As a follow-up to his best-seller The Weather Makers, Tim Flannery, a distinguished writer-scientist and professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, has written a long essay entitled “now or Never” and subtitled “Why We must Act Now to End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future”

         (A brief biography of Flannery is at http://TheWeathermakers.org/about)

         I am going to quote him extensively.

        He pulls no punches when he begins by writing, “Our despoliation of Earth’s life-support systems seems to mark us as the destroyer of our own civilizations.”  He goes on to say “there is no real debate about how serious our predicament is:  all plausible projections indicate that over the next forty to ninety years humanity will exceed – in all probability by about 100 percent – the capacity of the Earth to supply our needs, thereby greatly exacerbating the risk of widespread starvation, or of being over-whelmed by our own pollution.”

        At present, the Earth maintains a temperature within bounds that are conducive to life.  It recycles  nutrients and regulates the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans in the same way. 

        Living things have been absorbing  carbon and heavy metals from the atmosphere and oceans while at the same time producing oxygen, but the global warming trend you’ve heard about  is now real.  Our pollution is causing it.

        Steps toward sustainability must be taken to meet the challenge. 

        A hundred thousand years ago there were only 10,000 of us, but that number grew to 2.5 billion just a century ago.  A total of 6.6 billion people are now living on Earth, and projections are that the total will reach 9 billion 40 years from now.  According to Flannery, we already exceed the Earth’s biocapacity by 25%.

        For the first time, we must change how the Earth functions.  Geologists already have a label for the new age.  It is to be called the Anthropocene as it will be characterized by persuasive human influences on Earth’s processes.    

        The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an extremely conservative group, stated in 2007 that “it was likely” that the warming trend was caused by humans.  This dismissed the thought that sunspots or other cause proposed by skeptics played a part.

        Additional research by May of 2008, however, resulted in results that were published in “Nature”, a leading scientific journal, that there were a clear link between the huge changes that were occurring and human activity.  Cited were “changes in polar bear behavior, stream flow, the timing of grape harvests, the flowering of plants, and bird migration”.  It was obvious that we are profoundly influencing the Earth.

        Flannery’s description of how life on Earth is governed by the plant’s crust, air, and water should be read in order to understand how they interact and how they influence our lives.  None of them are passive, but the oceans – that cover 71% of the Earth - are “the most important element for withdrawing carbon from the atmosphere”. 

        The increased amounts of carbon that are occurring have already caused scientist to warn that in just a few decades, the North Pacific waters will be unable to have oysters, mussels, crabs, and lobsters; creatures that have grown there in great profusion for many years.

         Our problem “stems from digging up fossilized, once living matter, in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas – and burning it.”  The amount of CO2 in the air has risen by 30 percent in the last 200 years.  In just one year – 2008 – it increased by 2.2%, and the text states “Not for 55 million years has such an imbalance occurred.”

        Back in 2006, James Lovelock wrote a book entitled “The Revenge of Gaia” in which he predicted that “before the 21^st century ends, our civilization will have collapsed, as we lack the required foresight, wisdom, and political courage”. 

        He also predicted that only a few survivors – perhaps 1 in 10 - will still be living in habitable areas such as the Antarctic Peninsula and Greenland.

        Flannery states that the events that are likely to destroy us “will include flooding of coastal cities and some of the best agricultural land, changes in rainfall, extreme weather, and the disappearance of the glaciers that act as dams and whose melt-waters provide our most productive agricultural regions with water in the growing season.”

        Thus “starvation, warfare, and chaos will be the greatest scourge”. 

        Predicted Increases in Temperature

        The IPCC in 2001 predicted the average temperature increases over the 21^st century as being higher by as little as 2.5 degrees or as much as 10.4 degrees.   Flannery states that the latter increase would be catastrophic, as we would then have an ice-free world. 

        There was a tendency to regard the predictions as unbelievable.

        By 2007, more research revealed that the IPCC’s  predictions in 2001 were correct yet this information did not receive the world-wide attention that it deserved.

        It was during the summer of 2007, however, that the worst loss of Arctic ice occurred and some scientists are worried that the region is already in the grip of an irreversible transition.  At present the warming is 4 times the global average. 

        Many details of the loss of ice are included in the text, and its total loss has been predicted to occur  as soon as 2013.  When that happens, the sun’s rays will no longer be reflected away from earth and temperatures will rise.

        We’re now between a tipping point and a point of no return

        Flannery states that we have only a few years before we’ll reach the point of no return so there’s not a minute to waste.  “This is our greatest challenge, and clearly the path forward involves a drastic change in energy use.  It also means that we must make full use of the tools we have at our disposal – and invent new tools – to draw the pollution out of the air.”

        Dr. James Hansen, the world’s leading climate scientist, and his colleagues have summarized the challenge as follows:  “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, palaeoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350pp.”  Without corrective action, CO2 remains in the atmosphere for a century.

        The task is far greater than projected for if there were a cessation in all coal burning, the atmosphere would still contain 350ppm. 

        We are also faced with the fact that power generation capacity in China will almost double in the six years leading up to 2010 and India’s five-year plan which finishes in 2012 calls for the installation of 90,000 megawatts.  The burning of coal will be used in both countries.    

        Trying to convince those countries against burning coal would be a losing proposition.  Retrofitting would be an alternative according to Flannery, but he has written that the cost would be prohibitive, and therefore “there is an urgent need for someone to invest in the development of carbon capture technology”.

        He commented that investments by coal companies in clean technologies have been insufficient to fund the completion of even a single large demonstration plant.  A Swedish company opened a plant that deploys full carbon capture and storage technology, but it is so small that it can’t be included in the European carbon trading scheme.  Flannery feels that the coal industry has been dragging its feet on this issue, but acknowledges that there are many reasons for it.

        He described in detail Obama’s executive order creating the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, as “it commits $40.75 billion to clean energy initiatives, and will stimulate enormous activity in weatherizing housing, energy efficiency, the national electricity grid, public transportation, and cleaner motor vehicles.”

        The United States is also moving toward mandating a price on carbon pollution by means of a carbon trading scheme.  Europe established its scheme in 2005 and Australia’s will begin in 2011.

 Other items cited by Flannery:

         ·         Denmark has begun developing electric cars and provides plugs for recharging every 6^th parking place with an alternative of exchanging a battery at cites located throughout Denmark.  They’ve done this because of a commitment to wind energy that wasn’t needed at night and is now used to reenergize batteries.

• Through the years, trees have drawn down 8% of the carbon in the atmosphere so forests should be maintained. Rain forests in particular help stabilize life here on Earth, and he suggests that a system be established whereby computer access be made available to natives living in such areas linking those of us who live elsewhere and arranging payments via Ebay to the natives for caring for the forests. Read the book for further details.
• There is a plan called pyrolysis whereby charcoal is used in farming to help solve the problem of excess carbon.
• Two chapters have been devoted to changes in the care of animals and farming techniques that would be of benefit in our changing world.

• Even the use of planes to administer a dose of sulfur to cause global dimming has been considered. We’d then be living in a duller world, but who wouldn’t exchange it for the ability to continue to live.

        As his essay nears its end, Flannery suggests that “sustainability is essentially about extending the Eighth Commandment to forbid stealing from future generations”.

        He ends by writing, “This twenty-first century of ours will be faced with appalling social injustices, conflict, and pestilence. But these will not be its defining challenge. Our task is a far more difficult one; to bring sustainability to a species that has not known such a condition since it manufactured its first tool.”

        “If we fail, all of our species’ great triumphs, all of our efforts, will have been for naught.”