17.5: Hotter, Drier, Tougher

Hotter, Drier, Tougher

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): A dark vision of a future affected by climate change disasters, with a flooded urban landscape reflecting wildfire-smoke skies. "Future LA" by Steven Newton/Midjourney is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. Access a detailed description.

At this point in the course, you should have come to a somber understanding not only about the urgent danger of climate change, but also about the nature of California itself.

This is a beautiful state with incredibly diverse geology–-the vertiginous cliffs of Yosemite, the baking oven of Death Valley, the stark loneliness of Joshua Tree. But underlying it all–literally–is something terrible. The fearsome San Andreas fault system, and all of its scions, such as the Hollywood and Hayward faults, threatens to without warning collapse our comfortable complacency. As Natalie Merchant sang about California in her song “San Andreas Fault”: “What a wicked ground/ Build a dream, watch it all fall down.”

We have created a fragile, frail civilization here that hangs by the thinnest of threads. An unremarkable eruption at Mt. Shasta, and whole areas of Northern California become unlivable, buried in ash and smothered in lahars. An inevitable, long-overdue shift in California’s major faults, and our most basic life-sustaining infrastructures–housing, roads, electricity, fuel, sewage, gas, dams, drinking water–are ruined.

In addition to these risks, climate change is hammering every imaginable factor–all at once. A small change in snow pack formation and we no longer have enough water to sustain our swelling population. A delicate shift in fog-generating coastal currents, and California’s grand redwood trees go extinct. An inevitable rise in sea level–seemingly no worse than a very high tide except that the high tide is now permanent–and hundreds of thousands of Californians will have to abandon their now-worthless low-lying homes. For most Californians, homes represent their single largest lifetime financial investment. Some may assume that “the government” will construct sea walls to save their homes from rising oceans, when in fact local governments decline to raise taxes to fund schools adequately or to maintain even existing roads.

We obviously can’t prevent a volcano such as Mt. Shasta from erupting, but is there anything we can do about the effects of climate change on California?

California has undertaken some steps to counteract climate change. There have been a few token actions, such as laws tightening motor vehicle emission standards and phasing out sales of new gasoline cars by 2035. The California Climate Commitment pledges $54 billion to reduce fossil fuel and air pollution. Legislation has been signed requiring large businesses to disclose their carbon footprints. These are all positive steps. The problem is how few other states, and how few other countries, are following California’s lead. Without federal action, and without a worldwide program to reduce carbon dioxide emissions drastically–for example, by rapidly ceasing all use of coal for energy production–then California’s climate steps are akin to calibrating the clocks on the Titanic as it sinks. We can reduce our carbon usage, but if the PRC and India do not follow, then California alone won't be enough.

In K-12 education there is a common trope that climate change lessons should include practical steps young students can take. The thinking is that if children are frightened by climate change information, they may resist accepting the conclusions. But if these lessons are leavened with practical actions–switching light bulbs to LEDs, air-drying clothes, recycling–students may have a sense of agency and control that will make them more likely to accept the science.

But this is a college-level text, and here we have an obligation to tell the truth without condescension. And the truth is that such minor steps are not nearly enough.

One study found that in the United States changing standard light bulbs to LEDs saves an average of 0.17 equivalent tonnes of CO₂ annually, compared to a savings of 117.7 equivalent tonnes of CO₂ annually if a family decides to have one less child. Put another way, a family with one additional child incurs a carbon cost equivalent to 684 teenagers abstaining from recycling for the entirety of their lives.

The truth is that the accelerations of swelling sea levels, rising temperatures, and parching droughts are colossal, existential threats. These threats require changes of equally great magnitude to our economic, legal, and political systems. Switching to more efficient light bulbs does no harm but should not be seen as a substitute for the real work.

If humanity somehow lingers long enough for historians to compose histories of our time period, perhaps these writings will say that good people appreciative of natural beauty and the natural world–such as the lucky residents of the amazing state of California–fought successfully to effect the fundamental structural changes required to deal with climate change.

Query \(\PageIndex{1}\)

References

1. Wynes, S., & Nicholas, K. A. (2017). The climate mitigation gap: Education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions. Environmental Research Letters, 12(7). https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541