On climate, business as usual is not enough
Alaina Wood is a 25-year-old sustainability scientist, who accepts experts’ dire predictions about climate change. However, along with a growing number of people, particularly young adults, she rejects a gloom-and-doom outlook, using social media to convey a positive message that she and other “eco-creators” consider more beneficial. Wood said, “The science says things are bad. But it’s only going to get worse the longer it takes to act.” Using TikTok, young Americans’ popular social-media platform, Wood pinpointed such ongoing environmental achievements as 175 nations’ pledge to support an eventual treaty about plastics’ production and disposal, and Britain’s expanding off-shore wind industry.
In April 2022 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of UN-affiliated environmental experts, issued its latest report, which supported eco-creators’ assertions. While emphasizing the critical need to ratchet up the assault on global warming, the panel indicated that environmentrelated progress has occurred and that a positive outlook on climate-change challenges promotes successful outcomes.
Recently a survey of over 10,000 Americans found that nearly 70 percent prioritized production of such renewable energy sources as wind and solar to sharply reduce temperature-raising carbon emissions by 2050. The following section supports my prior references asserting that significant pollution-reducing gains have already occurred.
Historical clues about the environmental campaign
A well-known journalist provided two examples suggesting that “environmentalism is arguably the most successful citizens’ movement there has been.”
Acid rain develops when sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides produced mainly by power plants and vehicles combine with clouds’ water droplets to produce sulfuric and nitric acids, often killing plants and aquatic life. Spurred on by 1980s environmental activists, the U.S. developed a novel reform; power plants received a limited number of allowances for the aforementioned toxic emissions, which administrators could buy and sell among themselves. Gradually authorities reduced the number. Using a similar strategy, many other countries have also produced good results. The vice-president of the Environmental Defense Fund indicated that this approach attacked not only acid rain but also other pollutants, providing “benefits [valued at] 40 times greater than the costs.”
Another environmental advance involves protection of the ozone layer, lying about six to ten miles above earth and blocking most ultraviolet radiation that can injure or kill human beings and other life forms. In 1974 research concluded that because chlorofluorocarbons used as propellants in aerosol sprays destroyed the ozone layer, replacement was essential.
Many countries doubted investigators’ claims. However, in 1985 the British Antarctic Survey found decisive evidence that ozone in the South Pole was down 40 percent from two decades earlier. Nations mobilized, developing the Montreal Protocol which phased out CFCs and other ozonedestroying chemicals. A prominent environmental lawyer declared that the treaty eliminated a massive threat “and put the ozone layer on the path to recovery by 2065.” Significantly, the agreement emphasized that companies producing CFC substitutes could increase their profits.
Experts’ optimism continues to prove insightful. An environmental economist noted the importance of focusing on success, promoting groups’ consensus and downplaying political differences. He added, “We have to remind ourselves that we have done it and … can do it again.” I’ll add that for our collective welfare, we must do it. Let’s look ahead.
Future-oriented initiatives
The previous section suggests that a successful attack on climate control can evolve within the capitalist system. The previously cited British offshore-wind industry illustrates the business sector’s potential contribution to environmental cleanup. As the 21st century began, just two small turbines operated off the Northumberland coast, but by 2022 the UK had 2,000, which have steadily increased in number and size. By 2030 industry goals include a yearly instillation of 1 million heat pumps for homes, the manufacture of 10 million turbine-fueled vehicles, and the production of 40 gigawatts of offshore wind power. Meanwhile by 2026 this lucrative business will provide nearly 70,000 jobs.
A prominent environmental researcher stressed that a successful venture requires “open channels of dialogue between industry and government, … [developing] a joint vision and a means of tackling barriers to deployment.” The task can prove difficult. In Georgia, for instance, a plan for a factory producing up to 400,000 emission-free trucks a year became a political football, with the governor and a strong challenger for his office taking opposing positions.
Overall the stakes are astronomical, affecting all of us. Let me speak personally. My wife and I have a 2-year-old granddaughter — Siena is vivacious, inquisitive, funny, and much more. We fervently wish her a long, happy life on an increasingly healthy planet. To secure that environmental outcome, many more of us must start taking the climate-change challenge seriously and join the assault on this formidable threat.
Experts note the importance of focusing on success and downplaying political differences.