An apology to my future grandson

by Leigh Pomeroy

"They went on playing politics until their world collapsed around them." — U Thant, former secretary-general of the United Nations, in a 1971 speech

Provided all goes as planned, at the end of October I will become a grandfather for the first time.

Normally, this is a reason to celebrate, but I wonder: What will the world be like when my grandson turns my age at the end of the 21st century? Or even earlier, when he turns his father's age at midcentury?

I was born at the end of the 1940s. Since then, the planet's population has tripled, from 2.5 billion to nearly 8 billion. When my grandson turns his father's age, the planet is projected to be home to nearly 10 billion humans; when he's my age, perhaps 11 billion.

The good news is that population growth will slow dramatically. But if our resources for arable land and drinkable water are strained now, what will the planet be like with another 2 billion to 3 billion mouths to feed?

There are numerous other threats to civilization besides food and water supplies: shrinking biodiversity, the proliferation of man-made chemicals and plastics in the environment, and the big one: climate change.

I say threats to "civilization" instead of "humanity" because our species has existed for 200,000 years, surviving plague, pestilence, wars and climate change. And chances are, no matter what happens to the planet (short of a major meteor impact), humans will survive in some form for millennia more.

In history, localized civilizations have come and gone. Mesopotamia began as early as 14000 B.C., while Babylonian and ancient Egypt civilizations started about 4000 and 3000 B.C., respectively. Later, Greece and the Roman Empire rose to prominence, then declined. In Asia, Indus Valley civilizations arose about 7000 B.C., and the first Chinese dynasty about 2000 B.C. Angkor Wat in present-day Cambodia, famous for its temples, was a latecomer, beginning about 1100 A.D.

Civilization in the Western Hemisphere started as early as 5,000 years ago in present-day Peru. More recently came the rise and fall of the Maya, Inca and Aztec empires, as well as Cahokia near present day St. Louis and the Chaco Canyon Anasazi in the Southwest.

There are countless examples of the ascendance, then eclipse of civilizations across the planet and throughout history. All have come and gone due to climate change, disease and warfare, most often a combination of the three. Thus, to assume that our current worldwide civilization will survive on its current upward trajectory is folly. There are too many potentials for downfall, either at once or a slow decline.

Fast downfall could be through nuclear holocaust. Indeed, we are one step closer to that possibility due to Russia's unprovoked, senseless and tragic attack on peaceful Ukraine. But most likely collapse will occur over a prolonged period of time.

Worldwide, freshwater aquifers are dropping, forests are disappearing, arable land is declining, all of which have been thoroughly researched and noted. Plastics are filling the environment, leading to human health hazards. Plastics are particularly dangerous, since they don't break down in nature. They just disintegrate into smaller and smaller particles that animals, fish, insects and even tiny life-forms ingest, ultimately ending up in human diets. Some researchers estimate that Americans consume or breathe more than 120,000 particles of microplastics each year, a number that is growing.

And then there's climate change, which many researchers believe has been the prime factor for the rise and fall of civilizations.

The first civilizations arose during favorable climatic conditions following the end of the last glacial period about 10,000 years ago. They began in areas where temperatures were not too extreme and plenty of water existed. And they continued as long as those conditions remained, as long as people could predict rain and flood events, and store water in lakes and move it through canals.

In today's world we've become remarkably adept at water control, but now we realize that even our grandest schemes can't control nature. Witness the ongoing drought in the western United States, which has led to severe water rationing from the Colorado River and other sources.

There are two giant differences between our civilization today and the civilizations of the past. The first is our present-day interconnectedness; the planet now hosts one giant civilization instead of many smaller ones. The second is our ability to geoengineer the entire planet.

Now we're realizing that this geoengineering has not been for the better. It has been mankind's unplanned transference of greenhouse gases, mainly in the form of carbon dioxide, from the earth to the atmosphere and oceans.

While earlier civilizations altered their local climates via deforestation, burning and water projects, they did not do so on a planetwide scale. But today, by burning fossil fuels, clear-cutting and burning forests, creating cities, altering large tracts of land through agriculture and releasing man-made chemicals into the atmosphere, humans have created a geoengineering experiment unprecedented on this planet.

In the next decades, unless there are drastic and wholesale changes in human behavior, this is what my grandson will see:

By the time he's his father's age, major sections of coastal cities in the U.S. and around the world will be underwater during storms and high tides. Climates will change, for example: Portland, Ore., will be more like today's San Antonio, Texas. Minneapolis will be more like today's Kansas City. And Phoenix will be more like today's Baghdad, Iraq. In fact, many cities in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent will be unlivable due to heat, drought and air pollution.

When my grandson is my age, once heavily populated areas of Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nigeria will be permanently underwater. The average summer daytime temperature in much of the American Southwest will be 110 degrees. And already hot Mexico could be 8 degrees warmer, leading to even greater immigration pressure at the southern U.S. border.

This will all occur if we continue on the track we're on now. Unfortunately, given our current political and societal situation, even the most optimistic climate scientists don't see a way we're going to reverse that within the time period necessary to avert calamity.

It is unlikely that collapse will occur all at once. Instead, what we'll most likely experience is a series of mini-collapses around the world. And like a house of cards or a row of standing dominoes, one crisis will lead to another. Soon enough, even those of us fortunate enough to live in First World parts of the planet will be affected, making the COVID pandemic and our current inflation "crisis" look like a walk in the park.

If there is a silver lining, it's this: Just as we saw greenhouse gas releases drop during the COVID pandemic due to reduced economic output, we'll see similar declines as the world economy shrinks due to climate impacts. Yet even this lessening of greenhouse gas releases will not have an immediate effect on the climate, as carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for a century or more.

So I say to my future grandson: I'm sorry, I'm afraid this will be your reality.

Yet for my part I'll continue advocating and working to hopefully prove myself wrong. For as an environmentalist friend says, just because the ship is sinking doesn't mean you stop bailing.

After all, what else are you going to do?

Leigh Pomeroy is chair of the Southcentral Minnesota Clean Energy Council and was a DFL candidate for Congress in Minnesota's First District in 2004. 

This article was originally published in the StarTribune on Sunday, July 31, 2022.