The Build Back Better Act is the last best hope for fighting climate change. In response, Republicans react and say, “$3.5 B is too much. We need to be careful and study the problem.” While dramatically clutching their pearls. Their sentiments are worth as much as their paste pearls. With the medias’ and politicians’ focus is on the political game play and the pointless arguing over dollars and cents, odds are plummeting for our combating Climate Change and preserving a livable environment. The sun should be setting on the fossil fuel industry and its wanton destruction of our environment. Instead, it appears that night is gathering over the forces of reason and action.
This is a disaster of unprecedented proportions. A handful of “moderate” Democrats are working against the keystone Biden legislation that would give us the tools and social safety net to allow us to do what it takes to adapt to and mitigate the deadly consequences of Global Warming. Once again, it appears that the Democrats are about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The Republicans are, as usual, promoting their lies, doing all they can to obstruct our government’s ability to serve the best interests of all Americans. Moderate Republicans have yet to show any spine and join with Democrats in supporting this critical legislation. They have the power but refuse to use it.
How serious is it? Global warming worsens as we continue to pump growing amounts of greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere. These GHGs are predominately due to the burning of fossil fuels and carbon-based substitutes, such as ethanol. The effect of this catastrophic warming is literally everywhere. Every American lives in a region that has suffered serious climate events or disasters; fires in the West, hurricanes, and powerful storms throughout the South and South-East, the torrential rains producing floods in the East, and the drought that stretches from Los Angeles to Minneapolis and between the Canadian and Mexican Borders. We all have personal experience with some aspect of this escalating climate crisis.
Moderate Democrats and the GOP en mass, focus on the supposed outrageous cost of Biden’s plan. They forget to mention that each year’s, $350Bn will be paid for by increasing the taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations that haven’t paid their share since before Reagan. They also neglect to say that the taxing and the programs in the Build Back Better Bill are very popular with a broad cross-section of Americans, regardless of party affiliation.
The critics also have forgotten basic economics and Return On Investment. The ROI for government money spent where it is most needed is significant. A page on the Center For High Impact Philanthropy, summed up investing in children, “… early childhood stands out as a particularly notable area for investment precisely because so many interventions appear to save money in the longer term.”
Other studies have shown that one dollar spent on the poor, labor and middle classes, does more work and produces more good among the greatest number of people. Not surprisingly, a dollar doled out to the wealthy does little productive work, and simply collects interest. Interest must come from somewhere. It does as money saved through, efficiencies, including minimizing the wages of workers and their benefits. Right now, it appears that many workers are in a very advantageous position. There is a severe shortage of workers at all levels of the economy. Personal experience tells me that these times are rare and short-lived. Soon, if nothing changes, climate disasters, robots, and AI, will create a labor market with a glut of workers and wages plummeting. The Build Back Better Plan finances 10 years of steady job creation and work.
Inflation, the big menace waved about by moderates and the GOP, is being driven by the costs for rebuilding climate damaged infrastructure and communities. Prices are rising because of a scarcity of raw and processed materials and the disruptions to supply chains caused by climate change. Insurance rates are going up to help cover the growing destruction.
Along the coasts, people are becoming aware that life there is untenable and are looking to migrate to other parts of the country, even though there are no climate havens. This is putting a greater economic and social burden on the communities the migrants choose to move to. And all of this is going to continue to get worse.
How bad can it get? Major biological systems are collapsing. Our oceans have played a major role in absorbing the excess heat and CO2 trapped in our atmosphere. But in so doing, the conditions for life there are changing dramatically. The warming waters are deadly for many aquatic species, such as coral, plankton and the animals that feed on them. The increasing amounts of carbon dissolved in sea water, have turned the oceans acidic; reversing a “50,000,000-year trend. The current low pH in the open ocean of recent decades is unusual in the last 2 million years.”
This eats away at the calcium shells of plankton which is a major food source for the smallest and largest animals in the ocean. Because of this, fisheries are collapsing, resulting in growing hunger. Worse, plankton is a major source of Oxygen that we need to breathe. At the same time, the Amazon rainforest is no longer a major carbon capture and oxygen creation area but now, a net carbon emitter with reduced oxygen production. The air that we breath is slowly headed towards potential oxygen starvation.
Besides the immediate damage done by our use of carbon-based fuels, fossil fuels and ethanol, there are closed-loop cycles that, until the last few decades, we didn’t worry about. But now they are the tipping points pushing us towards calamity. An example is the thawing permafrost. Immense amounts of organic matter have accumulated over millions of years in the arctic. The cold kept this detritus from decomposing and locked the potential carbon dioxide, CO2, and methane CH4 in the frozen soil. However, Arctic areas have experienced the most rapid warming of any place on the planet, which is thawing the permafrost. The result is the rotting of organic material, thousands of years old, and the release of greenhouse gases, GHGs.
The feedback-loop is the effect of these released gases increasing warming more quickly and, in turn, thawing more permafrost, releasing even more GHGs that increase warming even more. It is a cycle that we have no control over unless we find a way to rapidly remove vast quantities of CO2 and CH4 from the air.
Another source of unwanted CH4 comes from the bottom of the sea. There are large deposits of frozen CH4 in the sediments on the sea floor. Safely stored away for millions of years, areas of ocean have warmed until these deposits have begun to release GHGs into the water and thus, into the air. Similar conditions exist in many northern lakes where GHGs are being freed during the winter and captured in bubbles in the ice. There are videos showing people breaking these frozen bubbles in the ice followed by a burst of flame.
The latest UN climate report, IPCC AR6, stated, “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere [Arctic, Antarctic, Glaciers] and biosphere have occurred.” The past tells us how extraordinary our situation is, “Each of the last four decades has been successively warmer than any decade that preceded it since 1850 [when modern weather data began to be collected globally]. Human influence has warmed the climate at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2000 years.”
The report offered five future scenarios, and none return us to our historic normal. Not surprisingly, the less we do to fight climate change the more disastrous our future becomes. “Future emissions cause future additional warming, with total warming dominated by past [feedback loops] and future CO₂ emissions.” The report emphasizes, “Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since AR5 [previous report].”
What we will see, “With every increment of global warming, changes get larger in regional mean temperature, precipitation and soil moisture.” And “Projected changes in extremes are larger in frequency and intensity with every additional increment of global warming.” In addition, one extreme event, such as fire caused by drought will create the conditions for a second extreme event, for instance, mudslides and flooding when it rains on the fire ravaged landscape.
What about global warming and our changing climate don’t our legislators and political leaders understand? The issue is not about money. It’s about survival. Anyone choosing to pinch pennies clearly doesn’t have a clue about the shit we are in. Or they are bilking the situation for all it’s worth, and they don’t give a damn about their constituents, our nation, and the imperiled world we live on.
What can we do? Immediately contact your legislators at the federal, state, and local levels and make your concerns known. Get on social media and express yourself. Build momentum so that those pesky algorithms pay attention and elevate the topic to top position.
Most importantly, actively support candidates that are bold and forward looking. Business as usual is the kiss of death. The GOP and Trump are amassing huge war chests to win the coming Primary elections and the General in 2022. If this happens, global warming will continue unabated, destroying our economy and killing any chance to create an equitable and just society.
Remember, that while climate change may not be your primary interest, if we don’t deal with our climate crisis boldly, willingly funding the actions necessary, then your concerns won’t have a chance. Climate change makes all other issues unsolvable. Unabated climate change is on the verge of killing our personal freedoms and Democracy.
Our Founders, put their wealth and lives on the line to create this noble experiment in self-government. Can we do any less to save that experiment by saving the lives of our children and future generations from hell on Earth?
Don’t allow the sun to set on this new era of cooperation, dramatic climate action and social justice. Don’t allow business as usual to slowly kill us.
Notes
Climate data is from Special Reports and a draft, both are part of the coming Sixth Assessment Report 2022, by the United Nations, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
High Return On Investment (ROI), University of Pennsylvania’s Center For High Impact Philanthropy, They can be large.For example, the National Forum on Early Childhood Policy and Programs has found that high quality early childhood programs can yield a $4 – $9 dollar return per $1 invested. A 2009 study of Perry Preschool, a high-quality program for 3–5-year-olds developed in Michigan in the 1960s, estimated a return to society of between about $7 and $12 for each $1 invested (see Figure 1 below).1 It is important to note that different assumptions can shift estimates and that different studies often rely on different assumptions, limiting comparisons across studies and programs. That said, early childhood stands out as a particularly notable area for investment precisely because so many interventions appear to save money in the longer term.