Many people in the US and throughout the world let out a sigh of relief when it was finally announced Donald Trump would no longer be president of the United States, for numerous reasons.
Mr. Trump’s entire presidency relied on unfounded and bogus conspiracy theories to keep his delusional legion of adherents eating from the palm of his hand.
He has vehemently denied the existence of human-induced global warming. On June 1st, 2017 he announced he would withdraw from the Paris Agreement. At one point during his presidency, he even stated that “It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch… I don’t think science knows, actually.”
He has also succeeded in rolling back at least 84 environmental rules while attempting to weaken an additional 20. These include limits on planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, protections for the nation’s wetlands, and wildlife protections.
Joe Biden has promised to rejoin the Paris Agreement and tackle climate change, and despite the tragedy of covid-19, the good news is global C02 emissions dropped by a record 7% in 2020.
Many environmentalists and concerned citizens view the above as a cause to celebrate, take out that old bottle of champagne and get funky. The planet is saved and we have a positive future after all!
Or do we?
Sure, we will no longer have a member of the clown posse at the pinnacle of world power, but there is still plenty of reason to worry. For one, a 2015 study suggests the full warming effect from a C02 emission may not be felt for several decades, even centuries, which means the greenhouse gas emissions we’ve emitted in decades past will continue to haunt us for quite some time.
But that’s only a small part of the story.
Feedback Loops
To understand the nature of a climate feedback loop, it helps to imagine someone who makes a snowball and then rolls it over the edge of a snow-covered hill. After a while gravity takes over, the snowball is no longer in that person’s control, and it keeps getting bigger as it rolls down on its own.
One of the most alarming feedback loops is the potential for a huge methane release from the melting ice in the Arctic ocean. Methane has 80 times the warming impact of C02 over a 20-year period. If enough is released into the atmosphere it could heat the planet more rapidly and catastrophically than anyone could imagine.
Just last October, scientists on the Russian research ship R/V Akademik Keldysh contacted The Guardian to tell them this process has already started, as their assessment of the Arctic indicated.
Then there are the northern permafrost regions, which harbor 1,460–1,600 billion metric tons of organic carbon beneath the soil, which has been frozen for eons. This is twice as much carbon as currently found in the atmosphere.
But now that permafrost is melting, and the C02 is getting released. What’s worse, much of the gas is also coming out in the form of methane, that gaseous little demon on the verge of escaping from the depths of the underworld and wreaking havoc above.
In 2019, The Guardian published an article titled “Scientists shocked by Arctic permafrost thawing 70 years sooner than predicted.” A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks witnessed the destabilization of the ground which had been frozen for millennia.
Just last summer (June/July 2020), northern Siberia was struck by a record-breaking heatwave, with temperatures exceeding 37.7C (100F) for the first time in recorded history. This fueled a massive outbreak of forest fires.
The unprecedented event, fire on frozen ground, may have already triggered the initial stages of a feedback by melting the permafrost and releasing more carbon, and methane, than the atmosphere can handle.
Another potential feedback loop comes from the oceans, which have absorbed most of the heat from global warming. This means they have the potential to start releasing that heat back into the atmosphere once they’ve exceeded their absorption capacity.
Can democrats save the future?
Now on to the political issues. The Paris Agreement has been considered totally insufficient by many climate scientists, and Brazilian cattle ranchers continue to tear through the Amazon, a huge carbon sink, at an unrelenting pace, fuelled by global meat and dairy consumption and encouraged by climate-denying president Jair Bolsonaro, Trump’s brown-haired clone on the other side of the equator, who remains in power.
As I already mentioned, C02 emissions declined in 2020 due to the economic slowdown, but they’re expected to rebound in 2021 as things gradually get back to normal.
Biden has pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, with an investment of 1.7 trillion dollars, which will be met with staunch opposition from Republicans, especially in a country where the democratic party is still at the mercy of the fossil fuel industry, at least to a certain degree. The US spends ten times more on subsidizing fossil fuels than on education, and that’s unlikely to change even with democrats back in power.
An increasing number of climate scientists suggest our only hope is to rapidly implement carbon capture and sequestration technologies, which would remove the excess C02 from the atmosphere and bury it underground. Yet many of these negative emissions technologies remain either untested or unproven, at least according to a 2018 article from Yale School of the Environment.
How might the next four to eight years look?
Although climate change is a relatively gradual process, it’s accelerating, and a lot can happen in a few years. The 2020 hurricane season broke records. As climate change gets worse year after year, either subtly or dramatically, the US may very well get hit by a monster storm like no other in recorded history. Or several of them.
Record-breaking heatwaves may destroy crops, causing food shortages. Unprecedented wildfires may set entire regions ablaze.
What’s next for supporters of Trump and his conspiracy-minded minions?
If Florida (or anywhere along the US coastline) gets pummeled by a monster category 6 hurricane, making Miami or West Palm Beach look like Hiroshima in 1945, Trump-supporters will proudly say Biden’s efforts against climate change were a waste of time, either because it has nothing to do with human activities or because Trump is the only one who can actually save the world.
If California gets completely torched, his loyal branch of Evangelical Apostles will say it was God, or Karma, or something, punishing them for being a left-leaning state and turning a cold shoulder on Mr. Trump, or simply because too many places legalized gay marriage and the Lord is furious.
There will also be talk of the Biden administration controlling the weather, intentionally creating monster hurricanes and directing them to Florida’s coasts to punish the state for voting against him in the 2020 elections.
Their beliefs will be confirmed if Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is damaged in any way by weather events at any period during Biden’s presidency.
No matter what happens, the former president’s legion of concubines will find a way to restructure reality to fit their imperturbable belief system.
What happens next?
Regardless of what people believe, the fact of the matter is humanity’s relentless greed created the snowball and pushed it over the hill. For all we know, it may very well be rolling down the slope on its own by now, gaining mass with freakish speed, and no individual, political party, or single nation, will be able to stop it on their own.
It will take a herculean effort like nothing humanity has ever imagined, putting all nations, races, political parties, belief systems, and enterprises to acknowledge this undeniable reality and get on the same page, with the same mission.
Let’s see if Mr. Biden, Mrs. Harris, and the rest of the global team can pull something out of their sleeves before the ever-expanding snowball passes the point of no return. We can only hope it hasn’t already done so.
