Student Voices - #1

For the fall 2012 semester, I taught 3 environmentally-themed courses.  Towards the end of the semester, students in these courses had assignments on topics that were relevant to this blog.  I have selected some of the best works and messages to share as a series of posts for the readers until I sort through the outcomes of COP18 and write up a summary.  Enjoy.  dwh

Will We See Sandy Again?

Caitlin Campbell

 December 2012

On a sandy beach, the high tide line is a ribbon of shells and seaweed. It marks reliable swells of the ocean as it inhales and exhales with the tides. On the front door of a home, it is a ruler of salt and grime. It marks the feet of water that inundated a home or the inches that spared it from ruin. One glance at that line, and you know which it was.

After the devastation of Superstorm Sandy, east coasters are pulling together with the kind of grit we’re known for. Drive into Atlantic City and the billboards will tell you, “Nice try Sandy, but we’re Jersey Strong.”  

But Sandy didn’t just cross the line. She redrew it.    

The assertion that our shifting climate will bring erratic, extreme weather isn’t new. But Superstorm Sandy has forced us to consider the impacts of climate change on weather with new urgency. I should add that according to NOAA’s “State of the Climate Report,” released Thursday, this year will end as the warmest on record for the United States.[i]

 U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed this growing concern at this year’s United Nation’s climate change conference. Rising sea-levels and increasingly frequent super storms, he said, are signs of a climate crisis.[ii] To his audience of over 200 nations he said, “Abnormal is the new normal.”

Of course we cannot say with absolutely certainty that severity of Sandy can be attributed to climate change. Extreme weather events themselves are single data points; they can’t show us what comes next. But when we factor in other extreme events, like droughts and flooding, we see that Sandy is on trend.  

As Elizabeth Kolbert put it in her recent piece for the New Yorker, “As with any particular “weather-related loss event,” it’s impossible to attribute Sandy to climate change. However, it is possible to say that the storm fits the general pattern in North America, and indeed around the world, toward more extreme weather, a pattern that, increasingly, can be attributed to climate change.”[iii]

We can say that the symptoms of climate change certainly work to make extreme weather more destructive. Consider that hurricanes are fueled by warm water. Our oceans are over a degree Celsius warmer than they were a century ago[iv]. Sea level has risen a foot, on average, in the same time. In places on the east coast where land is simultaneously sinking, sea level is 18 inches higher than sixty years ago.[v]

In a post for the American Geophysical Union, Meteorologist Dan Satterfield wrote, “Ask someone in New Jersey, who had a foot of water in their house, if they wish it were 18 inches lower.”[vi]

This assertion that our changing climate is brewing a world of more frequent, more destructive storms is not easy to stomach. And it will resurrect our hackneyed debate over climate change. It’s hard. It’s hard to look at a planet so immense and imagine that we are turning up its thermostat. It’s hard to face the science that tells us what kind of planet we are going to leave our kids. So is rebuilding the infrastructure, lives, and confidence of an entire coast.

Rather than waste ink resurrecting the points of that debate, let it come down to this. Imagine your loved one is sick. You take her one to a doctor, who diagnoses her with a serious illness. You go for another opinion. Then another, until 97 of those doctors agree, she needs help. Would you side with the other three because their diagnoses is the one you want to hear? When would you begin treatment?

According to a study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97% of climate scientists agree that we are experiencing human accelerated climate change.[vii]

We can never know if the severity of Sandy destruction was truly a symptom of climate change. But will we wait for more extreme storms, floods, and droughts before we can agree that we have a serious problem?

Sandy hurt. But we know we cannot redraw the high tide line that flooded the homes and crushed the spirits of millions. We can only rebuild. But deciding when we have wasted enough time in addressing climate change, that is a line that we can draw.

---

[i] Chris Dolce. “Record Warmest Year a "Virtual Certainty.” The Weather Channel. <http://www.weather.com/news/warmest-year-on-record-noaa-november-20121206 >

[ii] Barbara Lewis & Alister Doyle. “Extreme Weather is New Normal, U.N.’s Ban Tells Climate Change Talks.” Insurance Journal. <http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2012/12/05/272768.htm>

[iii] Elizabeth Kolbert. “Watching Sandy, Ignoring Climate Change.” The New Yorker. <http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/10/watching-hurricane-sandy-ignoring-climate-change.html#ixzz2DdLIkGS2>

[iv] Dan Satterfield. “What Those Who Understand Atmospheric Physics Are Talking About After Sandy.” American Geophysical Union. <http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2012/11/01/what-those-who-understand-atmospheric-physics-are-talking-about-after-sandy/>

[v] ibid

[vi] ibid

[vii] William R. L. Anderegg, James W. Prall, Jacob Harold, and Stephen H. Schneider. “Expert credibility in climate change.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. <http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html>

A Question to the Campus Community: Why Should We Care?

I write now both as a member of the college delegation that just returned from the U.N. climate conference (COP18) in Qatar and as co-chair of this year’s In Focus theme on sustainability.  The global phenomenon of climate change is likely the biggest challenge to a sustainable future.

The U.N. negotiations in Doha ran over into Saturday, and thus far, no significant outcomes or agreements have been reported.  Instead, what you get from groups like RTCC (Responding to Climate Change) are tweets (and linked news stories) such as:

- Protests: Doubts grow over Qatari leadership at UN climate talks
- Blackmail: Venezuela accuses rich states of holding developing world to ransom
- NGO anger: Climate talks “sleepwalking towards disaster”
- Brazil: Absence of acceptable Kyoto deal threatens UN climate process.

Many of you might ask, "Why should we care?"  For one answer, I suggest that you read my most recent blog post entitled "The Cost of Inaction" at http://moraviancollegeatunfccc.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-cost-of-inaction.html and read the news report below about the “Loss and Damage” negotiations.

The US response to proposed new financial compensation for nations worst hit by climate change threatens to define the UN summit’s finale.[1]

As negotiations ran into the early hours of the morning [Saturday] the US clashed with the Alliance of Island Small Island States (AOSIS) on the issue of Loss and Damage. This is the proposed mechanism to compensate countries worst affected by climate change.

The dispute spilled into a separate meeting room last night where protesters gathered to back AOSIS.

A small island state negotiator was seen leaving in tears. The BBC’s Roger Harrabin reports that before the text was agreed Todd Stern, the US chief negotiator, was heard saying: “I will block this. I will shut this down.”

The EU is understood to be trying to persuade AOSIS to weaken its stance in Doha and carry the debate into later round of talks. Whether the US accepts any mention of a future mechanism remains to be seen.

As we break for the holidays, many of you may go to see the new movie release Les Misérables.  The book on which the film is based, first published in 1862, has been called "one of the half-dozen greatest novels of the world".  In Upton Sinclair’s 1915 book The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest, he references Hugo’s remarks in the Preface of Les Misérables”:

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.

Where are the books, the authors like Hugo and Sinclair, calling attention to the social injustices resulting from climate change?  Although more of a journalist report than an enduring literary piece, Christian Parenti’s Tropic of Chaos:  Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence describes how climate change will exacerbate violence in areas already prone to conflict.[2]  Poverty and lack of access to water are common themes in the book.  Countless research studies and NGO reports have been published that show how the poor are already experiencing the impacts of climate change, despite contributing little to the causes.  Areas that are prone to drought are predicted to become even drier.  Both the Pentagon and the State Department have included climate change and its impact on national security in their strategic plans (making Todd Stern’s comments above even more puzzling).  One of my current students who plans to enlist in the military after graduation this spring told me how, while in basic training, they were told about the expectations for growing conflict due to both climate change and water scarcity.  His seminar on water scarcity this semester was riveting.  (All of this reminds me of the French Revolution and other such historical events when there were large disparities between the “haves” and the “have nots”.)

We don't have campus-wide discussions about climate change.  I don’t know how many from the campus community follow our blog.  I hope that the responses from the students in my three environmentally-themed courses this semester (who were strongly encouraged to read our reports from Qatar) aren’t indicative of the rest of campus.  Marla, the student who was part of the Moravian delegation this year, commented several times about the different level of engagement between the U.S. youth compared to those from other countries.  This is a sentiment we have heard each year when students join us at the U.N. meetings.  Today, Nikki DeLuca, a student from York College in PA who is still in Qatar representing the American Chemical Society, writes about an “action” by U.S. Youth at COP18:

I have decided that this disappointing action shows a lot about the U.S. We seem to be unmotivated and uninvolved internationally, and do not possess the spirit that the other countries here obviously have.  I was just at a talk by the Costa Rican delegates, who have announced (and whole heartedly believe) that their country will be "carbon-neutral" in 9 years' time. Where is that ambition in the U.S.? Are we capable of being that ambitious and optimistic about anything? I am personally sick of the negativity, doubt, and lack of commitment I have been seeing.[3]

This week, two op-eds related to COP18 appeared in the Huffington Post that included quotes from Marla and mentioned Moravian College (see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-foy/un-climate-change-youth-i_b_2228472.html and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-peterman/un-climate-conference-fee_b_2236560.html ).  International coverage about the activities of a student from Moravian!  I was hoping that this would generate some buzz on campus about our involvement in the U.N. conferences and about climate change.  Instead, I received an email yesterday: “Must See T.V.:  Moravian College Alumnus Noah Rachels '00 in Winner’s Circle on Jeopardy!” 

There is hope, however.  I was encouraged to see the movement on some college campuses, including Swarthmore (also in Pennsylvania) that was described in a New York Times piece this week.[4]  A number of faculty members sent me the link to this article.  I was also contacted this week by an alumna, Rebecca V. Zoellner ’78, to see if Moravian is committed to this movement:

I’ve been receiving information about 350.org’s “Do the Math” tours and their push to get colleges and universities to divest themselves of holdings in fossil fuel companies. I found your name by searching for information about Moravian and sustainability initiatives. I’m proud to see that Moravian has such a commitment to this issue. What I’m wondering is whether there is significant investment in fossil fuel industries in the Moravian endowment and, if so, whether there is any effort on campus to change that. I don’t know if you have all that information, but perhaps you can point me in the right direction.

I would love to hold a campus dialog next semester to see how we should respond to Ms. Zoellner’s inquiry.  It seems quite appropriate to discuss a challenge like this during the “Year of Sustainability”.

---

[1] From: http://www.rtcc.org/doha-climate-change-talks-close-in-on-low-ambition-deal/

[2] The Perseus Books Group, 2011. You can read an excerpt from this book at http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/6/29/book_excerpt_tropic_of_chaos_climate_change_and_the_new_geography_of_violence

[3] Nikki DeLuca’s blog post from 12/7/12: http://www.studentsonclimatechange.com/4/post/2012/12/does-this-add-up-no.html .

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/business/energy-environment/to-fight-climate-change-college-students-take-aim-at-the-endowment-portfolio.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1354977030-s26nIRjWuAzTAZSpg9gLWA