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In the lovely green coolness of Alaska’s spring and summer, it’s easy not to think about climate change. But we don’t have that luxury. Climate change is everybody’s problem, a problem that merits worldwide recognition. The lives of our children and grandchildren — in fact, the future of life on Earth — are at stake.
Every month for the last year has been the hottest ever. This trend compounds and affects the entire planet. The source of the problem is the production of carbon dioxide (CO2), a gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, causing the surface of the earth to heat up. The use of fossil fuels, the source of CO2, should be banned and replaced by electricity (electric cars, electric heating, etc.) as sources of energy.
Fortunately, electric energy produced at grid-connected solar farms can be virtually free, given the initial investment in transmission systems.
President Joe Biden has established a comprehensive plan to address climate change. Recent measures that are being considered in Alaska include a change in the wildfire management strategy of the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Instead of allowing fires to spread as a natural process of the Refuge, smoke jumpers would be deployed to limit the spread of CO2 emissions.
Of note, the Gwich’in Athabascan people in Alaska and Canada already have their own method of limiting forest fires. Ed Alexander of Fort Yukon reports that in the spring, they light fires in open meadows, thus creating fire breaks “to keep wildfires at manageable levels once summer heat and lightning strikes arrive.”
Under Biden’s plan, artificial intelligence would be employed to detect fires throughout the nation and Canada so they could be quickly smothered. Biden has urged that this be a worldwide effort.
The sheer growth in human population is impacting climate change. The world population is expected to reach 8 billion in 2023. Wikipedia notes that on average, “the body produces approximately 2.3 pounds of CO2 per day per person.”
Burial practices could make a big difference in reducing climate change. Approximately 100 pounds of CO2 comes from a 150-pound person during cremation. When this is considered in relation to the population of the world, cremation should be discouraged as much as possible.
Massive tree planting would help limit CO2. As an example of scale, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt used tree planting as a way to alleviate poverty. The project was so extensive that it created the forested landscape of our country’s east coast.
These are but a few of the possibilities for limiting CO2. Yes, businesses and livelihoods would be affected, but we are talking about the continuation of life on earth. A delay — of even a decade — in reducing CO2 emissions would lock in large-scale, irreversible change.
Scientists have a system for identifying episodes of life on Earth, starting with the Paleozoic (ancient life) era 600 million years ago. This episode was followed by the Cretaceous Era, which ended when Earth was hit by a massive asteroid that covered it with a shroud of ash and obliterated the dinosaurs. Life on earth recovered and we are now in an era that has been tentatively named the “Anthropocene,” the recent age of man.
There is much speculation about how this era will end, if at all. An article in The Economist evocatively entitled “Tomorrow and tomorrow and…” noted, “It is possible to imagine an Anthropocene that endures. This would be a world where human activity on its current scale continues, but human institutions rein in their excesses. Its carbon cycle is rebalanced; its climate cools; the chemistry of its abused oceans is tempered; its ice sheets and rainforests are restored.”
The Economist article concludes by speculating, “Alas, it is easy — perhaps too easy — to imagine instead an Anthropocene which is nasty, brutish and short... perhaps, in time, civilization would grow back up, perhaps not.”
Of course, the scenario where “human institutions rein in their excesses” is literally the only viable course. At temperatures of 104 to 122 degrees our bodies stop working optimally. Outside temperatures above a certain level are deadly.
The scientific community overwhelmingly agrees that the next 10 years will be vital to the future of life on Earth. Let us all think of our children and all the young people of the world. We have about 10 years to cut greenhouse gas emissions drastically, or humanity will suffer devastating consequences.
Janet McCabe is a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a member of Alaska Common Ground.
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