Some Silver Linings In The Clouds Of Climate Change

I don't write about climate change as much as I should and, to be honest, that's primarily because it is frankly just too depressing. From record low sea ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic, the loss of habitat that is driving beautiful creatures to extinction to the poisoning of our environment, heck the bumblebee was just put on the endangered list, to the criminal greed of the fossil fuel industry, it is often just too much to bear.

Many times, another new story about the greed-driven exploitation of our natural resources causes me to think of Jared Diamond's book, "Collapse", and the story of Easter Island. While other theories for the collapse of the society on Easter Island are also valid, Diamond's conclusion was that is was driven primarily by deforestation. There are no trees on the island today and I often wonder who were the ones who cut the last tree down and what could have possibly driven them to do so. And then you look at society today and realize that groupthink and the problems of people's everyday lives creates this space where it is viewed as either someone else's problem or, because we can't fix it ourselves, we simply have faith that it will all be taken care of sometime in the future.

With Trump rolling back the Clean Power Act today and the future of the Paris Agreement under threat and the continued prevalence of climate change denial within the totality of the Republican party, it is a pretty grim time. But there are some silver linings in the clouds surrounding us.

For the third year in a row, global carbon emissions remained flat. It remains to be seen whether this indicates we have finally reached a peak in carbon emissions or whether this is just a temporary plateau before it starts increasing again. But it is a very hopeful sign. Carbon emissions decreased in China and the US, while remaining flat in Europe. Those are the three top emitters in the world. Of course, in order to escape the worst of the global warming forecasts, which now seems likely to understate the damage to occur, carbon emission will have to begin to decrease. But you've got to start somewhere.

Today's executive order on repealing Obama's climate actions are not good news and will likely create more global warming. But, as is typical of Trump, the rhetoric in the order will not match the changes that actually occur. In fact, as Nancy Letourneau points out, his chances of rewriting Obama's rules on curbing carbon emissions are actually quite slim.

The real target of Trump's executive order is coal country and the order makes it seem like it will roll back the requirement that existing power plants limit greenhouse gas emissions. The existing rule spelled doom for coal-fired plants and made it prohibitive to build new ones. So Trump's order is intended to give those coal-fired plants new life. Except it's not going to happen. The first hurdle that Trump will have to clear is that the rules themselves are caught up in existing litigation. The EPA would have to get permission from the DC Court of Appeals to revisit the rules at all. Assuming that permission is granted, however, means the EPA would then have to justify why the original rules would need to be changed. The Obama rules were based on an Endangerment Finding that said that "that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases constitute a threat to human health and welfare." Changing or revoking that endangerment finding not only flies in the face of accepted science but would also trigger enormous lawsuits and years of litigation on its own. Without changing that finding, which Trump's executive order significantly does not instruct the EPA to do, any changes or new rules that the EPA would write would have to use the Endangerment Finding as its basis. If those rules actually ended up increasing carbon emissions, it would also set off a wave of lawsuits. And all these problems are compounded by the fact that new rules themselves normally take years to craft and become regulations and, since the administration does not seem inclined to fully staffing any agency, it becomes that much harder when the EPA is understaffed.

In addition, Trump's executive order today did not put in motion any process for the US to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords. That is important, but the danger is that any indication that the US will not be serious about meeting the 2025 goals for carbon emissions might quickly prompt others to start ignoring the agreement as well.

On March 3rd, California ISO, the largest electricity grid operator in the state reported that nearly half of its electricity generation at midday was coming from solar. In a few years, it is possible that solar and wind will actually be creating excess generation during daylight hours. By that time, hopefully, storage technology will have improved to the point where that excess can be used in the nighttime hours, limiting the costly ramp up of coal and gas-fired plants in the late afternoon and further reducing emissions and costs.

In Europe, countries continue to make big advances in renewable energy. In the Netherlands, all the electric trains in the country now run 100% on electricity provided by wind power. And in Norway, electric cars accounted for nearly 29% of all vehicles sold in the country last year and the government hopes to see that figure climb to 50% by the end of this year. Electric vehicles account for around 20% of all vehicles in the country now. Norway offers significant benefits for buying an electric car, including sales tax relief, free passage on toll roads and ferries, use of bus lanes, and waiving high-density traffic fees.

There is plenty of bad news about climate change, the thawing tundra, the changes in the jet stream, the shrinking sea ice, the Trump administration, but there are some bright spots here and there as well that we can not and should not ignore.