My Point of View by Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

The week of Earth Day began in the Houston, Texas, area with historic flooding. As much as 17 inches of rain fell in less than 24 hours, and it wasn’t part of a hurricane system.

Widespread drought in Africa influenced by El Niño was worse than meteorologists predicted. Crop failures in the north, especially Ethiopia, have left an estimated 20 million people food insecure this season.

In the south, particularly in Zimbabwe, nearly 50 million people are at risk of hunger due to lack of rain.

In India, a heat wave is compounding a drought affecting 330 million people, about a quarter of its total population. The country is hoping for an above-average monsoon this year as El Niño weakens.

The year 2015 was the hottest on record globally, breaking the temperature record set in 2014. The first three months of 2016 have also each set heat records, which date back over 100 years. The Arctic has been six degrees warmer than average, and ice thickness measurements are at a record low since calculations began in the late 1970s.

Climate change is here. It will affect everyone, directly or indirectly.

It presents a profound challenge to civilization. It will disrupt agriculture, which is based on decades of local knowledge and scientific research accumulated during a period of relatively reliable climate patterns. Millions more climate refugees will strain the resources of international agencies and host governments. These problems will create political crises, and even stable governments will be tested.

Some of these changes will happen regardless of our future actions due to the enduring quantities of carbon dioxide we’ve already pumped into the atmosphere. We can blunt the blow, though, by curbing our carbon use. In the U.S., we produce about 15 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions with only 5 percent of the world’s population. Thus, we have disproportionate impact on the future of our planet. Meanwhile, the vast majority of those who are first to suffer the negative impacts of climate change emit much less carbon dioxide per capita. This is plunder.

We will also have to reduce methane emissions. Thanks to natural gas, we have slightly decreased our carbon dioxide emissions. Fracking of natural gas, however, it not without its own set of consequences. It has caused toxic contamination of the drinking water and air quality of thousands of people who live near natural gas wells. That’s bad enough, but fracking poses a more insidious problem: the wells leak large quantities of methane — between 3 and 8 percent of their total output. The leakage is difficult to contain due to the nature of gas and structural limitations of cement.

Between 2002 and 2014, U.S. methane emissions increased 30 percent, causing a sharp increase in methane in the atmosphere. Methane doesn’t last as long as carbon dioxide, but molecule for molecule it traps 80 to 100 times more heat over a couple of decades. Simply put, despite less reliance on carbon-based energy, our impact on the atmosphere has actually grown worse due to methane leakage.

It’s time to put a tax on carbon and natural gas so that we pay closer to the true cost of what our carbon consumption and methane release does to the planet. The market will then be able to speed our switch to more energy-efficient products and renewable fuels with zero emissions. When products that are worst for the environment cost most, it makes economic sense to choose something better. The carbon tax can be used to offset the negative impacts of climate change and help people afford the transition to efficiency and renewables.

We are living in a period when our decisions are make-or-break for future generations. Will we rise to the occasion and leave behind a habitable planet? Previous generations made great sacrifices to overcome the central challenges of their time. This won’t require people to risk their lives making a beachhead on D-Day at Normandy, for example, but it will be harder because it will require more planning and just as much cooperation from all levels of society the way the allied nations’ efforts in World War II did. Furthermore, the wait to find out if we succeeded will take generations.

It’s difficult to imagine this level of combined effort at a time of extreme individualism and divided politics in the most powerful and resource-devouring country on Earth. But we must, and we can.

Love your mother Earth. Love your neighbor, near or far. We are all in this together.

 

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.