Global Warnings And Cultural Shifts

James Hansen delivered his first warning about global warming to Congress on June 23, 1988. Twenty years later he returned, and his message is far more dire.

Again a wide gap has developed between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known by policymakers and the public. Now, as then, frank assessment of scientific data yields conclusions that are shocking to the body politic. Now, as then, I can assert that these conclusions have a certainty exceeding 99 percent.

The difference is that now we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb. The next president and Congress must define a course next year in which the United States exerts leadership commensurate with our responsibility for the present dangerous situation.

Otherwise it will become impractical to constrain atmospheric carbon dioxide, the greenhouse-gas produced in burning fossil fuels, to a level that prevents the climate system from passing tipping points that lead to disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity's control.

Hansen called for CEOs of fossil fuel companies to be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity. They have blocked any attempt to transition into a clean energy future, have funded organizations designed to lie about the reasons for global warming, and generally protected their share of the energy market through disinformation and intimidation. If their work results in mass deaths and an unsustainable planet, I have to say he has a point.

The good news is that we have moved culturally toward a mindset of renewable energy and against carbon-producing industries. If you told me that rural Virginians would protest a coal-fired power plant three years ago, I wouldn't have believed you.

If it were possible to build a coal-fueled power plant in Virginia without controversy, it would happen here. In the state's Appalachian southwest, there is coal in the hills, coal in the rail cars, and coal in family histories that stretch back to picks and shovels.

Apparently, it's not possible.

"I am opposed to this plant," Wise County resident Jaculyn Hanrahan told the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board on Tuesday. "Because I am opposed to respiratory illness, smog, neurotoxins and acid rain."

The environmental injustice of carbon-producing energy is starting to reach people's understanding. Recent public health studies in poor areas like Appalachia showed the return of all sorts of exotic diseases that had been eradicated from North America for decades, like tapeworms and dengue fever. We know that areas in poverty typically have more pollution in the air, a result of having little political power to stop polluting industries from moving into their backyards. But as you can see in Wise County, they're starting to fight back, and coal is starting to become a dirty word. Forcing a technological shift out of necessity in heavy industry is one of our only hopes to provide a sustainable future for the next generation.