In 2020, climate change will be on the ballot

by Leigh Pomeroy

Leigh Pomeroy is a board member of the Southcentral Minnesota Clean Energy Council and sits on the Southeast Steering Committee of Clean Energy Resource Teams, part of the University of Minnesota Extension. His opinions are his own.

In this past mid-term election, climate change wasn’t a huge issue. Measures dealing directly or indirectly with climate change in states like Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and Washington were soundly rejected, thanks to fossil fuel companies spending tens of millions of dollars to defeat them.

The 2020 elections will be different. In two years the consequences of human-caused climate change will be forefront in many voters’ minds. By then the catastrophic consequences of the increased intensity of hurricanes and frequency of wildfires will have become commonplace news.

The effect of the heat-trapping properties of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been known since 1896, when Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius correctly predicted that the burning of coal would warm the planet. So man-made climate change is not “fake news” or even “new news” — it’s old news.

Climate change came to the forefront in the U.S. on a hot summer day in 1988 when NASA climate scientist James Hansen testified before Congress that the planet was warming and that the cause was human made.

Thirty years later, the evidence is overwhelming: from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Department of Defense, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — that is, where sources have not been blocked by the Trump Administration.

Some politicians and fossil fuel advocates have tried to obfuscate the issue for their own and their funders’ economic gain. But they are traitors to the future generations who will be suffering the consequences from the energy and economic largesse we currently enjoy from fossil fuel burning.

The science of climate change is deceptively simple: Our planetary system is based on a delicate balance not unlike that of human and other biological systems. Modern human civilization has developed over the last 10,000 years due to an interglacial warming period.

In other words, earth is normally colder than it is now, but due to factors including the elliptical nature of the Earth’s orbit (its distance from the sun), the angle of its axis and the wobble of that axis — collectively known as the Milankovitch cycles — it entered into a warming period about 11,000 to 12,000 years ago.

Climate scientists have determined that, because of the Milankovitch cycles, the planet should be cooling. But it is not. It is warming. Why?

After eliminating all other factors, scientists deduced that the transfer of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide to the atmosphere from their stored places in the earth have caused that change. The primary agents of that transfer? Human beings.

Let us draw an analogy. Human bodies need iron in small amounts. Too much iron creates hemochromatosis and other excess iron diseases. Too little creates iron deficiency anemia. Either way can lead to serious health problems, even death.

Our planet and its climate are much the same: Little differences can mean huge, even catastrophic consequences.

Let us look at the facts: Human-created climate change is a reality. It is affecting certain parts of the world more than others. In the upper Midwest we are not as influenced as is the U.S. southeast and west and other parts of the planet. Yet climate change will — and already has — affected heat, rainfall and the growing season in Minnesota. Just ask any farmer.

Much is being done at the local and state levels to move from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. Yet much more needs to be done, both at the state and, particularly, the federal level.

Minnesota is small potatoes in the world scheme of addressing climate change. Yet like the valid argument that every vote counts, every attempt to address the challenge that our energy profligacy has created must be embraced, even if it is one small step at a time.

The next election will occur in another two years. But it is time now to influence legislators — whether you agree with them or not — as to what is important for our kids and their kids.

Let them know that science and facts are fundamental to our democracy. Impress upon them that climate change is real and that we all must do something about it … now.

This piece appeared in the Mankato Free Press, Tuesday, November 20, 2018.