The Coad Table . . .
. . . meets every six weeks to discuss our response to and responsibilities in international affairs. The group is named in honor of Tom Coad who with Don McLaren founded the group years ago as a monthly, over-dinner discussion. Both Don and Tom were past-Presidents of the World Affairs Council; Tom’s particular interests were over-population and nuclear hegemony. Don’s, the forging of collaborative efforts to address conflict. Both, sadly, are gone but their legacy of concerns is carried on by fifteen or so of us old white guys. (Care to join? Give me a call. The younger and more colorful, the better.)
Climate Change
Last Tuesday, our impossibly broad subject was climate change and global warming. Eight of us catalogued the obstacles to meeting the +4°F Paris and Glasgow goal, but implicitly accepted that our course was to proceed and overcome those obstacles, as difficult and unlikely as that might be. Two of us, I in this camp, demurred: the war on global warming has been lost; it’s time for a change in direction.
The Global Warming War Has Been Lost
At risk of being called defeatist and isolationist, both of which labels I reject, let me argue my view. First, we already have used up half of the +4° leeway set in Paris at COP 21 (the United Nations Climate Change Conference, 2015) and re-affirmed at last month at Glasgow. We are more than +1°C (1.6° F) above pre-industrial 1890 temperature on average, and some areas of the world ahead of that. A neat way to see what’s happening around the world is to open and peruse these quick, “post card” bites of information on climate experiences in each UN member nation
Second, the developed nations’ 2015 pledges of financial support for lesser developed nations have not yet been paid. The need for and costs of investment escalate as global warming proceeds. We aren’t about to catch up.
Third, the developed world does not exhibit the will needed to dramatically move to zero emissions. Mandates are eschewed; carbon tax proposals are shelved. One of our Coad Table guys observed that there are three parts to the puzzle: the natural, long cycles of earth’s evolution; our man-made environment and technological change; and the social compact to act together. We can’t control the first. We may have some better tools coming on stream, such as batteries for storing wind and solar power, new methods for re-cycling water and minimizing fresh water usage, etc. Bill Gates, writing in his latest Gates Notes blog, holds out hope for technological silver bullets, mainly in energy generation, that will get us to net-zero by 2050.
But the roadblock is that social element: the will to undertake drastic, bold action. There is no prospect for marshalling such will world-wide, nor among the top five polluting economies – the US, China, India, EU, and Russia. We will be +4°F long before 2050. The war on global warming has already been lost. There is going to be more destruction, increasing dislocation, growing distress.
The US strategy must now change and focus on our own welfare. This doesn’t mean abandoning the world but first making sure that as few as possible of our own become climate war victims.
A Change of Direction
Last week, I attended a World Affairs Council panel discussion on what local companies were doing on climate change. On the panel were the top climate change officers (with various titles) of Boeing, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alaska Airlines. The four talked about re-cycling; cutting use of plastics; using renewable sources of energy; developing “sustainable aviation fuel” (whatever that is); converting to electric vehicle fleets; constructing green buildings; and so on – all good things in pursuit of forestalling global warming.
When question time came, I asked “if your CEO or board directed you to focus on anticipating, avoiding, and mitigating damage from climate change, how would that change what you do? It was four deer caught in the headlights – motionless, staring, silent. Finally, Amazon’s Chris Davis, Sr. Mgr., Sustainability Policy, said something like this: we’d have to start with and really step-up risk assessment. Mind: this was two days before the tornados in Tennessee and Kentucky, one of which flattened an Amazon distribution center, killing six employees.
What dangers?
Prepping for the Coad Table discussion, I listed for myself nine categories of climate damages and dangers to the US, and some steps that might be taken. Were we to try nothing, chaos, destruction and distress are guaranteed. Here is my list, in no particular order, which means Davis, of Amazon, nailed it: risk assessment is key to sorting out goals and priorities:
• Water -- Ocean level
Develop and install estuary gates a la Netherlands and Venice
Protection and renovation of locks, docks, cargo piers
Levees to be raised and, in some cases, removed to restore wetlands as storm water diversion
Zoning and insurance
No re-building on barrier islands and coastal plains – as homes destroyed, no replacement
State insurance commissioners use punitive rates to re-locate populations
Subsidized re-location programs
• Water – storm surge
Increase capacity of storm drain systems
Protection of industrial plants – especially nuclear and other power plants
Protection of city infrastructure
Levee subway accesses
• Drought
Watershed process for resolving allocation issues
Desalinization plant investment
• Wildfires
Zoning in unincorporated areas
Increasing manpower and capacity of forest fire fighting orgs
Fireproofing electrical grids
• Fertility zone changes
Beef up USDA county Ag Agents
Increase funded crop research
• Frequent and severe storms: tornados, hurricanes, thunderstorms
Power and Grid vulnerability
Industrial Plant vulnerability
Catalog high potential damage zones
• Migration
Guest worker program
Climate refugee rights accord
Interdiction of illegal immigration
• Domestic terrorism and cultural conflict
• Species extinction and diversity
Weight in risk assessment?
Protection of ranges in face of migration and new fertility zone pressures
A New Direction
Such enormous projects of risk assessment, damage avoidance, mitigation and emergency response require a national consensus and extraordinary leadership to forge it. Some of Coad Table group cautioned that autocracy and armed forces enforcement might be called for. But autocracy is not required if a consensus on the threat to the commonweal and a clearly defined purpose can be articulated and a compelling call to patriotism be made. This doesn’t mean stopping research into clean energy and carbon footprint reduction; it does mean setting new priorities and undertaking new investments and expenditures at local, state and federal levels.
How will all this be paid for? First, weight priorities for the new infrastructure authorization toward projects that have climate damage mitigation effects. Next: how about forgoing the ten-year, $3 trillion ICBM modernization program, decommissioning that third and increasingly obsolete leg of the triad, and relying on submarine-launched nukes and air-launched cruise missiles and strategic bombing as our deterrents? Freeing up $300 billion a year will go far to paying the bill for a comprehensive climate damage strategy. Reducing the risk of unintentional nuclear exchange would be a welcome dividend.
Does this mean turning inward and isolationist? Not necessarily. How about curtailing all military assistance programs and replacing them dollar for dollar with climate disaster preparation assistance? That would buy a far larger and more valuable impact. How about closing the War College and creating a Climate Adaptation College for both domestic and foreign designees?
The Third Label . . .
. . . I will be tagged with is alarmist. Yes; the alarm bells need to be rung. I am alarmed. Now a third of the way round my 88th orbit of the Sun, I likely won’t be here to see what happens, but your and my children will be. Our grandchildren are potential victims. And my great-grandchildren?
And the Fourth Label?
Idealist
OK, guilty. My friend Bill R recently said “when you are confronted with an idealist, run for your life!” But we have no place to run to. All I’ve suggested here is feasible even though unlikely.
Bill is a realist. But Bill and Fletch, the realist and the alarmed idealist, were the two Coad Table outliers who said climate change is here; the war to forestall global warming is already lost; it’s time for a change of priority. And that change is to ring the alarm and engage Americans in a crusade to mitigate the damage that global warming is already beginning to wreak upon us.
PS If you find this provocative, pass it along to an acquaintance, preferably one of those Gen Z’ers who will inherit this mess we’ve been making. They are the promising ones of passion and idealism.
