Jennifer Christie: "It's More Than Weather"

A few days ago I asked Indiana progressive candidate Jennifer Christie if she was up for commenting on a post I was working on about the Republican war against science. Was she ever! In fact she has so much to say about it-- and even sent us a homemade video!-- that I decided to run it as a stand alone post.

Why Climate Change is an Existential Threat

-by Jennifer Christie

It’s more than weather

The Earth’s climate has been extraordinarily stable which is partially why humans have done so well. A stable climate has enabled the development of agriculture and the advancement of civilizations around the world. Life on Earth has enjoyed relative stability for millennia due to the thin layer of gasses that are trapped by Earth’s gravity, our atmosphere. Scientists have measured Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels from ice cores and have data going back 800,000 years. The level of CO2 has been relatively stable, even through multiple ice ages and warm periods.  CO2 concentrations did not go over 300 ppm in 800,000 years UNTIL NOW.  CO2 levels began rising dramatically with the use of fossil fuels and reached 407 ppm in 2018. In other words, we now have more CO2 in our atmosphere than in the last 800,000 years (at least). And as a result, the global mean temperature (which had been stable for all those years) is rising fast! That means processes such as wind and ocean currents, seasonal temperatures, and precipitation patterns, are also changing so rapidly that life on Earth cannot adapt quickly enough. This disruption essentially removes the stability that most living organisms, including people, need to live.





Mass Extinction

Adaptation takes time, lots of it. That is why evolution is such a slow process. Over the last 4.5 billion years, the composition of our atmosphere has changed. Roughly 3 billion years ago, cyanobacteria produced Oxygen and began changing our atmosphere. Plants showed up about 700 million years ago followed by the first animals roughly 550 million years ago. Notice we are talking about millions and billions of years for changes to occur. Life on Earth adapts through genetic variation as a result of environmental interaction and natural selection; it takes a long long time. There are species that are so specifically evolved that they can be found in only one place on Earth, such as the Golden Toad of Costa Rica’s cloud forests. Even widely dispersed species, like the Monarch Butterfly, have intricately adapted life cycles that depend on environmental stability of their habitats.  One significant change could wipe them out. Imagine if the overwintering habitat of the Monarch disappeared one year due to climate change or if a reef system that was spawning habitat for fish was gone….an entire species could be wiped out very quickly. That is beginning to happen now. As a biologist, this makes me deeply sad.  As a mother, I worry about my children’s future. As an Earthling, I begin to feel the weight of the gravest sin. While an insect or amphibian might seem irrelevant to some, they are intricately connected to us in a complicated web of life. Plants and insects have intricate relationships as do herbivores and plants as do predators and prey… remove one and the system begins to collapse even if you don’t see it immediately. Life will strive to survive until it can’t. Our own food sources depend on pollinators and healthy ecosystems.

Droughts and Floods cause Economic and Security Disasters

Both. Local weather and precipitation will change as the climate changes. Some places will become desert while others will flood.  As a result, people will migrate and crops will fail. If all the ice in Greenland melts, ocean levels will rise 25 feet and coastal cities will be under water. The economic implications are enormous. The US already spends over 35 Billion on climate-related disasters each year. That is minuscule compared to what it will cost when entire populations and industries are forced to relocate. The Department of Defense already recognizes Climate Change as a top threat to national security. As wells dry up and entire communities become unlivable, borders and boundaries will be tested. It was a hot day that sparked the war between Shakespeare’s Montagues and Capulets in Romeo and Juliet.   We already see climate refugees around the world; if we do not solve climate change what we will be is almost unthinkable.

Racing Against Time

Scientists in the Journal of Nature recently called for urgent actions as they identified nine climate tipping points that are at high risk of collapse (Arctic Sea Ice, Greenland Ice Sheet, Boreal Forests, Permafrost, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, Amazon Rainforest, Warm-Water Corals, West Antarctic Ice Sheet, Parts of East Antarctic Ice Sheet). These tipping points, once gone are irreversible and threaten human civilization and life on Earth. Sadly, these and other tipping points can serve as feedback loops which can amplify warming. For example, the loss of the Amazon Rainforest would mean losing the greatest carbon-capture system in the world. The melting of the ice sheets put water into the atmosphere (also a greenhouse gas) and reduce reflection of solar radiation thereby causing even more heat to be trapped by the atmosphere. We are running out of time.

Back to the Question: Is Climate Change an Existential Threat?

Indeed, it is the only existential threat that modern humans have ever faced.  Whether disrupting food sources, destroying ecosystems to be unlivable, or fueling wars, Climate Change is the greatest challenge we have ever seen. It is our biggest test. And we did it to ourselves. The good news is that there is still a little bit of time, and we can transform our economy and our future if we take real action. We have the ability to solve it, but will we? This will require new thinking and rearranging priorities and old ways. We will need to be selfless and courageous and innovative. We will need new leaders who understand and prioritize Climate Action, and this is why elections are so important especially in the U.S. America is best positioned to take real leadership on solving the Climate Crisis. We have the innovation, academic and technical institutions, and the wealth to do it. Our campaign has released a Climate Agenda (JenniferForIndiana.com), and we are ready to fight for a Green New Deal and legislation, such as a Carbon Fee and Dividend, that will bring us to zero emissions to save the planet.  This is a critical moment in human history. Our great-grandchildren and the world are counting on us.

Jennifer is running for an open seat just north of Indianapolis, IN-05. Trump beat Hillary there, 53.1-41.3%, more because they didn’t like Hillary than because they liked Trump. And they like him less now. It’s an uphill battle-- and the DCCC is running a status quo candidate against Jennifer-- but this is a winnable race for someone spending more energy on a ground-game, as she is, than raising money for a flood of TV ads in a market that will be saturated with political ads by next summer and fall. If you agree with what Jennifer had to say about handling the Climate Crisis, please consider contributing to her campaign by clicking on a special Blue America page thermometer on the right: Congress Needs More Progressive Women.

About The Weather

When I woke up yesterday, Memeorandum was offering only one story-- out of scores-- that wasn't Kavanaugh-related, a Washington Post piece by Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney: Trump administration sees a 7-degree rise in global temperatures by 2100. "Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Trump administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous 7 degrees by the end of this century." Earlier the NY Times had run a unintentionally related piece by Coral Davenport, E.P.A. to Eliminate Office That Advises Agency Chief on Science.

Among the many reasons for which a sane society would be clamoring for immediate impeachment of Trump is his regime's nonchalance-- at best-- towards climate change. Axios' recent reporting would have us believe there's little to worry about because Big Oil is taking up the slack: The oil industry takes on climate change despite Trump's rollback. So even if the Trump regime's ideological attitude is putting the planet at risk, "a tangible shift over the last two years is sharpening among the world’s biggest oil companies, including in America, to more readily acknowledge and address climate change. The trend, fueled by investor and lawsuit pressure, is underway regardless of, and partly in response to, President Trump’s retreat on the matter... Goldman Sachs’ co-head of global natural resources, Gonzalo Garcia, said in a presentation at a conference in Norway Wednesday that he’s "probably spent more time talking with oil company executives about the energy shift and renewables in the last two years than the previous 23 put together." Garcia says he predicts U.S. companies like Exxon and Chevron will invest in renewables like their counterparts in Europe.

A week earlier, the same reporter, Amy Harder, wrote that Some of America’s most powerful U.S.-based oil companies-- ExxonMobil, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum-- are joining a global consortium of oil and gas producers seeking to address climate change. "The companies," she wrote, "are the first U.S.-based members of the group, called the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative. This is one of the strongest signs yet of how America’s biggest oil companies, under pressure from investors and lawsuits, are joining most other U.S. corporations in working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions despite President Trump reversing America’s course on the matter." Exxon CEO Darren Woods: "It will take the collective efforts of many in the energy industry and society to develop scalable, affordable solutions that will be needed to address the risks of climate change."

CEOs of several major, publicly traded oil companies say they support carbon taxes and back a separate group writing a proposal for one. But the companies are not actively lobbying Congress to embrace the policy. That disconnect will grow harder to reconcile as their public commitments to address climate change, such as through groups like this, grow.

No doubt. Meanwhile, in the real world, the Weather Channel reported this week that NASA says that Climate Change Is Causing Earth to Wobble on Its Axis, NASA Says. No, really.

For the first time, scientists have identified why Earth wobbles as it spins.

The decrease in Greenland's ice mass is the main reason for the wobble, NASA says.

Changes in the Earth's wobble could impact the accuracy of satellite tools like GPS systems, according to NASA.

Climate change is impacting how Earth spins on its axis, NASA says. Over the past century, Earth’s axis-- the imaginary line that passes through the North and South Poles-- has drifted about 4 inches, and a decrease in Greenland's ice mass is the main contributor to the wobble, the space agency has announced.

As temperatures increased throughout the 20th century because of humans, Greenland's ice mass decreased.

"A total of about 7,500 gigatons-- the weight of more than 20 million Empire State Buildings-- of Greenland's ice melted into the ocean during this time period," NASA said in a press release. "This makes Greenland one of the top contributors of mass being transferred to the oceans, causing sea level to rise and, consequently, a drift in Earth's spin axis."