Global Warming: Why are we delaying action?

With 97% (low estimate for some) of environmental scientists and climate specialists committed to the field of climate change and how to reduce the impact...why are we sitting back and not addressing the crisis? 

Ask yourself when you first heard about global warming... climate change...and the impact that 8-Billion humans are having on our natural planet systems.  Me, I can recall hearing about it more than 45 years ago, and I have seen research that predates that time as well.  Our demand for fossil fuels, and our unwillingness to fully engage renewables promises to be our downfall. 

Why are we staying linked to these fuels and who in our society is pushing us to use more, and harvest more oil and coal for our use?  Why? Simple, it’s about profits for corporate giants.  Who?  The extremely wealthy who view wealth as power...so far beyond the point of need that they can’t grasp the failure that they are promoting.  They have anchors in the approximately $3-Trillion a year market that keep them enamored, and with global reserves (economically recoverable resources) in-excess-of $30-Trillion in today’s dollars (source: EIA) they don’t see a reason to change their focus, even if it means that future generations will live in a doomed world.

Two drivers that should be considered here are time and sustainability.  Time is what is driving the corporate exploration because they recognize that if they don’t harvest the resources now, their opportunities will lessen over time because of reduced demand.  Sustainability, on the other hand, argues that by reducing our use of fossil fuels we will promote balanced growth of renewables and extend the resource base for these truly usable fossil resources by centuries into the future. 

I am reminded of the words of  Tom Corbett, the Governor of Pennsylvania when, in 2014, he said that Fracking for natural gas and oil would provide Pennsylvania with revenue for the next hundred years.  One Hundred Years... and then what?  In that pronouncement Corbett defined the short-sighted nature of the American culture.  The damage that coal, oil, and natural gas all produce with their release of complex Green House Gas emissions will last a millennium from the point at which we stop polluting our atmosphere.  

For the Koch brothers, the owners of the largest privately held petro-chemical conglomerate, it's about profits and growth.  So much so that they invest hundreds of millions in campaigns and donations intended to attack the "radical environmentalists" who are fighting against the pollution that their industry yields.  Pollution, we should note, that the US taxpayers pay to clean up because our government has allowed corporations to side step the responsibility of their pollution.

Unprotected fracking pit in California

How are we taxed to cover these expenses, here are a few examples.  Oil and natural gas exploration and recovery operations draw millions of gallons of water a day for each fracking site, but they pay nothing for the water they use.  They then dump that water into retention ponds on site that damage and poison the groundwater, but they are not held accountable for cleaning this toxic waste, nor are their standard for their pit designs.  They aren't even required to divulge what chemicals they put into their fracking mixtures.  Then, when heavy storms run through their regions these ponds overflow, and again nothing is charged back to the corporate citizens that yielded the chemical flow poured into our streams and rivers.  The same can be noted about the atmosphere and how we are poisoning it, as well, with GHGs that take several decades to clear.

If we return to ‘Time and Sustainability’ we can find some answers, but it will take Governmental constraint and regulations to make a global difference.  If we don’t act soon the future will be much worse for our delay.  CO2 absorption into our lakes, rivers, and oceans is replacing oxygen and increasing acidity.  As a result, sea life is failing, and considering that the seas are the source of more than fifteen percent of animal protein intake for 4.5 Billion or more of mankind.  That is more than half of the population of the world depending on a failing food source, destroyed by our pollution (source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization).

Profits can come from many directions for the world’s corporations and governments.  Consider that if we recovered the floating plastics in our ocean gyres it could be recycled to produce new products, while protecting ocean creatures and returning the seas to a healthier environment.  Or if we reduce the use of fossil fuels, instead redirecting our focus to renewables, we could regain the leadership of this economy and profit for our effort.   

Time and Sustainability... plan globally to reduce pollution in all forms while expanding our use of nonpolluting energy to move us forward and solve the problems we will face due to the past centuries of neglect.