The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy wrote in his short story “What Men Live By,” “Remember then: there is only one time that is important — Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.”
This quote has always been significant to me, but now when I reflect on the UN Climate Change Conference and the speeches our world leaders made there, it seems especially relevant. Many leaders and diplomats spoke at the summit, and many of their words were relieving in their truth and urgency. It was relieving to hear those in power admit to the imperative need for climate change action.
A recent Washington Post article highlighted a study that indicated Western mountainous states in the United States will be almost without snow in 35 to 60 years if greenhouse gas emissions do not significantly decrease. Researchers predicted this decrease in snow will lead to water shortage problems.
A National Geographic report published just today iterated over the realities of climate change through 18 extreme weather events that hit the United States in 2021 alone, from heat waves to floods to wildfires.
It cannot be overstressed that the extremely damaging effects of climate change are here and will get worse if no action is taken. Politicians acknowledging these realities is not enough, however. Their words mean nothing unless they are followed by direct action.
U.S. President Biden plans to combat climate change and economic problems together with a plan he called “Biden’s Build Back Better Framework.”At the COP26 climate summit, Biden claimed this plan would “make historic investments in clean energy, the most significant investment to deal with the climate crisis that any advanced nation has made ever.” This claim was followed by his promise to “cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by well over a gigaton by 2030.”
Many politicians use the 2030 timeline following a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which stated global emissions had to be halved by 2030 to avoid disastrous climate change consequences.
But why do we need to gradually phase out fossil fuels? Why can’t we simply stop utilizing this resource immediately?
Some may point to how centered the fossil fuel industry is in the U.S. economy. Moreover, the abundance and relative inexpensiveness of utilizing fossil fuels make the transition away from their use unappealing to some politicians. The projected cost to switch the U.S. to all renewable energy sources by 2030 would be at least 5.7 trillion dollars, according to the Institute for Energy Research.
But the fate of the U.S. economy should not come before the health of our world.
Instead of vague promises of “phasing down” or “phasing out” fossil fuels over the next decade, we need to do it as soon as we can. Such a quick shift to all renewable energy sources would undoubtedly create massive public debt — but there are two rebuttals to this.
The first is that strategies like the Green New Deal, currently being represented by the Sunrise Movement and others, would allow us to recover economically by creating new jobs in the renewable energy sector. The second is that the public and national debt that would occur from the switch are utterly incomparable to the devastation that climate change will release on current and future generations.
When the COVID-19 pandemic put the United States into a state of emergency, Biden pledged to deliver 100 million vaccine doses in the first 100 days that he was in office.
If Biden treated climate change like an emergency of the level of COVID-19, we may make some headway. He must look at the wildfires in California, the sea level rise on the East Coast — and realize that climate change is already affecting the nation he is charged to lead. Acting now is imperative.
