To save a dying planet
Candidates’ calls to address climate change must be heeded
Eric Boose / Opinion Editor / The USD Vista
Of the 22 candidates already in the 2020 presidential race, only two have devoted serious effort to addressing climate change, and only one has made it their number one priority. One of those two candidates, former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke, announced a comprehensive, $5 trillion plan to combat climate change on Monday. On his website O’Rourke says, “Climate change is the greatest threat we face – one which will test our country, our democracy, and every single one of us.” O’Rourke’s plan to combat climate change is his most defined policy proposal by far and an important step in provoking serious debate about how to lead in the fight against climate change.
However, no presidential candidate has prioritized climate change like Washington Governor Jay Inslee. Inslee’s candidacy is built on his pledge to make solving climate change his first priority if elected. In fact, Inslee asserts that climate change should be the number one priority for the next president. Even considering the vast range of issues a president will face during their term, Inslee is right. Climate change must be the number one priority of any president.
As Inslee puts it, “We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change and the last who can do something about it.” Climate change is already impacting our planet, and has been for years. It has caused global temperatures to rise over the last half-century, including a two-degree-Fahrenheit increase in the average temperature in the western United States. Heat waves are more common now than they were 50 years ago, bringing more days where it is literally too hot to go outside in certain parts of the world. In India, deadly heat waves have forced the government into action to bring the annual death toll down from over 2,000 in 2015.
With the heat come more frequent and more intense droughts in California and other parts of the American southwest. Not only do those droughts damage local agriculture, they transform our forests into tinderboxes. The Union of Concerned Scientists links the increased heat experienced in the western United States to the increasing number and size of wildfires that torch this state every fall. In fact, the number of large wildfires per year in California and other western states has quintupled since the 1970s.
In San Diego, we are stuck between devastating fires and a rising ocean. Perhaps one of the most commonly-reiterated dangers of climate change is the rise of sea levels and the impending danger to coastal communities. Global sea levels have been rising exponentially ever since 1880, and are eight inches higher than they were at the end of the 19th century. While this does not mean that downtown will be underwater tomorrow, it does increase the likelihood of seawater making its way onto the streets in a storm.
The dangers that we face here in San Diego and throughout California are only some of those unfolding on a global scale. Flooding and tornadoes which level towns across the south and the midwest are only becoming more common and more destructive. The hurricanes that rock the East Coast, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific are becoming continuously more lethal. Polar ice caps continue to melt, threatening to reshape the entire arctic ecosystem. The habitats of hundreds of plant and animal species are dying, and we are doing precious little to stop it.
The environmental threats, despite being omnipresent in discussions of climate change, are not the only threats we face. A report published last fall notes that climate change also poses a threat to people’s “economic well-being.” A report from the Environmental Protection Agency predicts that if nothing changes, climate change will cost the United States upward of $100 billion per year by the end of this century. Much of that cost will come in the form of losses for farmers. In 2010, the dairy industry lost $1.2 billion due to “heat stress” reducing milk production, and the EPA report estimates that the midwest will see corn and soybean production both fall at least 25 percent.
This is the sting of climate change that Inslee talks about. It is not just shorter winters and hotter summers, it is the ongoing collapse of our ecosystems, a serious threat to our health, and the potential crippling of our economy. When Inslee calls us the last generation who can do something about climate change, he is not asking us all to stop using plastic straws or to recycle more. Doing “something” about climate change is no longer about individuals making small changes in their lifestyles – however worthwhile those changes may be.
Even if we make every change possible to reduce our carbon footprint, corporate pollution will still deal significant environmental damage. At this point in time, the effort to save the planet will have to take place on a grand scale, beyond the capacities of any one individual. With that in mind, it can be easy to feel discouraged. However, simply because we cannot save the world on our own does not mean that we do not have a role to play. There is a variety of actions we can take as individuals to seriously combat climate change, the first and foremost of which is to vote. The only way to guarantee the implementation of laws designed to protect the environment and combat climate change is to vote for politicians who will pass those laws, not only at the federal level, but in state and local governments as well.
Like most history-defining problems, climate change does not have a simple, defined, or clear solution. What we know is that we must drastically reduce harmful emissions and work to protect and restore dying ecosystems. In deciding how we accomplish those goals, we have room to be creative. Like all college students, we are in the process of deciding what we want to do in life. In making that decision, we ought to ask ourselves how we can help save the planet while still achieving our personal goals. Answering this question will be easier for some people than for others, but we all must still answer it. Businesses built on principles of sustainability are as important as biologists to monitor the effects we have on our planet and both are as important as engineers to design even better ways to harness renewable energy. We can do something about climate change. In fact, we must do something about climate change.