Our Children: The Climate Activists We Need!

On Strike for the Climate.  Greta Thunberg, then aged 15, decided not to go back to school after a summer of record temperatures in Sweden in 2018.  Instead she picketed solo outside the Swedish parliament, with her books and a sign reading “School Strike for Climate”.  She felt powerless as Swedish politicians failed to address climate change in a meaningful way, even as they campaigned for reelection in Sweden. In short order, now 16 years old, she has engendered a global movement of school students protesting inaction on the climate around the world.  She started the #FridaysForFuture climate protests, for example involving over 30,000 pupils in Belgium alone in January 2019.  At the annual United Nations climate talks in Poland in December 2018, she berated the delegates, saying “You are not mature enough to tell it like it is.  Even that burden you leave to us children.”  Elsewhere she has said, perhaps with wisdom exceeding her years, “Change is on the horizon, but to see that change we also have to change ourselves.”

A globe-wide international strike of students marching against climate inaction took place in March 2019, a sequel to Greta Thunberg’s activism.  1,700 strike events occurred on every continent (except Antarctica).  In the U. S. alone there were 100 strikes.  Nadia Nazar, an organizer of a strike in Washington, D.C., said “We’re the first generation that’s being significantly affected by climate change, and the last generation that can do something about it.”

Many of these children, born just after the 21^st century began, realize they will be living through most of its remainder.  They see and read about the harms already being inflicted upon humanity by weather and climate extremes.  They also recognize that global warming poses an existential threat to our planet as this century unfolds, and understand that, barring energetic, ambitious action starting now, their lives risk becoming unsustainable as the earth continues warming. (Please see the post “How Do We Answer Our Children?”)  

Climate scientists agree that our children’s climate worries are justified.  Twenty-two prominent climate scientists from 10 countries published a letter to the editor of Science (12 April 2019) in support of the youthful climate strikers.  The writers affirm: “Their concerns are justified and supported by the best available science. The current measures for protecting the climate and biosphere are deeply inadequate.”  Confirming our children’s calls to action they state “It is critical to immediately begin a rapid reduction in CO₂ and other greenhouse gas emissions…. The young protesters rightfully demand that … solutions [already known to us] be used to achieve a sustainable society…. Without bold and focused action, their future is in critical danger.” 

The letter forcefully concludes “The enormous grassroots mobilization…of the youth climate movement…shows that young people understand the situation. We approve and support their demand for rapid and forceful action….Only if humanity acts quickly and resolutely can we limit global warming [and its consequent ecological damage, and assure the] well-being of present and future generations. This is what the young people want to achieve. They deserve our respect and full support.”

Climate Science. The science behind our understanding of global warming and its consequences has been understood already for many decades.  Indeed, the first findings that burning fossil fuels by humankind produces carbon dioxide (CO₂) that warms the atmosphere were uncovered during the nineteenth century.  These are summarized in the Details section at the end of this post.

IPCC Assessment Reports. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been issuing Assessment Reports presenting scientific data and discussing warming mitigation and adaptation methodologies since 1990, at intervals of 5-7 years.  The most recent one, the fifth, appeared in three parts over 2013-4. 

The basic conclusions throughout this series have not wavered significantly from those presented in the first Report; the difference over this 24-year period has been rather that a) the number of climate scientists at work, and our understanding of climate science based on their results, have grown dramatically; and b) technologies that permit more extensive and more accurate gathering and analysis of climate data have likewise grown significantly.  This has permitted the conclusions and recommendations made in the Fifth Assessment Report to be offered with the highest levels of certainty and confidence, compared to those in the previous versions. 

Even so, over this interval our policymakers have not embraced these recommendations as energetically and as early as would have been needed to respond to the climate crisis. Instead, policymakers have reacted inadequately to the growing threat of damages and harms to health and society that global warming poses.  In Ms. Thunberg’s words, our political leaders have not been “mature enough to tell it like it is.  Even that burden [they are leaving to their] children.”

Most recently, an IPCC Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, which appeared in October 2018, summons the world to take more immediate, extensive, and radical actions than in earlier reports so that the rise in global average temperature remains below about 1.5°C (2.7°F).  Because of earlier inaction this Report now foresees the need to reduce net global annual greenhouse gas emission rates to near zero by 2050.  This will require committed technological development and deployment at the enormous scale needed to match the rate of production of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases.  It also depends on the worldwide exercise of political will that reflects scientific necessity and moral responsibility. There is no longer any scientific doubt that global warming leads to extremes of weather and climate that contribute to, or cause, climate disasters at an ever-increasing and ever more devastating pace.  Again as Ms. Thunberg states, “to see that change we also have to change ourselves.”

Details

The early scientific history leading to identification of CO₂ as a greenhouse gas and the understanding that it could harm our environment includes the following discoveries and reports:

1790s: Horace-Benedict de Saussure, a Swiss geologist and alpinist, constructed a glass-covered box with a thermometer inside: his “heliothermometer”.  Without understanding why, he discovered that the temperature inside the box was much higher than the air outside.  (We now know that glass is greenhouse-active.)

1820s: Joseph Fourier, a French physicist with an interest in global heat exchange, understood that the atmosphere acts as what we now call a greenhouse, retaining heat from the sun that keeps the earth warm.  But he had no way to verify his theory.

1859: John Tyndall, a British experimental physicist was the first to demonstrate in his laboratory that CO₂ (and many other gases) absorb heat radiation.  This established that CO₂ in the atmosphere behaves as a greenhouse gas, retaining solar energy as extra heat.

1896: Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, built on the knowledge of his predecessors.  He knew that burning fossil fuels generates CO_2.  He calculated (using pencil and paper, before the advent of calculators and computers) the extra warming that could arise from this added CO₂, and warned of the effects that continued fossil fuel use could have. 

1958: Charles Keeling, an American geologist, was the first to measure directly the CO₂ content of the atmosphere.  It was higher than before fossil fuel use began, and continues to grow to record levels to this day.

© 2019 Henry Auer