3fer on the Environment

 IT’S DARK AT THE END OF THIS TUNNEL  

The damaging reign of Trump is over and some kind of a focus on climate change with the Biden administration is in the wind. Republicans – or should we call them neo-Trumpers – have already attacked efforts to deal with the climate crisis, with Fox flunkies like Larry Kudlow mocking  what he calls “the Green New Socialist Deal” and Texas politicians blaming renewable energy for their abject failure to protect their deregulated energy grid.

Two 2019 books evoke the climate disasters to come in vivid language. “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming” by David Wallace-Wells and Naomi Klein’s “On Fire: the Burning Case for a Green New Deal.” They build on many other previous books like the Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Sixth Extinction” and proto-ecologist Rachel Carson’s lyrical warnings in “Silent Spring.” Klein and Wallace-Wells’ books have been eclipsed in popularity by oligarch writers like Bill Gates, who has just released “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need.” It is already in the top ten NYT best-seller list. The hot question we face is - is it too late and have we passed the “tipping point?”

WALLACE-WELLS

Wallace-Wells paints a satanic picture of earth in its death cycle. He points out that that the planet is 75% water but with only 2% fresh water available now for earth’s 7 billion people by the end of the century this will shrink to less than 1%. As much as 80% of water is used for food production. He cites the history of the earth 250 million years ago when the planet warmed 5 degrees, releasing methane that obliterated most life on the planet. It is puzzling how so many climate deniers cannot grasp the simple fact that climate change involves the displacement of cold arctic air by warmer air. In the case of arctic warming, the melting of the tundra is already releasing methane gases which are deadlier than CO2’s effects.

Currently, the earth’s atmosphere has 1/3 more carbon than in the previous hundreds and even thousands of years. Even if the U.S. and others follow the Paris accords, which the U.S. has rejoined, their goal of holding the climate temperature increase to 1.5 degrees is still a recipe for disaster. Wallace-Wells catalogs the effects of a few degrees of change: heat deaths, drought, famine and salt water flooding in from a dying ocean. This has already led to massive migrations due to conflicts on a local and global scale. According to Wallace-Wells, the entire economic and social system will fail no matter what political ideas dominate it. Wallace-Wells sees no long term solution on the horizon.

NAOMI KLEIN

Naomi Klein, a prominent Canadian activist, is the most politically conscious of the writers, supporting the Green New Deal and analyzing the detrimental effects of a capitalist consumer economy. She has been fighting on the climate issues for more than a decade and the book references her history with environmental groups. Klein sees the dangers of climate change to also involve damage to humans from air-born particulates which have massively increased due to drought and forest fires.

Klein has followed the climate change deniers’ propaganda trail and has secretly attended right-wing conferences like those of the Heartland Institute, which is funded by the Koch brothers and many entrepreneurs and financial heavyweights in the capitalist class. Not dealt with in these books is the possibility of an unlikely natural event like a vast volcanic eruption or meteorite strike, which could change the climate to a worldwide winter as happened in the past. Klein sees the Green New Deal agenda as having few drawbacks even with its massive cost, which she says will boost the economy and open up millions of new jobs as well as mitigate climate dangers. Klein does not discuss the efficacy of nuclear power.

BILL GATES

On the other hand Bill Gates has funded “compact nuclear reactors” with his TerraPower company, along with other technological “fixes”. Gates advocates many technocratic and social solutions which involve large governmental and individual commitments, but no changes beyond that.  One geo-engineering fix Gates is leery of is injecting gasses into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight. In that vein a recent “perturbation” balloon launch was deflated by criticism as a Swedish attempt to test this theory of blocking sunlight was cancelled.  But the most dangerous gas right now is the false claims bloviating from the climate deniers in industry and politics, who still hold power.  It is even worse than the methane belching of cows.

“On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal” is available at May Day Books, as is “The Sixth Extinction.”

Other prior book reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left:  “No is Not Enough,” “This Changes Everything – Capitalism vs. The Climate,” “The Shock Doctrine,” (all 3 by Klein); “Planet of the Humans,” “The Vanishing Face of Gaia,” (Lovelock); “Anthropocene or Capitalocene?” “The Sixth Extinction,” “The Collapse of Western Civilization,” “Catastrophism,” “Stop Tar Sands Oil,” etc. Or books on Marx and the environment by John Bellamy Foster…”Marx and the Earth,” “The Robbery of Nature,” “The Ecological Revolution”(all by JB Foster).

Guest Reviewer:  

AvatardeuX

April 8, 2021