I think I might have COVID again. Body aches and a cough. I’ve tested negative twice, but I’ve learned that doesn’t mean anything. I was at a crowded charity event on Monday, but it could have come from anywhere. Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether it’s COVID or not, I’m down for the count.
Thankfully, it’s raining outside so I don’t feel like I am missing anything. If it were colder the city would be blanketed in snow and I’d really want to be out in it. It’s been a while, though, since we’ve had a proper snowstorm in the city.
This past year was the warmest ever on record. By a lot. Even so, it’s just the latest in a steady run of hot years. The ten warmest years since we started keeping track in 1850 have all been in the last decade.
Last year’s natural disasters ran the gamut from wildfires across Canada that burned 45.7 million acres of forest to a wildfire on Maui that in addition to destroying a historic town also was the deadliest in terms of the loss of human life in the United States in a century. Across the Atlantic, Cyclone Daniel raged across the north coast of Africa and killed 10,000 people. These events were all connected to the earth’s rise in temperature.
Both Arctic and Antarctic Sea ice melted away in record amounts last year. That warming at the poles weakens the air stream which in turn, allows the subzero temperatures that much of our country’s center is experiencing to linger.
Across the globe, the frequency and destructiveness of seasonal storms set new records. In the United States, alone, there were twenty-eight separate climate-related events that each caused a billion dollars in damage or more. In all, we spent $92.9 billion dollars last year digging ourselves out from under ashes and rubble. And that’s just here, in America.
In 2015, 196 sovereign states, including the United States, entered into a legally binding agreement during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. The goal of the treaty was to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. To achieve that, greenhouse gas emissions need to peak by next year and then decline by 43% over the next five years.
Before the Eighteenth Century, Europe and North America were both largely agrarian societies, meaning that almost everything was done by hand. If you needed a basket or a rug or some other household product, somebody had to sit down and weave it or carve it or hammer it together. If you had to plow a field, you’d have to harness up the dray horses and get out there and do it yourself.
In the 1600s, that started to change as people began to figure out how to make machines that would do the work for us.
The idea of using steam as a power source is probably about 4,000 years old. The first contemporary steam engine, however, was created in 1712 and was used to pump water out of coal mines. The machine required coal to heat the water which made the steam. It spewed out black smoke as it ran.
Even in the 1200s, coal smoke created enough air pollution that it affected the health of city dwellers. In 1272 King Edward I banned the burning of sea coal, which was coal that washed up on the shore, after the resulting smoke started to make people sick. That was nearly eight hundred years ago.
By the 1950’s pea soup fogs were a regular occurrence in London. In December of 1952, a dense fog of industrial pollution settled over the city and is believed to have been responsible for 12,000 deaths. By then, countries the world over had experienced their own industrial revolutions, and they, too, were spewing black smoke into our air and sickening their populations.
All that smog made its way up into the atmosphere and began creating an insulating layer that slowly started raising the temperature of the earth’s surface. For about 300 years all we’ve been doing is reinforcing that layer by sending more and more industrial smog up into the air with a vengeance.
On November 4, 2020, our 45th President pulled We, the People out of the Paris Climate Accord. This was after he had spent the previous three years relentlessly rolling back most of President Obama’s climate-regulation policies.
Months after he took office, our 45th President ordered the EPA to get rid of its Clean Power Plan which was designed to reduce emissions by 32% of 2005’s levels over twenty-five years. In its place, 45’s administration directed that the EPA implement a new Affordable Clean Energy rule. That action as well as the many more like it would have, by estimates, have added 1.8 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere.
All in all, about 100 environmental regulations were altered or struck down during 45’s term in office.
What saved us from the projected level rise happening was the shutdown during the pandemic when everything stopped. We all spent a year and a half at home. Instead of emission levels rising, therefore, they merely plateaued.
States and cities also enacted their own regulations to counter the federal free-for-all. During the last decade or so, alternative fuel options have become cheaper, so it no longer makes any economic sense to use coal. 45 pushed using coal during his campaign and tenure simply to get votes from that sector of the workforce.
When Biden took office, he immediately took steps to overturn much of his predecessor’s deregulation. Instead of just focusing on the EPA, though, he also enacted new rules and regulations within the Defense, Treasury, and Agriculture Departments with an eye toward making the combatting of Climate Change a more universal goal for the entire country. His massive infrastructure bill that was passed in November of 2021 includes a great number of environmental protections.
One of his first actions in office, of course, was to get us back into the Paris Accord.
Biden’s record is not spotless. There’s no way it could be. He’s had to bow to political pressure and grant fossil fuel concessions like the Willow Project in Alaska and the Appalachian Mountain Valley pipeline.
There are people who now hate the man, as a result, and will not vote for him again.
Biden did issue an Executive Order that forbade new drilling for oil and gas on public lands and in public waters fulfilling a promise he made during his campaign. That order was then struck down by a federal judge in 2021.
Politics is exactly that, politics. It’s about making compromises and slowly building a coalition to fight for what you want. You need to weigh the good with the bad and do everything you can not to make things worse. You must give in on some things to achieve others.
A group called Earthjustice is already challenging the Willow Project whose aim is to drill into Alaska’s North Slope to extract what is thought to be 600 million barrels of oil. Construction on the Willow Project can only happen during the winter because ice roads are needed for the equipment to get in there. Earthjustice could keep that from happening this year. Even once construction begins it will take several years to complete before drilling can start.
The Mountain Valley pipeline has the potential to employ 2,500 people across a very poor swath of Virginia and West Virginia. It also has the potential to wreak havoc on the local environment. Native Americans oppose it because it will contaminate many of their sacred areas. Towns along its proposed length oppose it for fear of what the increased levels of air and water pollution will do to their health.
I want Earthjustice and those who oppose the pipeline to prevail. My guess is that so does the current Administration. Granting those concessions seems to go against everything Joe Biden has ever fought for. It doesn’t make him a hypocrite; it makes him a politician.
We need to beware false equivalencies. The two men are not equally bad when it comes to the environment. If 45 gets into office again, he’s going to do everything he can to roll back everything that Joe Biden has accomplished. The Willow Project and the Mountain Valley pipeline will end up being only a tiny fraction of the total number of environmentally destructive projects that get federal approval.
This past year, we went past the 1.5-degree Celsius level discussed in the Paris Accord. At some point, in the very near future, we will pass the point of no return regarding Global Warming.
I am still testing negative for COVID. It sure felt like I had it. Yesterday, I was useless all day. Today I feel more or less normal. Dear lord am I sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.
The condition of my spot on the couch was an insult even to me. I just vacuumed and dusted it and now, alas, I have to do the whole room because once you start…
It’s grey and depressing-looking outside. I’m warm and comfortable on the couch with the cat curled up on my lap. I may go out for a walk later on even though it’s still raining a bit.
Of course, I’ll have to wait until the cat wakes up.
Hope you’re feeling better, Richard. We had a 40 degree C (110 F) day here at Manly beach yesterday which is a very rare temperature. Like you, we sat on the couch, read and watched some great tennis with the Aussie Open on right now.
Let’s hope 45 does NOT become 47😳.
Jx