Dire climate report, skies soon full of smoke. Will Idaho lawmakers do anything?


Darin Oswald/doswald@idahostatesman.com

Bryan Clark
Mon, June 6, 2022

A report released last month by the International Energy Agency detailing global carbon emissions is dire. Last year, the world released 36.3 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That was an increase of more than 2 billion tons from 2020, the largest absolute increase in CO2 released ever. Part of that was the bounce-back from pandemic-induced emissions declines, but the IEA pointed particularly to an increase in coal use as the main driver of increasing emissions.

As the New York Times noted, global temperatures have already risen about 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The espoused goal of the Paris Climate accords is to limit temperature increases to 1.5 degrees. Day by day, as we fail to face this problem head-on, that goal recedes from our grasp.

The Paris accords set a target of 2050 for carbon neutrality in order to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, but it assumes we will make steady progress toward that goal along the way. The U.S. is making little, though there are some bright spots in the report.

Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar continue to be adopted quickly, both in the U.S. and around the world. Combined with nuclear power, they now make up a larger portion of global energy production than coal, the report noted.

But those bright spots remain vastly inadequate to the scale of the problem.

If there is a defining characteristic of our current political era, it is paralysis in the face of real problems.

The filibuster in the U.S. Senate has led to more than a decade of paralysis in federal policy — and it’s not even clear whether that’s good or bad. If the Senate had not been twiddling its thumbs all this time, would it have made the problem worse by expanding oil and gas production or cutting renewable energy programs?

At the state level, it’s even worse. Lawmakers have done nothing, and the Republican majority shows no signs of taking the matter seriously.

As our politics is consumed by fights about porn in libraries and transgender athletes and other engineered controversies, the world is lurching ever closer to a tipping point beyond which our children’s and grandchildren’s future begins to look untenable. There is little question we will be remembered as the most irresponsible generation in history.

As Kelcie Moseley-Morris of the Idaho Capital Sun reported in January, the effects of climate change on Idaho agriculture could be quite dramatic. Hotter temperatures are expected to make potato and onion storage more difficult, leading to more spoilage. Maybe just use refrigeration? That’s going to be hard since lower snowpacks will mean less water to generate hydropower — or to grow potatoes in the first place.

Our current drought may be nothing compared to what’s coming, and the time for the Legislature to prepare for it was 10 years ago.

It’s easy to forget this generational, species-level crisis when our politics is centered on manufactured outrage. But it won’t be long until our skies are again clogged with smoke to remind us of the consequences of our inaction.

Will we ignore those skies again this year?