This entry continues the “Climate change is…” series.
Last year, I met the photographer, film maker, and author James Balog. After a talk that included pieces of The Human Element, Chasing Ice, and other parts of his expansive catalog, he was asked a question about what lesson has been really important.
His answer: “Acceptance.” We cannot run from the truth nor argue with what is. We cannot cower in fear and do nothing nor put on rose-tinted-glasses. Be in the present moment. Let it go.
2024 will be the hottest on record. The global average temperature will be above 1.5° C for the year. The Paris Agreement, signed by 195 nations (including the United States) at the 21st Conference of Parties for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, has an ambitious goal of keeping global heating below the 1.5° threshold and a necessary goal of 2° C. While the world has not had a running average of 1.5° yet, it is looming because of historic and ongoing massive carbon emissions. We have burned so much fossil fuel, used carbon-heavy industry, and transformed so much land that we have wrapped the Earth in a thicker blanket of greenhouse gases. The hotter world has created a more violent atmosphere. Only the most rapid decarbonization pathways available to humanity will prevent us from shooting past 1.5° C. These pathways seem very unlikely. [I’ll write about pathways later.]
Already, I am projecting into the future with “what ifs.” What if the world doesn’t drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels? What if we blow past +2° C and hit +3° C? Elevated average temperatures mean longer heat waves and heat domes. Billions of people who currently live in Pakistan, India, and the Middle East would live in a world where the wet bulb temperature would surpass the ability of human beings to regulate their temperature. Research from my colleagues at Penn State and Purdue argues that “limiting warming to under 2 °C nearly eliminates exposure and risk of widespread uncompensable moist heatwaves as a sharp rise in exposure occurs at 3 °C of warming.” At +3° C, “the US Midwest emerges as a moist heat stress hotspot.” The dystopia starts to write itself.
I am in central Pennsylvania right now where I live with my family. Outside, it is wet because it has rained for the last 10 hours. The temperature is 9° C (47° F). Soon, I will go to work. I accept today. I accept that it is warmer on this December day than it was 40 years ago when I was in third grade. I accept this change because it is simply what it is. I accept that there were wildfires that unleashed the worst air quality in the world on central Pennsylvania in June 2023, altering the color of the sky on my wedding day. The rain had cleared the smoke just an hour before Hilary walked across the bridge in Spring Creek Park and then across a muddy patch that stained her dress (picture from that evening to the right, where you can see the stain). The stain is still on that dress. I accept that this year there were wildfires in the northeast, including Pennsylvania. But today, I am in my home office on a cool but still unseasonably warm day, using electric heat from a fossil-heavy grid but my electricity contract is for 100% renewable.
I am in the present moment. I am here right now.
I am in the present moment. I will let it go.
Peter Walks for Democracy 