My four-point plan for ending the threat of Global Warming

1) Put a price on carbon, and let companies innovate their way to efficiency and clean energy. Set achievable targets, let people see the economic benefits, and then go for a reduction in our emissions that avoids the 450 ppm "severe global consequences" threshold.

2) End the Iraq war, and cut military research funding by 10%. Use that money to fund a Moon Landing-sized, two-decade government initiative into alternative energy research. As the premier energy-using society on Earth, America's national security is directly tied to its ability to find and deploy alternative sources of energy.

3) Expand tax-breaks for alternative energy and energy efficiency investments, set a $4-a-gallon basement on gasoline prices, and reduce subsidies for agricultural, coal, and oil industries. Use any tax monies to help poor people pay for higher energy costs.

4) Sign on to the next international global warming treaty in 2010, and commit to the REDD provision, a framework to allow rich nations to offset their emissions by paying poor nations to protect their rainforests. This could really save the rainforest, and cut humanity's emissions by 20% at a very cheap price ($600 million a year for the Amazon!).

What shape will the future hold? By 2030, developed countries could be driving electric cars, using solar, wind, and nuclear for most of our power, restoring the rainforests, and exporting green technology to the developing world. Coal plant emissions could feed algae biodiesel tanks, and be emissions-free at the other end. Global warming could be a fading worry, like the ozone hole.

It will take great effort and great leadership. We must act very soon. How do we want to be remembered?

Carbon Dioxide at 1000 ppm

I read a fascinating and short article today on the NYTimes DotEarth Blog. A prominent Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric scientist (he did the bulk of the early scientific work on the ozone hole) predicted soberly that carbon dioxide would hit 1000 ppm (parts per million) before humanity stabilized it.

The professor and one other Nobel Laureate colleague believe the civilizational challenge of fixing our multi-trillion dollar-sized energy and transportation networks and ending deforestation is going to be too slow a change to avoid this spike in carbon dioxide.

What would a world of 1000 ppm carbon dioxide be like? “I have no idea,” Dr. F. Sherwood Rowland said. He was not smiling.

1000 ppm CO2. That's 1 part per 1000 air molecules, roughly 4 times the highest concentration for the last million years, and twice the 450 ppm tipping point for environmental disasters to unfold. At the rate we are going, we could hit 1000 pm sometime around 2200.

Think what the climate was like when all the coal and oil was laid down in the ground: a world-wide tropical greenhouse with continents half-drowned by shallow seas and rain-forests growing in Alaska. Now put it on fast-forward: seas rising 10-50 meters, hurricanes putting an end to coastal cities, decadal droughts that empty entire regions, and a complete loss of all Arctic ice, and devastating damage to ecosystems around the world.

I don't often get Four Horseman about environmental problems; I believe our culture is narcissistic about its eventual end. But 1000 pm in less than 200 years? Realistically, there is a distinct possibility that billions will die from famine and disease, countries will collapse, and over 50% of the life on earth will go extinct. The climate will change so quickly that we may not be able to see the big blows coming, let alone adapt.

Crazy talk, you say. Push this globe hard enough, I say, and she will turn around on you. That's not politics--it's physics.

Car-Free Anxieties

So Nissan will produce an all-electric car by 2010 in the United States. Even counting in the emissions from coal-fired electric power plants, this car will get INCREDIBLE "gas"-mileage (if you don't believe me, check out this incredible Popular Mechanics article that resolves the gas vs. electric mileage-emissions question (see the chart)). The limitations will the charging time and range, but Nissan seems to hint there will be improvement there as well.

Given that the Chevy Volt will be coming out in 2010-2011 (a super-hybrid) along with new hybrids and many smaller cars, it seems a renaissance in American driving is on its way. With gas prices projected to hit $4 by this summer and stay high for the near future due to rising demand and continued political instability in Nigeria, Venezuela, and the Middle East, this is good news for the American consumer. Like in Europe, 2008's high gas prices are beginning to change consumer behavior, including buying smaller cars, taking public transit, and taking shorter drives. Unlike 1970, it seems that current global oil output is at its limits, with price driven by global oil demand and perceived or real disruptions to supply. Barring a global recession, oil prices are likely to remain high (above $3 a gallon) for an unforeseeable amount of time. I guess 5 years, but who knows?

All of this is positive news for the planet. The number of car drivers in America and the world continues to grow, with the developing world expected to double its car ownership by 2020. The $2500 price tag of the Tata, an Indian-built car, will put it within reach of millions. If innovative new cars weren't on the horizon, things would look grim indeed for global greenhouse emissions and the continued growth of the U.S. economy.

As a Texan, I bought a car at 16, like everyone else. Texas is too spread out for walking or biking to take you anywhere useful, so my used Nissan Centra (followed by a used Chevy Surburban) was a key to freedom. I bought a used Jeep Cherokee named Moira to go to grad school in New England, and I have been driving that car for 11 years. She gets 22 mpg, and I offset her emissions by buying rainforest parks through conservation organizations. I have been saving up to buy a cheap, environmentally friendly car for years.

So why do I find all of this ironic? After 14 years of driving, I am going to give up my car and move to New York City for five years of graduate school. Just when new cars are coming on to the market that will be "emissions-free", I won't be able to drive one!

Owning a car in Manhattan is inconvenient in so many ways--very expensive to insure, hard to park, and useless to get around the city proper. It is only convenient to own a car when you want to get out of the City or move large items. I have adult friends from the City that have never owned their own cars. Seeing as how living in the large grey urban castle called Manhattan will be hard for me, I anticipate wanting to get out of the city frequently, but I just can't justify the huge cost of a car on a graduate student budget. Currently, I am investigating Zipcar, renting the occasional car, or even buying a Vespa.

So America, enjoy those new revolutionary cars! I will return to the car-owning world after they have become as old-hat as the Prius. When I drop off my baby in late August, I anticipate shedding a tear or two at leaving the car-culture (and Moira) behind.

Rapid Human-Caused Climate Change (RHCCC for short)

Well, as a biology teacher, my time is about up. This is my third year teaching biology, and my last in high school. I am starting graduate school in the fall in ecology, and moving to NYC. Due to the short schedule at my school and the huge nature of modern biology, every year, I end up leaving something out. The first year I taught, I couldn't get to the topics of respiration, mitosis, and meiosis. The second year I taught, I left out plants, which I love. This year, it looked like I was going to fit everything in, with one week for plants shoehorned into the end of the semester, just after evolution.

But then, I had a thought: is plant anatomy really important enough to justify my final week as a teacher? And the answer is no.

The natural world faces huge threats from habitat destruction, invasive species, and global warming. A good biology student these days needs to know what these threats are. My students are still lacking an introduction to invasive species and global warming, and that's more important than basic plant biology and more relevant to evolution.

They need to know four important truths about global warming (RHCCC):
1) There is overwhelming scientific evidence that indicates the world is warming rapidly, and that warming has had predictable, inevitable consequences in the Earth's past.
2) What is so bad about global warming is NOT that it is happening. It has happened before, with few bad effects. What is bad about this around is the SPEED of the current climate change, and the rapidity with which ice is melting, oceans are rising, regions are becoming drier, and species are having to migrate or become extinct.
3) Humans are the indisputable, main cause of this rise in greenhouse gases, which is the greatest the world has seen in over 400,000 years.
4) Since climate is average weather in a place, and it takes decades for the climate to respond to increases in greenhouse gases, we are at the beginning of a very great change in our climate. There is still time to stop this rapid, human-caused climate change (RHCCC) from being catastrophic both for our society and the natural world.

I would argue that you disagree with any of the statements above, then you are not up on the latest science. Or, you have jumped past the science to the solutions to the problem, dislike the proposed solutions, and would rather attack the solid science than come up with creative solutions. George Will spoke at my school and disagreed with global warming on shaky scientific grounds. I think both statements above applied to him. If 99 out of 100 doctors tell you are sick, and you don't like the taste of the medicine, do you attack the doctor's conclusions? I say, come up with a creative way to take your medicine, and accept that you have a temperature.

To come up with a solution to global warming is, as a generation, my student's charge. As their science teacher, I cannot leave it out of the curriculum.