Local Letter Speaks to Our Misguided Climate Mindset

Misinformation, myth fuel a human-made crisis

By Frank Carini / ecoRI News columnist

A recent letter to the editor published in Newport This Week succinctly summed up the ignorance that allows the climate crisis to rage largely unabated. I don’t know the writer, and my response isn’t about her. It’s about this collective mindset that casually shrugs off human suffering, wildlife extinction, and the destruction of our global life-support system.

Let’s examine some of the takes (in bold) from the four-paragraph letter.

“I feel the hysteria over climate change is beyond the pale.” 

More frequent and intense rainfall, greater occurrences of severe weather, melting glaciers, thawing permafrost, sea level rise, increased flooding, landslides, ocean acidification, bleached coral, drowning wetlands, an explosion of wildfires, deadly heat waves, and prolonged drought aren’t what is unacceptable. The offensive part is actually being concerned about climate refugees, future generations, and the world we share with a diminishing collection of other life.

“Climate change has been happening since the beginning of our planet with some pretty wild swings.” 

That is true, but since humans have only been on the planet for what amounts to a nanosecond, that pearl of wisdom provides little insight into the impact global warming will have on our species. Hint: It isn’t likely to be a net positive.

Also, the planet isn’t ours.

“From my reading the warming of our planet now is nowhere near the warm periods earth has experienced. These occurred long before our current population and use of fossil fuels.” 

One of Earth’s warmest times was during the geologic period known as the Neoproterozoic Era, between 800 million and 600 million years ago. Conditions were also frequently sweltering between 500 million and 250 million years ago. Humans first arrived between 6 million and 2 million years ago. We began burning fossil fuels with gusto at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

“The fact that Earth has been hotter in the past than it is today doesn’t prove that recent global warming is natural,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The climate crisis isn’t about the planet surviving. It’s about human survival, and in what form, and how much other life will disappear because of our hubris.

“I also feel that it’s arrogance that makes us think we can con­trol climate change.” 

I feel that it’s selfishness that makes us think we don’t have to do anything to address the climate crisis. The planet is warming — more quickly than science initially projected — because humans have spent the past 264 years relentlessly burning coal, oil, gasoline, diesel, propane, and methane (natural gas).

Fossil fuels produce large quantities of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide when burned. This trio of potent greenhouse gases traps some of the Earth’s outgoing energy, thus retaining heat in the atmosphere. This heat-trapping alters climate and weather patterns at global, regional, and even local scales. It is making the planet less hospitable to life, including our own.

“Multiple lines of evidence confirm that human activities are the primary cause of global warming since the start of the 20th century,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency. “Natural factors, such as variations in the sun’s output, volcanic activity, the Earth’s orbit, the carbon cycle, and others, also affect Earth’s radiative balance. However, beginning in the late 1700s, the net global effect of human activities has been a continual increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.”

We actually can control, or at least mitigate, climate change by drastically reducing the burning of fossil fuels. To do that, responsibly sited renewable energy (wind and solar) needs to play a prominent role.

“The demands made on us that we should convert everything to electricity is nonsen­sical.” 

To me this is the most dispiriting part of this groupthink. What demands are being placed on individuals to go electric? The government isn’t forcing anyone to buy an electric vehicle, an electric stove, or a heat pump. Its not forcing you to put solar panels on your roof. No one is making you ride an electric bus. Gasoline-guzzling, super-sized pickups aren’t illegal. In fact, no one is demanding you do anything to lessen suffering or protect the future.

Raising awareness about the climate crisis and encouraging people to make decisions that reduce the burning of fossil fuels makes perfect sense, even if it isn’t enough.

“There is no way that wind and solar can meet our needs for elec­tricity.” 

That view is held by few academics, scientists, and energy experts. It’s just a myth feverishly spewed by the fossil fuel industry.

“In reality, it is entirely possible to sustain a reliable electricity system based on renewable energy sources plus a combination of other means, including improved methods of energy management and storage,” according to a piece published three years ago by Yale Environment 360. 

“A clearer understanding of how to dependably manage electricity supply is vital because climate threats require a rapid shift to renewable sources like solar and wind power. This transition has been sped by plummeting costs — Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that solar and wind are the cheapest source for 91 percent of the world’s electricity — but is being held back by misinformation and myths.”

A 2023 analysis found that even in the most ambitious scenarios, the planet has enough materials to power the grid with renewables. The researchers also determined that the mining and processing of said materials, if done responsibly, wouldn’t produce enough emissions to warm the world past international targets.

“Both solar and wind have major downsides in expense and what happens with them in the future.” 

No energy source comes without consequences. The production of dysprosium and neodymium, rare-earth metals used in wind turbine magnets, will have environmental and societal impacts. Increasing production of other materials, especially those needed for batteries, will present challenges.

However, those issues dwarf the damage that has been done and is being done by extracting, manufacturing, transporting, and burning fossil fuels. The industry takes a heavy toll on human, ecosystem, and wildlife health. It needs vast stretches of land for wells, pipelines, and access roads, and acres upon acres of facilities that process the raw materials (see photo above) and store hazardous byproducts.

In the case of strip mining, entire chunks of terrain, including forests and mountaintops, are bulldozed and blasted to get at coal or oil deposits. After operations cease, the poisoned land remains long scarred. As a result, critical wildlife habitat ends up fragmented and destroyed.

Coal mining operations wash toxic runoff into streams, rivers, and lakes. Oil spills and leaks, on land and in the ocean, during drilling and transport pollute drinking water sources and degrade freshwater and saltwater ecosystems.

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and its toxic fluids contaminate drinking water supplies. Tar sands mining depletes and pollutes freshwater sources and creates immense ponds of toxic waste.

All of this nonstop drilling, fracking, and mining generate enormous amounts of wastewater, which is often laced with heavy metals, radioactive materials, and many other pollutants.

Renewable energy isn’t clean, but it is exponentially cleaner than fossil fuels. Its cost is also increasingly in-line with that of hydrocarbons. The International Energy Agency, in its World Energy Outlook for 2020, noted solar “is now the cheapest source of electricity in history.”

The external costs — those not borne by the entity that causes them — of renewables are also significantly less than fossil fuels.

“We are dependent pretty much on China for solar panels since China has the materials re­quired for production.” 

We are dependent on overseas markets such as China for solar panels, and for much of the things we consume, because U.S. corporations increase profits by sending manufacturing to countries with no unions, little protections for workers and the environment, and forced labor.

In 2021, U.S. exports to China were $151 billion, while U.S. imports from China were $506 billion. That massive trade difference isn’t just solar panels.

“We as yet haven’t come up with how to dis­pose of solar panels once they are no longer viable which is in about 25 years. We’ve seen what can happen with windmills.” 

In two and a half centuries of fossil fuel reliance, we’re still dealing with abandoned wells and mines, closed power plants, and other left-behind infrastructure built to support coal, oil, and gas production. We’re still remediating Superfund sites and brownfields created by fossil fuel pollution.

We’ve seen what can happen with offshore drilling rigs, oil spills, and refinery explosions.

“Our country has much gas, oil and coal which are much cleaner burning now.” 

There is nothing clean about fossil fuels.

“However, our efforts will never be able to combat China, India and other’s massive, aggres­sive and dirty energy production.” 

Ah yes, the do-nothings’ pièce de résistance: blame others so you don’t have to lift a finger.

Between 1751 and 2017, the world emitted about 1.5 trillion tons of carbon dioxide. The United States with 399 billion tons was responsible for 25% of those emissions, followed by the European Union at 22% and China at 12.7%. India was responsible for 3%.

Admitting we have a problem is the first step to solving it.