Chair's Column: Summer 2018

Each time I approach the task of composing this column, I face the difficulty of selecting from a vast array of topics that cry out for an audience — and I always feel I’ve chosen well, but regret the stories left unwritten. This issue is no exception.

However, for this edition of the Sierra Atlantic, several events and new scientific findings happen to be entering the public stage within the same short six-month timeframe, events and knowledge that have longer-range implications than many may realize. Some of these events include the mid-term elections and attendant primaries, potential passage of legislation gutting the Endangered Species Act and permitting drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and opening of coastal areas all around the US to offshore drilling. 

Added to these developments, numerous scientific studies have detailed the fact that multiple elements of climate disruption are accelerating at rates greater than predicted in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. A study, funded by NASA and the European Space Agency ESA and published in Nature, concludes that glacial ice losses from Antarctica have tripled since 2012, with 180 billion tons of ice pouring into the ocean every year. Sea ice in the Arctic continues to diminish, on average, 13.2% each year. The less ice, the more heat is absorbed.

If Antarctica were to become completely ice free, the world’s oceans would rise 190 feet (58 meters). Obviously, that wouldn’t occur overnight, but if any of the vast stores of methane trapped on the Arctic ocean floor and in permafrost suddenly burped its way to the surface, killing all life in the immediate vicinity and raising global temperatures several degrees nearly instantly, some of the nightmare scenarios imagined will come to pass.

The point here is not to spread fatalistic gloom and doom, but rather to shock people awake. It’s long past the time when discussing mitigation or quaint adaptive strategies makes sense. The planet is never again going to be the same as it was in the 1940s or the 1870s, or even the 1970s. This is a whole new alien world emerging, and to pretend otherwise is to be fatally naive. 

Yes, we need to push for clean, renewable energy sources as fast and as diversified as possible. And we need to stress conservation, efficiency, sustainability and cooperation. We also need to expand our understanding of equity, inclusion and justice to include other species and ecosystems. If we don’t hasten to ensure preservation of the diversity of the biosphere, it may not have the resiliency needed to withstand the changes ahead. We also must guard against panic, which can lead to reckless decisions — such as deploying inadequately tested methods of geoengineering technologies — that result in unintended consequences more devastating than the ones they were meant to resolve.

Above all, we need to work together and not allow ourselves to be divided and fall into bickering over the smaller details. The elections remind me of this. Obviously, we can’t agree on every nuance, but if we can agree on the larger goals as the unifying framework, we have a real chance of ushering humanity into this new, warmer world with a positive, hopeful future.