Lethal Trajectories - Michael Conley [132]
“Glad to, Clayton,” Peter responded, caught up in the urgency of his bid for change. “In a broad sense, we’re going to see the rate of carbon dioxide emissions slow as the global economy flounders. Now, ordinarily, this small improvement plus the Saudi crisis would take climate-change off everyone’s radar screen. But not this time, I’m afraid.”
“How bad is it?” Clayton asked.
“This is still not confirmed, Mr. President, but we believe the climate-change satellite data will confirm three awful things that will raise the visibility—literally—of climate-change.”
“This doesn’t sound good,” Clayton responded.
“It isn’t, Mr. President. First, it now looks like the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica is in the throes of major disintegration. Considering that it’s roughly the size of New Hampshire and Vermont, I don’t need to tell you what this could mean to rising sea levels and coastal flooding. Of even more immediate concern, the Greenland glacial flows are accelerating at a phenomenal speed and will contribute almost immediately to rising sea levels.
“Second, the polar vortex is being confirmed as a semipermanent condition attributable largely to the warming of the Arctic areas. Essentially, the blizzards and brutally cold temperatures we’ve experienced across North America and Europe for the past six or seven years are not aberrations, but rather a part of our new climate reality. Ironically, the climate-change disbelievers have typically cited severe winter cold waves as ‘evidence’ that global warming is a hoax, when in reality they were confirmation of it. Our projections suggest that this coming winter could be the worst ever recorded in America, and that will put an added burden on our precarious heating-fuel situation.
“This leads to my last point. Temperatures in the far north are rising dramatically, which exacerbates permafrost melts and increases the rate of release of the methane gas trapped in it. The methane gas thus released is more than twenty times as efficient at heat retention as carbon dioxide and will dwarf any reductions achieved in carbon dioxide emissions due to the economic downturn and reduction of fossil fuel usage. The impacts will exacerbate crop production problems and further disrupt hydrologic patterns, causing floods and droughts.”
“This is awful,” replied the dejected president. “To sum up what you just said, we are in for the worst winter ever—until next year when it may be even worse; coastal areas will soon experience rising waters due to glacial ice melts; runaway methane releases will send greenhouse gas emission levels to catastrophic highs, and the frequency and severity of famines and droughts will increase. Does that about sum it up?”
“I’m afraid it does, Mr. President,” Peter responded glumly.
“What then do you propose in terms of addressing climate-change?” Clayton asked.
“We’re going to propose aggressive mitigation and adaptation strategies, Mr. President, and the United States will have to take the lead in concert with China. The long- and short-term emission metrics will have to be determined quickly, and they can’t be back-loaded in such a way that little gets done in the early years. Strategically, we’ll recommend a two-pronged approach of curtailing energy use and using clean energy wisely, as well as building new energy models.
“We’ll go after the low-hanging fruit first, and that includes conservation, austerity, and demand-reduction efforts—both voluntary and mandatory. Concurrently, we will recommend a complete reengineering of our current energy models. This will entail a long-term plan to ramp up renewable energy power systems, installing a nationwide electrical smart grid infrastructure, and an all-out effort to retrofit our transportation models and systems. We envision an intense and sustained effort comparable to the Manhattan Project to accomplish these things. We’ll propose significant incentives for playing the game right and disincentives for bucking the system. Last, and perhaps our greatest challenge,