With heat-waves
underway and glaciers melting, climate-change was undeniable in the summer of
2015. Human nature itself was on full display. It was almost as if the human
race could not summon itself into action even as the hardships of a warming
world were a foregone conclusion.
"We're the
first generation to feel the effects of climate change and the last generation
that can do something about it," said Obama on August 3rd when he
announced a new set of regulations for U.S. power plants that call for a 32 percent reduction in
greenhouse gas emissions, from 2005 levels, by 2030. The EPA also issued final
rules for new power plants that call for phasing out new coal-fired units
unless there is technology in place that can capture and store carbon
emissions. Obama said the rules would reduce carbon dioxide pollution by 870
million tons, the equivalent of what is produced by 108 million homes or 166
million cars.[1] He
acknowledged a battle lurked ahead, as industry groups were already gearing up
to fight the rules in court.
Penguins face receding ice and rising waters. (Natacha Pisarenko of AP)
On the same day,
the World Glacier Monitoring Service released a study providing new evidence that the world’s glaciers
had melted to the lowest levels since the late nineteenth century, and the
ice-melt in 2015 would likely be twice the rate in the 1990s and three times
the rate the decade before that. "Globally, we lose about three times the
ice volume stored in the entirety of the European Alps every
year," Michael Zemp, director of the WGMS and lead author of the
study said.[2]
On July 20th, “James Hansen,
the former NASA climateologist who brought climate change to the public’s
attention in the summer of 1998, [had] issued a bombshell: He and a team of
climate scientists had identified a newly important feedback mechanism off the
coast of Antarctica that suggests mean sea levels could rise 10 times faster
than previously predicted: 10 feet by 2065.”[3]
Coastal Florida, including its vast commercial and residential real-estate, hang
in the balance. Meanwhile, Californians, in the fourth year of the worst
drought there in a millennium, witnessed a 50-acre brush fire swell seventyfold
in just a few hours, with many other fires raging too.[4]
In spite of the
clear indications that the Earth’s atmosphere was warming at an
uncharacteristically high rate, the National Mining Association of coal-mining
companies requested a stay in court on the EPA’s new rules while the courts
have the opportunity to determine the lawfulness of the agency’s attempt to
commandeer the nation’s electric grid."[5] Doubtless the focus on the EPA's power-grab did not include the fact that that July was the hottest globally since record-keeping began in 1880. The first seven months of the year were the hottest January-to-July span on record. In fact, from ice-cores scientists determined that the planet was its warmest in at least 4,000 years.[6]
Because coal-fueled power plants made up about 40 percent of the carbon emissions in the U.S. at the time, the companies were playing with fire in that their legal opposition to the rules could make an appreciable difference in how much climate change results from emissions. Put another way, a point of law could conceivably decide whether the lives of future generations of people are just uncomfortable or impossible.
Because coal-fueled power plants made up about 40 percent of the carbon emissions in the U.S. at the time, the companies were playing with fire in that their legal opposition to the rules could make an appreciable difference in how much climate change results from emissions. Put another way, a point of law could conceivably decide whether the lives of future generations of people are just uncomfortable or impossible.
"[T]he Rule
. . . aims at nothing less than the
comprehensive 'transformation' of the American electric power grid," wrote
Hal Quinn, the NMA's president and chief executive officer, in a letter to Environmental Protection Agency head Gina
McCarthy. "Congress,
however, did not give EPA the power to restructure how the nation produces and
consumes electricity."[7]
Even if reducing carbon emissions by a third from power plants constitutes a
restructuring of the power grid, Obama’s point about his generation then in
power being the first to perceive the impacts from global warming and the last
to realistically keep the world’s ecosystem from getting away from us dwarfs
the matter of a regulatory agency overreaching.
Of course, the
matter may be as simple as that of a narrow private interest being indifferent
to the general welfare. Implementing the rule, Quinn wrote, "will
irreparably injure the coal mining industry, coal mining workers, and coal
mining communities" and "has no purpose other than to reduce the use
of coal for electric generation as a means of reducing power sector [carbon
dioxide] emissions."[8]
The harm to the coal-mining industry in terms of lost revenue was Quinn’s real
concern. That the human race could stand in the balance in just a few
generations makes the sordid nature of the industry’s self-interest
transparent. In fact, the increased demand for electricity for air-conditioning
could mean that the mining industry had a financial stake in global warming
even though in just a few generations demand for electricity decreases due to
more climate-related deaths.
James Jansen and his colleagues warned that if
carbon emissions were not cut soon, the social disruption and dire economic
consequences of the sea-level rise along could be devastating. “It is not
difficult to imagine,” the scientists wrote, “that conflicts arising from
forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable,
threatening the fabric of civilization.”[9]
That such a prospect was rendered realistic given the clear signs of global
warming already extant makes the narrow focus of the coal executives even more
astonishing. To be sure, business and societal norms and perspectives can be
expected to differ, and even clash, for business is but one component of
society. For a part to seek to maximize its own gain at the expense of the
continued viability of the whole in the foreseeable future renders the strategy
highly unethical, not to mention problematic from the standpoint of society.
The latter arguably has an ethical right—obligation even—to constrain the
maximizing tendency of the hypertrophic part.
Beyond business
and society, human nature itself, particularly in its preoccupation with
instant gratification even at the risk of self-preservation in the long term,
can explain why such a genetically-successful species could also be that
species that alters its ecosystems to the extent that the species itself goes
extinct. The force of reason pales in comparison with selfishness. On August 3,
2015, the generation that could grasp the actuality of climate change was both
doing something about it and putting up obstacles. Human nature was on full
display. The question is whether such nature is compatible with its own
survival.
[1]
Kate Sheppard, “Obama
On Climate Rules: ‘This Is Our Moment To Get This Right’,” The Huffington
Post, August 3, 2015.
[2]
Nick Visser, “World’s
Glaciers Melting At Fastest Rate Since Record-Keeping Began,” The Worden
Report, August 3, 2015.
[3]
Eric Holthaus, “The
Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here,” Rolling Stones, August 5, 2015.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Kate Sheppard, “Coal
Interests Prepare To Challenge Obama’s Power Plant Rules,” The Worde
Report, August 3, 2015.
[6] Nick Visser, "It's Official, July Was Earth's Hottest Month on Record," The Huffington Post, August 20, 2015.
[6] Nick Visser, "It's Official, July Was Earth's Hottest Month on Record," The Huffington Post, August 20, 2015.
[8]
Ibid.
[9]
Holthaus, “The Point of No Return.”
