Opinion
Our time is up; global warming requires activism now

William Culbert
Sun, July 23, 2023 

Global warming is misunderstood by many people, and the politicization of the issue has made it even more difficult to explore potential solutions.

William Culbert

The world population is expected to peak as early as the 2040s or, by any estimate, the end of the century, but this alone will not help us survive as a species. The rich world’s disproportionate use of carbon-based energy needs to change.

To become carbon neutral by 2050, in addition to being off fossil fuels, we would have to remove 1,850 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere annually. “Decarbonizing” the air with industrial processes is expensive and at best will remove only 4 million tons annually with the industrial facilities that have been proposed in the United States.

Cultivating forests is far more efficient. Under the best scenarios, if we were to ween off fossil fuels immediately, we would still have high levels of carbon in the atmosphere for centuries.

But we don’t have centuries.

As much as 40% of sea level rise is the direct product of the thermal expansion of water and not related to melting ice on the continents. But this latter issue is perhaps much worse than once thought.

Over the next 1,000 years the collapse of the Western Antarctic ice sheets is expected to raise sea levels more than 10 feet. But new Harvard research suggests that as the bedrock supporting the ice rebounds from the decreasing weight, it may displace even more water, raising sea levels another 3 feet.

Forty percent of the world’s population lives within about 60 miles of the ocean. According to The Economist, only about 13% of the world’s coastal areas might be amenable to efforts to protect them, but 65% would have no chance.

Some large industrial coastal cities like several in Eastern China would be particularly affected. Most were previously farmland with rapidly shrinking water tables. Industrialization with construction of skyscrapers and the elimination of wetlands is causing these cities to sink rapidly. Shanghai, with a population of 26 million, will be in great danger in the coming decades.

The heat from a changing climate alone may be enough to kill us. Europe experienced almost 62,000 additional heat-related deaths last year. In three decades, 100 million Americans can expect at least a day with a heat index of 125 degrees. This could have the potential to kill rapidly, and the process is insidious.

The world has had five mass extinctions in the last 500 million years that have each resulted in the extinction of most of the plant and animal species on earth. Some estimates suggest that 99.9% of all species that have lived on earth are now extinct. A quarter of all existing species are now threatened with extinction, and the process is increasing rapidly. If we lose 80 specific ones that are mostly microscopic, food production could be devastated, resulting in mass global starvation.

Humans and all other mammals have evolved from the few opossum-sized hibernating creatures that were able to survive the meteor strike that killed most dinosaurs. All birds and some reptiles evolved from dinosaurs.

Global warming may be just another mass extinction for the planet and life will go on, but it will surely represent the end of humans.

It should be the focus of all of us to delay the process as long as possible. It is not enough to do this by living a life with a low carbon footprint. Everyone needs to become a political activist.

William Culbert is an Oak Ridge resident and retired physician.

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Our time is up; global warming requires activism now