by Bill Creasy
The University of Maryland Baltimore County hosted a lecture by Mark Hertsgaard, journalist and author of "HOT: Living through the next Fifty Years on Earth" on October 16, 2013. The book was adopted campus-wide by UMBC, which has reduced carbon footprint by 13%. Baltimore Secular Humanists listed this lecture as an event on their meetup site.
The University of Maryland Baltimore County hosted a lecture by Mark Hertsgaard, journalist and author of "HOT: Living through the next Fifty Years on Earth" on October 16, 2013. The book was adopted campus-wide by UMBC, which has reduced carbon footprint by 13%. Baltimore Secular Humanists listed this lecture as an event on their meetup site.
Hertsgaard
gave some good news about climate change. He pointed out that cell
phones have been adopted rapidly in 15 years, and solar power use is
being adopted now faster than cell phones were. Germany is adopting
it rapidly. Japan added more solar than the nuclear that they shut
down the nuclear reactors following the Fukishima disaster. Solar
power is going to poor villages in Africa, beating the transmission
grid. The Dutch are most prepared nation esp. for sea level rise,
and they are selling the expertise.
Solar
is getting cheap quickly, and business analysts agree. A company
called Sunjevity installs solar panels, but it leases the panels and
consumers only sign contract to consume power. The company has no
fuel costs, and company makes money on electricity.
The
silver lining of climate change: it will create jobs. The bad news
is in the latest IPCC report. There is a time lag between release of
gas into atmosphere and heating. Temperatures will increase for 30
years even with no additional emissions.
Most
of the book is about how to live through increasing temperatures by
"generation HOT," current college students and younger
children, including Hertsgaard's young daughter. Society must "avoid
an unmanagable amount of warming, and manage the unavoidable."
There
is a target of 2 degree threshold, and countries will try to limit
change to 2 C. Even with this target, there will still be sea level
rise and glacier melting. The target should give 30 years to stop
using carbon-based fuels. That is the challenge for the current
generation.
Victories
are being won: 168 coal plants are being stopped, even in the red
states. Keystone XL pipeline is being resisted. Environmental
groups are becoming a movement with political power only in the last
2 years. But in order to meet the 2 C target, some fossil fuels will
have to be left in the ground.
What
can students do? Ask what you can do, and get an education; do
something, don't just worry; change your lifestyle as a start; but a
change of policies is needed to make big changes, by getting
politically active. He asks people to get involved, for the sake of
his children. He said that on Nov. 12 at MICA (Maryland Institute
College of Art) will have a protest against LNG terminal byChesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), which he called the most
effective local group in the country.
Natural
gas was considered to be an improvement over coal power plants
because there is less carbon dioxide emission per unit energy from
burning it. But natural gas has problems that are only beginning to
be assessed, because leakage of gas into the atmosphere contributes
to warming, and methane is about twenty times as effective for
warming as carbon dioxide. So it may not have as much advantage over
coal as has been thought.
The
biggest myth is that adapting to climate change will make life worse
or force a return to lower technology. He thinks if we do it right,
life will get better.
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