Image by LucAleria (License CC BY-SA 3.0)
Full disclosure – I was a vocal Global Warming skeptic back in the 90’s. As a conservative debater, when the policy topic was renewable energy, it was in my interests to learn every argument against it. Much like an oil company funding ‘alternative research,’ or a voter who wants to believe they know more than the scientists, I wrote it off. I wanted to believe that pumping massive amounts of CO2 and methane into our atmosphere wasn’t the catastrophe the liberal intelligentsia and tree-hugging activists said it was. The only problem with my opinion: it was dead wrong.
I hope I might help persuade some people that Climate Change is a real, terrible threat. It faces our planet’s entire population, and especially those of us who aren’t obscenely rich. If a die-hard skeptic like me can be convinced, I hope skeptical readers can also realize the profound danger we’re facing.
So, I’ll try to convince the skeptics that it’s real, to motivate the apathetic that it will seriously wound their lives, and to show that there really are cost-effective, fair, common sense solutions. The biggest stumbling block to implementing them is that the people who will be hurt most, aren’t rich. In fact, many rich folks are intent on ignoring the problem, and they control our government.
“Who are you going to believe? Innocent big oil, or all those corrupt scientists and crooked drowning polar bears?”
Why should you believe in Climate Change?
As a convert to believing climate change is real and largely man made, the single most powerful argument that changed my mind was fully understanding the concept behind it. Our atmosphere is like a blanket. It retains heat. The moon, or Mars, have very thin atmospheres. They dip below -100 degrees when the sun isn’t shining. Venus has a really thick atmosphere, so it’s hot as hell, day or night.
These aren’t theories, it’s reality. When you burn trillions of tons of carbon and methane, you’re taking meaningful portions of the Earth’s crust and turning the ground into sky. That pumping the land into the atmosphere would lead to a thicker ‘blanket’ is absolutely common sense. I searched far and wide for a counterargument to that, and I never found one that held up to basic scrutiny.
The second thing that convinced me was all these scientists, with their empirical evidence, and peer reviewed studies about rising temperatures, thinning polar ice, and higher carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. It really seemed like they were on to something. And the counterargument, about urban heat islands and sunspots supposedly throwing off our measurements always came from oil companies and their lobbying firms.
After years spent researching the ‘argument,’ as the evidence became harder to refute, I realized I was on the wrong side. The scientists who had hard facts, backed up by obvious realities, were right. The oil companies trying to justify their tax breaks were lying to us. This is a reality the rest of the world has a consensus on, and we’re lagging far behind.
You specifically should take an interest, because if you’re reading this, you probably don’t have the resources to absorb the costs climate change will bring. Rising sea levels will soon cause massive disruptions along the world’s coasts. It will upend world agriculture, to the point where famines will become something that effects you and your family personally.
Shortsighted 1 percenters who want to ignore the problem will have their fortunes to insulate themselves from the destructive path we’re on, but even they will pay a price. But, it’s a price they can afford to pay. We can’t. Every day we refuse to take decisive action, the costs we’ll pay will get larger.
Even if Climate Change wasn’t a looming, catastrophic threat (which it is), you should still advocate for policies encouraging renewable energy.
‘Fossil fuels’ isn’t a marketing term made up by environmentalists. Coal, oil, even natural gas – they’re all formed over millions of years, from natural processes, from countless generations of plant and animal life. Ask any petrochemical scientist – none of them will tell you that God put a bottomless barrel of oil under the Earth’s surface that we can tap forever.
We’re already relying on new, more hazardous methods to sustain ourselves – and that’s after a hundred years of significant harvesting, and far fewer years at anything near this level. Fossil fuels could never have been anything more than a transitional step.
So, we can focus on energy solutions for the future, to master the engine driving a new economy, or we can devote ourselves to an industry that is bound to die off within our lifetime. For the record, I’m not a far left eco-activist, and I can prove it. I personally think that carbon-neutral nuclear power is far safer than polluting fossil fuels. Even if we pretend climate change is a hoax, we should be encouraging a whole range of non-carbon power sources. I want sustainable solutions. So should you.
Other countries have figured out that the future doesn’t rely on fossil fuels. It can’t. And even if you’ll never take a job in the energy industry, you should support America investing in the future. Doubling down on coal may be popular in West Virginia and Kentucky, and I understand why. The lives of people in coal country should matter as much to us as anyone elses. But we are literally making decisions on behalf of the world and our great grand children. Committing to strip-mining every last ounce of coal from the Earth’s crust, and injecting it into the atmosphere, MIGHT not be the best course of action.
If you think that makes me an out-of-touch arugula-chomping San Francisco liberal, I have news for you. First off, there’s nothing wrong with arugula, or some baby spinach for that matter. A good salad isn’t un-American. I have never lived outside of Nebraska, and I love a good steak almost as much as I love Husker football (GO BIG RED!).
So, what can we do about it?
There are market based solutions, some of which we’ve backed, others we haven’t had the guts or political will to implement. Subsidies for renewable energy is a start. They exist, but they could be beefed up. A couple of other options, both of which are market based – 1) a carbon tax, where power companies have to offset the greenhouse gasses they pump into the atmosphere with cash. 2) A cap and trade system, where we set emissions limits, but let companies going over the limit, buy credits from companies that are helping fight climate change. Both of these have been tried with other harmful pollutants like SO2 and NO2.
Gen Xers, Baby Boomers, and Millennial debaters like me will remember when Acid Rain was a big problem. Bush Sr. actually fixed that with market based solutions back when a Republican was allowed to admit that our air and water are important. The key thing about ‘market based solutions’ is that they aren’t meaningless buzz words. In a sane world, where people recognized ‘science’, ‘reality’, and ‘holy shit why are polar bears drowning now, and are we next!?!’ as a real problem, market based approaches are a smart tool we can use to make sure corporations are compensating us for the harm they’re doing to our environment and to encourage businesses that provide the same service without the harm. It’s about polluters paying their fair share. They can’t argue against that, so they just deny that they’re polluting. Who are you going to believe? Innocent big oil, or all those corrupt scientists and crooked drowning polar bears?
So, why does this matter to your average person working 40 hours a week in the middle of America?
First off, even if you’re skeptical of Climate Change, you should be concerned with America building an economy for the future. But let’s say science isn’t a hoax, and you can’t trust oil companies telling you ‘oil is always the best forever.’ If ever there’s a food shortage, which is very realistic, it’s not oil executives who will go hungry, it’s the rest of us. Even if you don’t give a damn about drowning polar bears, you should care about that.
There have been so many things to worry about recently… It disturbs me that dealing with Climate Change has found itself on the activism back-burner. Because our future really is at stake. I will loudly and proudly proclaim my support for progressive causes, but among all issues, this should clearly cross partisan lines. It is real, it’s happening, and GOP or Dem, our futures depend on it. I remember when GOP folks cared about science and the future. I hope for all of our sakes they start taking both seriously again.
Travis Hepburn was a Top 25-ranked debater on a National Championship-winning team at Creighton University. He currently manages an Assisted Living Facility for the mentally ill. Politics and policy have remained an unhealthy fixation for him for over 20 years.