Despite years of warnings, overwhelming evidence and changing climate patterns, most of humanity sits idly as our planet continues to warm.
From 2000 to 2010, carbon emissions grew more rapidly than in each of the previous three decades, according to a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
That means there’s a lot of work to be done.
The IPCC operates under the United Nations to assess the scientific basis of climate change for policymakers. According to a news release about this latest report, the IPCC evaluated about 1,200 scenarios from scientific literature to see how efforts to combat climate change have been faring.
If nothing changes, temperatures will rise between 3 and 5 degrees Celsius. That could spell disaster for climate patterns and agricultural yield, meaning worse weather and less food for an ever-growing world population.
The international goal is to keep global warming within 2 degrees, but doing that requires “major institutional and technological change” to even come close to meeting that goal, according to an IPCC news release.
The world must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 70 percent by 2050 and be near zero by the end of the century to be on target.
One common method of curbing emissions in the scenarios modeled by the IPCC is to bring emissions relating to electricity to near zero. That means no more dirty fossil-fueled power plants. Although that may seem impossible, solar power can now compete without subsidy in Germany, Italy and Spain. It’s not as crazy as the talking heads would have you expect.
Even though the IPCC report released in September 2013 stated there was 95 percent certainty that humans were the cause of climate change, the U.S. is on track for projects like the Keystone XL Pipeline. That project would move the tar sands, crude oil mixed with clay and dirt, from the Canadian border to an existing pipeline in Nebraska.
Of course, supporters say it helps with jobs and energy independence. But they overlook the potential for environmental disaster, which are all too commonplace. Don’t forget about the chemical spill in West Virginia earlier this year related to the coal industry. And energy independence? Companies like Exxon market themselves as “green” by touting natural gas, but they fail to mention that it still produces carbon. That’s not even going into the other environmental concerns that come with fracking, such as earthquakes and flammable tap water.
Don’t expect an answer from the top, especially in the U.S. It’s unfortunate, but the oil and gas industry is one of the top lobbying powers in Washington, giving politicians more than $144 million in 2013 alone.
In the meantime, the government “raises awareness” about how citizens can help conserve. Let’s be honest with ourselves: Remembering to turn out the lights when you leave a room isn’t going to decrease the world’s carbon emissions enough.
The government needs to get its priorities in order and start representing the interests of the people and resist corporate donations. Instead of focusing on short-term profits, which capitalism forces society to do, society must turn to what will happen in the long run.
That’s the one drawback of ditching fossil fuels and switching to renewable energy — production loss. According to the IPCC report, consumption will grow by 1.6 to 3 percent per year if nothing changes. Aggressive attempts to combat climate change would only slow that growth by 0.06 percent per year.
That leaves us in a pickle. Either slow global consumption by less than one-tenth of 1 percent or essentially lose the world we know.
Until it gets sorted out, I’ll be lying on the ground with all the lights off to do my part to conserve.
[Justin Jones is a UF journalism senior. His columns appear on Thursdays. A version of this column ran on page 6 on 4/17/2014 under the headline "Harsh truth: Global warming is imminent"]
