The good news is the weekend of September 20-21 saw the largest worldwide demonstration ever for political action on climate change.
Hundreds of thousands of citizens in cities around the world joined the People’s Climate March for climate action now. They called on their political leaders to act together in global cooperation to stem the flow of fossil fuel pollution that is wrecking climate balance.
New York City was the epicentre of this uprising because world leaders were meeting the following week at the UN to talk about action on climate change. The People’s Climate March was organized worldwide to help these leaders understand that global action must be taken now to drastically reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other green house gases that are being dumped into the atmosphere.
For all the research, and all the negotiations that have been going on for the last several decades, fossil fuel pollution of the atmosphere is continuing to climb. And climate disruption is no longer a vague possibility: It is manifestly clear that the damage and the costs of extreme weather events are escalating.
Several years before hurricane Sandy hit New York City, leading meteorologists said it was only a matter of time until a super-storm hit the area that would flood lower Manhattan and fill the subway tunnels with water. Then it happened, and the cost of the damage for that storm has been pegged at $68 billion. And that doesn’t even count the cost of economic disruption of businesses.
Canadian meteorologists have since pointed out that if Sandy had come up the Bay of Fundy the storm surge would have gone right across the Isthmus of Chignecto connecting New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. It would have taken out all of its infrastructure and disconnected the two provinces. And think of all the other surrounding shoreline damage that would have occurred. Is this reality just a matter of time for us?
The reality of continued fossil fuel pollution of the atmosphere is not just global warming, but increasingly chaotic, disruptive, and damaging climate instability. More than just discomfort, inconvenience, or even loss of life and infrastructure, the costs of dealing with and trying to recover from blow after blow will increasingly cripple our economy. Climate disruption is now a looming economic disaster. How will NB, already deeply in debt, deal with such a future?
In 2011 the Canadian National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy (NRT) published a major research report titled, Paying the Price: The Economic Impacts of Climate Change for Canada, which laid out the costs likely to be incurred if nothing is done to stem the direction of climate disruption. They estimate that by mid-century costs could average up to $1800 per home per year in New Brunswick. Householders in some regions, of course, will suffer much greater damage than others.
By 2020 the costs nationally will be $5 billion annually. By 2050 they will rise to between $21 and $43 billion per year. These are conservative projections. If climate damage accelerates, they estimate the figure could go as high as $91 billion every year.
If political leaders, including Canada’s, are not persuaded to take effective global action to move swiftly from reliance on fossil fuel energy to renewable energy, these costs will become a reality.
The People’s Climate March on Sunday, September 21st was a worldwide demand for political and business leaders to wise-up to what’s happening. As the March organizers said, “Do the math!” The quantity of fossil fuels still in ground, if extracted and burned, will destabilize the climate to such an extent that the damage will far outstrip any possible benefit. We’ve got to minimize the use of fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy as fast as possible simply to save our economy.
Even the US military has done the research and has warned that destabilizing the climate is the biggest threat to national and global security that we face. If the Pentagon is worried about this, it’s pretty dumb for the rest of us not be worried as well.
So what’s the response of political leaders in Canada and, for us, in New Brunswick? The Harper government has responded by “shooting the messenger.” In addition to telling the economic truth about climate change, the NRT had the audacity to issue a major study in 2012 titled, Framing the Future: Embracing the Low-Carbon Economy. The Harper government yanked the NRT’s funding out of the 2012 budget, which forced it to close down in 2013.
A “low-carbon economy” is the last thing the Harper government wants to hear about when its got the Alberta tar sands going full tilt. And in New Brunswick, the Alward government wants the west-east pipeline to bring Alberta crude to the Bay of Fundy, and to see the shale gas fracking boom set up shop in the province.
This is the opposite of “embracing the low-carbon economy.” It’s the opposite of a positive, progressive response to both the challenge and the opportunities of climate change. The NRT’s study lays out the road map to a low-carbon economy that helps stabilize the climate, and creates a renaissance of new businesses, investment, and employment opportunities in renewable energy technology.
Why aren’t governments listening? Why aren’t they doing their best to minimize the economic costs of climate disruption? How can we think of them as “leaders” when they are walking backward into climate chaos and economic ruin?
The organizers of the worldwide People’s Climate March hope that this massive uprising of citizen power can be a turning point, even at this late date, which gives birth to a new politics of global cooperation on climate change action. “If the people lead, the leaders will follow.”
Written by Sam Arnold and Keith Helmuth, members of the Woodstock Sustainable Energy Group.
Website update of Energy Futures column published in Bugle-Observer, September 19, 2014.