Editor's Note: Joe Attamante is a former teacher and veteran and a lifetime member of the Sierra Club. He lives in Morristown.
As I reflect on September’s New York City Climate March and Rally, I am heartened that over 50,000 people from hundreds of organizations focused their commitment and energy to speak with one voice, telling President Biden, Congress, and the fossil fuel industry that business as usual will destroy our planet’s balance and eventually extinguish much of life: plants, animals, and us. Most important, they called on everyone to protect and preserve the fragile balance of temperature, air, earth and water, the climate that sustains all that lives.
At the same time, I am dismayed and discouraged that many of our fellow citizens either don’t know the effects of global warming or openly distrust science and don’t want to know. Many who apparently do understand climate change ignore what their senses and eyes show them. A recent Pew survey indicated Americans remain sharply divided over addressing climate change.
Most shameful in my mind are the many elected officials who, for political advantage, openly deny or minimize the clear scientific evidence that our Earth is warming with dangerous rapidity.
The world has known of the cause-and-effect connection between CO2 and warming of the atmosphere—that as CO2 increases, the atmosphere warms and a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture—through the 19th century work of Eunice Foote, John Tyndall, and most famously, Svante Arrhenius, who worked out how much of the sun’s radiation would be retained by C02 and water vapor in the atmosphere.
These effects have been confirmed by a consensus of climate scientists who monitor and measure our atmosphere, oceans, and earth. For many years, these scientists have urgently warned that we have limited time to avoid irremediable catastrophes—increasingly severe storms, wildfires, massive flooding, heat waves, and drought. They continually warn us that the only way we can mitigate the most horrific scenario, planetary devastation and possible collapse of civilization, is to rapidly reduce and finally eliminate the burning of fossil fuels.
Moreover, although our governing leaders enacted some legislation that will help, such as “Build Back Better” and the “Inflation Reduction Act,” they then undermined that good by continuing to subsidize the fossil fuel industry and approving the massive Willow oil drilling project in Alaska and the West Virginia Mountain Valley Pipeline, and these projects were approved despite knowing they would ensure decades more CO2 emissions pollution of air, land, and water and destruction of natural habitat.
Most threatening to present and future environmental legislation, the Supreme Court also undermines progress. In June 2022, it curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate industrial smokestack emissions, contrary to the clear mandate to do so under the 1970 Clean Air Act.
Many people mistakenly believe that planting trees, seedlings, and saplings somehow makes up for continuing to log and destroy the Amazon and the northern boreal forest, and that it’s OK to convert our mature forest trees on public lands into lumber. Simply planting trees does not justify or make up for massive logging. Fully grown trees sequester more carbon than many newly planted ones, so it's essential to preserve mature forests.
The bottom line is that while our elected and unelected officials say they are doing everything they can to avoid the worst outcome, their actions do not match their rhetoric.
And speaking of public betrayal, it should not go unnoted that most broadcast TV, as well as C-Span, knew a massive climate march was to take place on 9/17, but nonetheless chose not to stream or broadcast live coverage of the event. Anyone who feels the wind, rain, and heat and breathes the air already knows that the world is warming, and that extreme weather is becoming the norm. What do we do to avoid the worst outcomes?
I submit that hope lies with those who marched and stood with each other in the streets that day; they marched for all of us. It is incumbent on all of us to write and call local, state, and national officials and rally and speak to all those we entrust to act in our best interests. If those we elect do not move swiftly to transition from fossil fuels, we must call them out—make them uncomfortable until they do act—and vote out those who only mouth platitudes to placate us.
Resources
Pew Survey: https://shorturl.at/tJMSX
Build Back Better: https://shorturl.at/nNOT1
Inflation Reduction Act: https://shorturl.at/FTX12
Willow: https://shorturl.at/dno14