Climate Disaster

 

Climate Disaster                   Gerry OShea

The precipitous decline in the planet’s ecological stability, associated in particular with climate change, has turbocharged the search for solutions or some kind of a respite. Wildfires are raging across Europe and North America – and beyond. Extreme weather is revealing how a rapidly-heating world is playing havoc with the lives and livelihoods of people everywhere.

Intemperate heat in recent months has smashed records around the globe. Heatwaves have devastated India and south Asia and droughts have imperiled the residents in African countries especially in places close to the equator.

In Great Britain where summer highs rarely reach 30 degrees centigrade (86 F) the numbers in July touched 40 (104 F) for the first time in recorded history. Runways at airports in the United Kingdom began melting and firefighters were stretched to contain multiple fires in overheated buildings. There was a sense of dealing with a new and fearful reality as people had to adapt to sweltering homes that were not built to accommodate such heat.

In Western Europe, one of the richest parts of the world, the population is also struggling to cope with the devastation caused by extreme sunshine. Very high temperatures killed over 2000 people in Portugal and Spain in one week in mid-July. Perhaps, most frightening of all, the mighty Po River, the longest in Italy, has run so low that salt water is seeping into it from the Adriatic Sea. Experts warn that the fertile river estuary, often spoken of as the breadbasket of Italy, may lose up to 40% of its produce this year.

Wildfires destroyed a massive 75 square miles of trees in France, and, ominously, the sizzling heat forced them to throttle some of their nuclear plants because the water drawn from rivers to cool reactors could not safely be returned to those already warm waterways without parboiling fish.

In America also there were abundant signs of weather-related disasters. California Fire officials were alarmed by the spread of an Oak Fire that charred over 18,000 acres near Yosemite National Park. This fire fed by extremely dry vegetation forced over 3000 residents to flee their homes. In 2020 wildfire smoke accounted for roughly half the air pollution in the Western United States which means that as much toxic smog was coming from wildfires there as from all human activity combined.

 In Dallas, a stunning once-in-a-century deluge dropped ten inches of rain in as many hours, causing serious flooding and devastation in that part of Texas.

Ministers from forty key countries gathered in Berlin recently for a two-day conference to discuss extreme weather. The United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, warned that wildfires and heatwaves showed that humanity is facing “collective suicide” without urgent remedial action. “Half of humanity is in the danger zone, from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires. No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction.”

President Biden has joined Mr. Guterres in naming the current danger level “Code Red for Humanity” to highlight the extreme gravity of the threat from climate change. They were reacting to a landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which stressed that climate actions would have to be intensified: merely reducing new greenhouse gas emissions is no longer enough.

We must actively draw carbon emissions out of the atmosphere to prevent devastating consequences in every continent. Massive afforestation programs are at the planning stage because trees can suck in poisonous gases.

In a major recent study dealing with worldwide afforestation led by a distinguished ecologist called Jean-Francois Bastin, who works out of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the results confirmed the importance of trees in mitigating the climate crisis. They developed a computer program that estimates how much forested land could be restored now and in a future warmer planet.

Satellite photographs allowed them to count every tree in the world. Forests currently cover 2.8 billion hectares of land - think of a hectare as about two and a half acres. Bastin and his team determined that the planet could carry 4.4 billion hectares.

We are into big numbers here beyond our comprehension, but here is the crunch point. Allowing for adequate room for agriculture and housing, they determined that around 900 million hectares of land could be available for tree planting – an area about the size of Brazil. Most of the land needed can be found in six countries: Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil and China.

If a dream program along these lines was somehow realized under UN leadership, Bastin claims that when the trees reach maturity, they would remove about 66% of damaging carbon from the global atmosphere. We would return to the carbon levels of 100 years ago.

The scientists in Zurich realize that the countries named are unlikely to co-operate in such a massive project but Bastin warns of the dire consequences: “we have shown that we only have a narrow window of time in which to restore global tree cover.”

Conservatives seem dubious about the climate crisis. MAGA rhetoric never covers environmental concerns. No Republican leader – not Trump or McCarthy or DeStefanis or McConnell – has dealt seriously with the issue.

Democrats are certainly different. The recent Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Biden, designates hundreds of billions for climate renewal programs. President Biden pointed out that confronting the cataclysmic predictions of uncontrolled weather remains one of his top priorities, and he has provided the financing to lower the carbon production by 45%.

Republicans may regret their head-in-the-sand posture because, predictably, as the weather has become more extreme, popular support for policy action has increased. According to research published in April of this year by Yale University, 87% of registered voters support tax incentives to make buildings more energy-efficient,77% back tax rebates for installing solar panels, and 74% want carbon dioxide regulated as a pollutant.

The November mid-term elections are the main concern of both political parties. Democrats are already pointing to their plans to reduce carbon emissions almost by half. Republicans have no policy in this area so far. The voters will decide which approach they favor.