustainable policies are adopted, demand could decrease 25% by 2040. 

In fact, those policies are changing. Many US states (including Massachusetts) and nations now mandate weaning ourselves off fossil fuels as the environmental and economic impacts of climate change become clearer to just about everyone. Big tech companies like Google and Apple have pledged to go carbon free. 

We will still need oil. Barring a massive technological change, jet aircraft will still run on kerosene. Naval and cargo ships will still need fuel oil. Cars and trucks put in service today will still be on the road 10 to 15 years from now, but even they are more fuel efficient than their 10 to 15-year-old equivalents.

The petroleum industry isn’t dead, but I don’t think it will ever be the same. I certainly could be wrong but I think that just like coal, the petroleum industry’s best days are behind it.

Published in the Village News, September 25th, 2020

The Information Apocalypse

 “Do you remember, before the internet, that it was thought the cause of collective stupidity was the lack of access to information? . . . Well, it wasn’t that.” – popular meme

When I was in college 40 years ago, writing a term paper required me to go to the library, search through various reference books and journal articles, make handwritten notes using these things called pen and paper. I would hand write a draft of my report, then type it up using this device called a typewriter. It was, as they say, all analog.

Energy was used to make the paper, print the books and journals. Once made, no more energy was used, other than the calories I burned to go to the library and do the research using my Mark 1 eyeballs and brain.

It all sounds so quaint now, doesn’t it?

Today, we have all the possible information we could ever want available at our fingertips, because it is all stored on electronically “in the cloud,” also known as huge data center buildings full of server computers connected to the world at large via a network of routers, switches and cables.

We pay a monthly fee for internet and/or wireless data services, type a few words into a search engine (aka Google) and Shazam! We are digital information prodigies. It’s easy! It’s cheap!

Well, no, it isn’t. Those data centers consume over 200 Terawatt hours of electricity per year (and growing) to power them. All those hard drives and microchips take energy and resources to make as well.

The World Economic Forum estimates that about 48 trillion billion gigabytes of information is stored “in the entire digital universe,” much of it “in the cloud.” If the average PC has a 500 gigabyte hard drive, that’s equivalent to about 96 trillion personal computers. Between 1 and 2 trillion PCs worth of data is added every day. IBM estimates that 90% of the world’s data was created in just the last decade. My math could be off – but suffice it to say, a trillion here and a trillion there and soon we are talking about really big numbers.

Worse, the vast majority is wasted. Very little of that data is even being analyzed, according to Data Intelligence firm NodeGraph.

The American Institute of Physics published a paper last month entitled “The information catastrophe” which stated that at current rates of accumulation, by 2150 the amount of power needed to sustain all this data storage “. . . would equal all the power currently produced on planet Earth”. By 2245, “half of Earth's mass would be converted to digital information mass.”  

The paper may be just an exercise in mathematical projection, but this conversion of physical and energy resources into stored data is currently proceeding unabated at an exponential rate.

I can envision it now. In 300 years, huge robotic machines will scour the Earth, with the single-minded imperative to devour everything in their way and spit out microchips to ensure that tweets, Facebook posts, and people’s Google GPS tracks from centuries earlier are preserved in all their electronic purity.

Obviously, this headlong pursuit of data storage for the sake of storing it is unsustainable. If NodeGraph is right, we aren’t even doing anything useful with most of it.

Do I have a comprehensive answer for this conundrum? Not really – other than to suggest that at some point, data will need to be “retired”.  Think about it this way - Are we really going to turn every bit of matter on the planet into one big hairy data center to store every trivial piece of anything that has made its way into digital form? That’s objectively nuts.

I cannot imagine that Amazon and Google have not thought about this “crisis”. Look at it this way, if the Earth and all its inhabitants are turned into humongous data centers, they can’t make money.

So, think about what’s actually happening when you post to Twitter or Facebook, view YouTube videos, send an email, put a document on Google Drive, watch Netflix or do any other trivial thing with whatever media device you like to use. There is more going on than you realize.

Now, excuse me while I delete a bunch of 35-year old files from my cloud storage account so I can do my part to stave off the arrival of the information apocalypse.

Published in the Village News, September 11th, 2020

The Arrogance of Eversource

 Eversource, the company that distributes natural gas through this region, wants to construct a 16” diameter high-pressure pipeline through Westborough, traversing residential neighborhoods along Flanders and Steven Road. It will pass an elementary school and two assisted living facilities.

According to their community relations “specialist”, the $21 million Worcester Feed Line Improvement Project is needed because “. . . we will lose the ability to serve existing customers and increase capacity in the region” which could happen before the decade is out.

“Increase capacity” is another way of saying “potential new customers” (their words, not mine) whom Eversource is actively encouraging to switch from oil to gas heating.

Last January, the Westborough Board of Selectmen invited Eversource to an open hearing to discuss their project. Eversource was completely unprepared to answer any kind of detailed questions from the public outside their canned presentation.

Subsequently, the Selectmen sent Eversource detailed questions to be answered at a later hearing, which took place on July 28th. Eversource again gave a canned presentation and would not provide any of the requested detailed information to support their assertion that the pipeline is an essential public need.

The question is why?

In my opinion, it’s because Eversource thinks they don’t have to. They think it will be a slam dunk to get their Energy Facility Siting Board (EFSB) permit application approved. Local opposition is just a piece of lint to be swept off their shoulder.

Let’s look at the pipeline from their perspective. A goal of any business is to increase its customer base. Nothing wrong with that. That’s capitalism.

But what do you do if this goal conflicts with a government’s goal, which is to protect its citizens and their property from an environmental threat caused, in part, by your company’s product or service?

Massachusetts’ goal is to “start to get off the fossil fuel rollercoaster”. By law the state’s greenhouse gas emissions in all sectors of the economy have to decrease 80% by 2050 which means Eversource’s revenues will decline precipitously over the coming decades. 

If I were Eversource, I’d increase my customer base as much as possible, thus making it more difficult to transition away from gas, as customers will already have born the cost of one conversion, making them reluctant to do it again. Will they admit that? Heck no.

The state is encouraging oil and gas heating consumers to switch to air source heat pumps, a proven technology which has been used for well over a decade AND which the state is subsidizing through the Mass Save program.

But Eversource lumps heat pumps in with “new and emerging technologies”, which is utter nonsense. Why would Massachusetts subsidize heat pumps if the technology was not proven?

Instead Eversource talked up their commitment to alternative energy – they devoted an entire slide proudly touting a pilot project at a farm in Connecticut to turn cow manure into natural gas. Wow, that’ll make a dent.

Their arrogant and dismissive attitude at the July 28th hearing insulted the intelligence of the Selectmen as well as anyone who was watching.

The Selectmen will again ask Eversource to address the Westborough’s questions in detail, which I fully expect Eversource to ignore as well. It all comes down to wanting more customers, plain and simple. They increase their customer base and profits; we deal with the pipeline’s disruptions and hazards.

What’s next?

The Selectmen have already gone on record as opposing the pipeline. The next step will be for the Town to engage a qualified consultant to review the Eversource application to the EFSB. The application will have the detailed information Eversource refuses to provide. We will have to pay for that consultant, but I think it will be money well spent.

What else can we do? Write to State Representatives Dykema, Gregoire and Kane as well as Senator Eldridge. Eversource will have to file for review under the provisions of the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA). This review provides for public comment, so exercise your right to comment.

Westborough committed to address climate change via Article 11 at the 2019 Fall Town Meeting. The Climate Action Plan task force will be providing recommendations to be integrated into the new Town Master Plan to lower emissions and move to alternative energy.

The pipeline project flies in the face of this goal. It will disrupt neighborhoods during its construction and present a long term hazard to residents along its route.

Westborough is not required to acquiesce to Eversource. Enough already.

Published in the Village News, August 8th, 2020

Apocalypse 2030?

 “We now hold dominion over the earth, but the planet always wins in the end.” - Richard Smith, PhD

The word “apocalypse”, is a Greek for “revelation”. Today, we associate the word with the total destruction of the world or the end times described in the Old Testament’s Book of Revelations.

In 2018, a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which stated that we would have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about half by 2030 to prevent temperature increase above the 2.7 Degree F (1.5 C) limit in the Paris Climate Accord.

This finding was interpreted by climate activists such as the Youth Climate Strike, Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion to mean that we only had until 2030 to avoid a climate change disaster.  Two years ago, I heard a teenager say that she was going to die in 12 years because of climate change (which I assured her was not true).

So, are we going to kill the planet by the end of this decade? Is humanity’s impact on Earth going to destroy the planet in an apocalypse of sudden environmental and civilization-ending collapse?

No. Neither of these things will happen. Are we going to keep making our planet less hospitable to ourselves (and everything else)? Short answer – yes.

One example - Arctic Siberia experienced a heatwave this year which a multinational scientific consortium estimated was 600 times more likely than it would have been if the Earth was not rapidly warming.

Let me make it clear - we cannot “kill” the planet. The planet and life on it have survived much worse catastrophes than anything most people could dream of.

Over the last half billion years, there have been five major extinction events which wiped out the majority of life on Earth. The causes vary from continent-sized volcanic eruptions to the well-known asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaurs.

Life always “bounced” back, if you define a bounce as hundreds of thousands to millions of years, with most animal and plant species being completely different than those which lived before the mass extinction.

Dinosaurs were a minor class of animals which grew to dominate the Earth only after a mass extinction some 200 million years ago. Same for mammalian class, which took over only after the dinosaurs were wiped out, with the exception of the feathered avian versions you see flitting about your backyard.

Modern humans have been around for the last 300,000 years. Compared to tyrannosaurs (2 million years) or wooly mammoths (5 million years), we are youngsters.

The time span of human civilization, from ancient Mesopotamia to today, is only 6,000 years, not even a rounding error compared to the age of the Earth.

During this interval, the Earth’s climate has been very stable, with an average worldwide temperature of about 55 degrees F give or take. Since the mid-20th century, this temperature has so far increased about 2 degrees F, the heat equivalent to 4 million times the annual energy consumption of the US.

If nothing changes, by 2070 one third of the people on this planet could experience an annual average temperature of 84 degrees, conditions which today only exist in a small section of the Sahara, but will spread to most of the subtropical belt around the world.

This is not the plot of a post-apocalyptic dystopian science fiction novel, it’s the conclusion of research published last May in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) after months of peer review. The study was a collaborative effort of scientists hailing from China, the US, South America and Europe. It’s also not the first scientific study I’ve read which makes this sort of prediction.

Is this prediction apocalyptic or alarmist? Certainly, it doesn’t leave me feeling all warm and fuzzy. Keep in mind that PNAS isn’t in the habit of publishing science fiction novel plots in its journal.

It’s also not a sure thing because it assumes that we do nothing to alter the trajectory, which we still can do, to some extent.

“We now hold dominion over the earth” but it is hubris to think we are not subject to the same forces of nature which apply to all other forms of life. We forget that we are part of nature.

The only difference is that we allegedly have the ability to think ahead and a modicum of wisdom, both of which seem in short supply at the moment.

“The planet always wins in the end.” Almost every species of life that has existed on Earth has one thing in common, it is extinct.

Will humans become extinct someday? Inevitably, yes. We do not help ourselves by rapidly making the planet’s environment much harsher for us, which all the evidence shows we are doing.

Remember, we need the planet. The planet does not need us. Just ask a woolly mammoth.

Published in the Village News, August 1, 2020

The Climate Apartheid Scenario

We all saw the excruciatingly slow murder of George Floyd by a police officer indifferent to his humanity and the consequent huge protests which have rippled across our nation since then inflamed by the anger of continual justice denied to people of color, a “feature” of our country since the end of the civil war. Minorities had enough. We should all have had enough.

The Covid-19 pandemic also brutally exposed the social injustice and inequities inherent in our economic system, where minorities are still more likely to suffer from lack of access to healthcare, decent housing and good education which would break the cycle of their poverty. The stark contrast between white and black people in this country has never been clearer.

Consider a recent University of Pittsburgh study showing that in the US, “. . . black people are more than 3.5 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than white people, and Latino people are nearly twice as likely to die . . .” If nothing else can convince you of our country’s racial inequities, this statistic should.

The inequities go much further than our broken criminal, social and health systems.

Another study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association of 32 million births in the US since 2007 stated that: “pregnant women exposed to high temperatures or air pollution are more likely to have children who are premature, underweight or stillborn, and African-American mothers and babies are harmed at a much higher rate than the population at large.”  As one of the study’s authors said in the NY Times – “Black moms matter.”

So, add environmental AND climate injustice to the list of racial injustices as well, which can be tied directly back to the social and economic inequities I have already listed.

“Climate injustice” you say? Yes.

Any way you look at the numbers, the world is rapidly getting warmer. We already know that heat waves kill – but they kill more minorities and the poor as a percentage of victims.

African Americans are more likely to live nearer to power plants or other pollution sources and are more likely to not have air conditioning. They are more likely to have jobs which put their health at risk due to problems like heat stress. Add in the lack of access to healthcare and the mortality and morbidity numbers should surprise no one.

Sea levels are rising and flooding is more common. We are not talking about Bangladesh or Vietnam’s Mekong Delta; we are talking about the United States and the Mississippi Delta. Even New York City falls into this category given what happened during Hurricane Sandy.

Well to-do people can pick up and move away from flood-prone areas, just as they can move to wealthier communities like Westborough from cities like Lawrence. Disadvantaged people cannot, making it likely that people of color in these vulnerable communities will end up being homeless climate refugees.

I read an interview with Philip Alston, a law professor and United Nations Special Reporter on extreme poverty and human rights. I will just quote from the interview: he warned last year in a harrowing report on the climate crisis that 120 million people could be forced into poverty by global warming by 2030 and wrote that ‘we risk a ‘climate apartheid scenario where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer."

Ashton went on to say “There's going to be massive population displacement—the figures there are truly stunning in terms of the hundreds of millions of people who are likely to be affected, both internationally and internally.”

2030 is just a decade away. If you have young children, they will be in high school in 2030. 2030 is not an endpoint - it will just be the beginning.

If you live in the towns covered by the Village News and are reading this article from the comfort of your air-conditioned single-family home on an acre of land with its two-car garage and green lawn (that’s me, by the way), you very likely among those who will not immediately suffer from the coming climate apartheid. You will have the resources to live in a warmer world, at least for a while. Your less fortunate neighbors will not.

In the last five months, which have felt like five years, we have witnessed a global pandemic unlike anything since 1917 and nationwide protests unlike anything since the 1960s. They have laid bare social and economic inequities of our society we have so long ignored. Neither the pandemic nor social unrest are going to go away any time soon.

The climate crisis will only make these human crises more common and more severe. Blithe complacency in the face of what’s coming is no longer an option.

Published in the Village News, June 27th, 2020

COVID-19 and the New Normal

One of the lessons the last few weeks should have taught us is that we live in an interconnected world.

We can travel to the opposite side of the planet in hours. The internet allows dispersal of information worldwide in less than an eyeblink. Our supply chains allow goods to be created and moved across the world only when they are needed, from factories with the cheapest labor, making businesses more efficient.

This interconnectedness has a flip side. Diseases can travel from the opposite side of the world in hours. The internet allows dispersal of mis-information worldwide in less than an eyeblink. Our “just-in-time” supply chains can quickly break down when they are most needed, as crowded factories shut down.

A second lesson is that we are not as separated from nature as we like to think we are. You can live in the middle of a city and be impacted by disease-harboring wildlife on the other side of the planet.

A third lesson is that worldwide catastrophes are not only possible, they are inevitable. First world countries are not invulnerable. WE are not invulnerable.

The impact of the COVID-19 catastrophe is defined by the loss of human life, the disruption to our society, and the vast financial losses – probably tens of trillions of dollars worldwide, all of which will reverberate through society for many years to come.

COVID-19 ripped across this planet in weeks and showed how unprepared humanity is to deal with a worldwide calamity, regardless of ideology, race, religion or form of government.

The conditions which led to this one are still in place. Unfettered world travel, poor sanitation and health conditions, ongoing intrusion into regions of the world where these diseases are endemic, chaotic and inconsistent public health policies and response planning, and defunding of scientific research. The list goes on.

I cannot begin to predict where our country will be six months from now, but I can make this prediction – another pandemic like this one will happen if we do not get our act together. The consequences will be just as catastrophic.

Moving on - Let me ask you a question - Have you noticed the lack of contrails through blue skies?

The question leads to the pandemic’s impact on the rest of the planet, meaning the natural world. Air and water pollution decreased markedly. People in cities normally choked by pollution can now see for miles. Wildlife everywhere started walking the streets where people feared to tread.

I am willing to predict that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will decrease this year. In other words, the impact on the planet was positive.

COVID-19 is a fast catastrophe, occurring while the slower moving climate catastrophe continues unabated. This ongoing catastrophe is having the same impact on society, in terms of lives lost, lives disrupted and lost economic output. It’s just taking longer. Background noise. Backpage news or way-down-the-webpage news if you no longer do something as quaint as read an actual newspaper.

Unlike this pandemic – the impact of ongoing climate on the natural world, which we depend on for clean water, clean air, food, predictable weather, and stable sea level is devastating as well.

Some aspects of the climate crisis will not be slow moving. A recent paper in Nature predicts that we will reach a temperature threshold within a decade where ecosystems will rapidly collapse. Starting in the tropics then moving rapidly to more temperate regions beyond the equator by 2050. This scenario assumes we continue to do little or nothing about reining in greenhouse gas emissions. Another tipping point where the world switches to an irreversible new normal.

The rapid collapse of ecosystems will lead to starvation, loss of life, disrupted lives, all the impacts the pandemic caused. Unlike the pandemic, there will be no turning back, at least in terms of the human perspective of time. When plant and animal species disappear, they are gone for good. Increased temperatures and CO2 concentrations will take centuries to abate.

This fast-moving pandemic and the slower, but now accelerating climate crisis are both within our capacity to manage, we just need to start thinking differently about the world and our place in it. Start taking the longer view, one which spans generations, not daily changes in the S&P 500.

I will leave you with this thought.: A friend of mine wrote on Facebook about the pandemic's consequences: “We can't just ‘return to normal.’ Normal was the problem in the first place.”

Published in the Village News May 1, 2020

Living in a Disaster Movie

At the start of every disaster movie, there’s a scientist being ignored. – internet meme

In 1983, I attended a lecture by Richard Leakey, a noted paleoanthropologist and son of Louis Leakey, discoverer of many of our extinct hominid ancestors. I distinctly remember an answer he gave during the Q&A session after his lecture, on the biggest threats to the human race. 

Instead of nuclear war, a very real threat at that time, he said the biggest threat would be a virulent disease that spread rapidly around the world because of the ease of international travel and trade. He predicted such an event almost 40 years ago. 

He thought the disease would be spawned in a hospital environment, where constant evolution of bacteria in response to antibiotics and antiseptics would create a superbug impervious to any known treatment.

Indeed, we now are faced with such a superbug – MRSA – a staph bacterium resistant to just about every known antibiotic. Although MRSA is now common, it does not spread easily throughout a population.

Turns out that the virulent “bug” about which Leakey warned us was not a bacterium, but a virus, which jumped from bats to mammals then to people. He was not right about the source, but was right about what could happen and indeed what did happen as COVID-19 crippled the world in a matter of weeks.

Public health experts and epidemiologists have warned us for decades that a dangerous and very contagious pandemic was not a matter of if, but when, because it had happened before.

Spanish flu, which probably originated in the US, spread like wildfire in the crowded conditions of cities, troop ships and the trenches of World War I Europe, sickening 500 million and killing anywhere from 17 to 50 million. Remember that this pandemic happened when the furthest an airplane could fly was a few hundred miles. World air travel was science fiction. 

Instead of preparing for this eventuality by stockpiling the materiel needed to fight a pandemic, putting policies in place to rapidly mobilize against it, and funding medical research to create potential cures, we have done the opposite since Leakey made his prediction. 

Public health programs have been cut or defunded to the point of extinction all over the US. Even now, medical research is the target of draconian cuts under the current administration.

Adding insult to injury - President Trump ignored warnings about what was going to happen for months, because he thought it would make him look bad and tank the economy, the one thing he had going for him to justify his re-election.

Well - how did that one work out?

Shortsighted does not even begin to describe government policies which put us into this mess, but pandemic response policies are just one half of the problem.
The other half is the lack of policies to prevent the eruption of such virulent diseases in the first place.

Let’s start with a question:  Why do so many of these viruses – Marburg, Ebola, SARS and now COVID-19 originate from bats? 

The reason is the same as why staph evolved to resist antibiotics. Bats have an immune system that’s very good at battling viruses, so the viruses keep evolving to get past the bat immune system, thus becoming more virulent.

How do bat viruses turn into people viruses? The path starts with the proximity of bats to other mammals which are then captured and consumed by people. In China, there are huge markets specializing in exotic animals that have contact with bats in the wild. COVID-19 is thought to have jumped to people from a critter known as a pangolin. 

The problem isn’t “bat soup” as Senator John Cornyn opined. Not sure that pangolin soup sounds any more appetizing, but I digress.

The Chinese government has known for years that such markets are a disease tinderbox just waiting to explode. It happened before with SARS. They could have shut down trade in exotic animal meat years ago, but didn’t because consuming such meat is a cultural norm in China. The government may be a communist autocracy, but they still don’t want to piss off their people. 

The Chinese government put shortsighted government policy in the name of political expediency over the welfare of their people. What’s worse is that when COVID-19 started to spread, they covered it up for the same reason. 

The science has always been clear. Viruses don’t give a damn about public perception.

There are so many threats to people and the world that scientific researchers have identified. Some of these threats are we cannot do anything about. If the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts or a large asteroid speeds in from the dark and hits the Earth at 30,000 miles an hour, it’s basically game over for civilization.

Others we can do something about, either to prevent them or to fight them, like pandemic disease.

It was politically expedient to ignore the scientific warnings about COVID-19. As a result, we are living in a disaster movie.

Inexorable Trend

Inexorable - Impossible to stop or prevent

Among the criticisms I got when I started writing columns advocating for grid-scale wind and solar energy is that they cannot power a very energy intensive use such as the electric arc furnaces used in steel mills. The very idea was laughable.

No longer. A NY Times article from last October detailed how a steel mill is being transformed to use solar during the day and wind at night.  Overall, 95% of the mill’s energy demand will be provided by solar alone when the transformation is complete.  It’s just the first plant, but I have no doubt that it won’t be the last.

Never say never.

This transformation is possible because the cost of alternative energy has dropped precipitously over the last decade. The U.S. Energy Information Agency, according to an article in a January Forbes article, predicts that 76% of new electric energy going online this year will be solar and wind. Conversely, coal and gas plants will account for 85% of closures.

Coal can no longer compete with renewables, even as federal subsidies phase out. Solar and wind costs have dropped about 90% and 70% respectively over the last decade. Although renewables still make up a fraction of US grid-scale energy production it’s growing exponentially, while coal is collapsing.

Solar and wind are cheaper than nuclear by a factor of three. It’s now cheaper to add alternative energy to the grid than even natural gas.

Another common criticism is that because the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine, these sources are unreliable. This criticism also no longer valid because of the parallel precipitous drop in the price of battery storage systems, making even rarely-used natural gas-powered standby plants increasingly uneconomic.

Even more dramatic is a new technology being prototyped where excess solar and wind power is used to generate hydrogen by splitting water molecules. The hydrogen can be stored until needed. Hydrogen can be used to run a power turbine just as easily as natural gas. Burn hydrogen and you get . . . water. No batteries needed.

Given current trends, solar is projected to make up 20% of US electrical generation by 2030, up from about 3% now. Likewise, wind is expected to grow to 40% by 2030, compared to today’s 8%.

What do all these numbers mean? It means the trends have become inexorable despite the retrograde policies of the current administration.

Not only that, but the jobs in alternative energy now outstrip those in fossil fuel extraction by 3 to 1, according to Forbes, especially in solar. Given how much room there is to grow in these industries, the trend can only continue.

I also think these projections are underestimates because many states have mandated aggressive goals to “decarbonize” their energy production by 50 to 100% by 2050 or earlier. These states represent 28% of all US power demand, according to the World Resources Institute.

In addition, investor-owned utilities are pledging to do the same thing. WRI states that “These pledges suggest that power companies are beginning to recognize that the shift to low-carbon energy is inevitable and are finding it advantageous to lead in this transition.” I will say that seeing will be believing on that score.

These mandates don’t even consider what counties, cities and towns are doing, which will only increase the economic demand for low or non-carbon energy. At the municipal level in Massachusetts, many communities are making the same commitments. Last fall, Westborough Town Meeting voted to join them.

This is just the beginning. The transition should have started two decades ago, but it has started and the momentum is increasing.

As another Forbes article stated, “… it’s cheaper to save the climate than destroy it.”

This article was published in the Village News, February 22, 2020