The 2018 Nobel laureate for economics William Nordhaus (2013: 19) illustrates how deceptive are the consequences of fossil-fuelled social practices that cause climate change. If he drives 100 miles in his car, āI consume 5 gallons of gasoline. This will produce about 100 pounds of CO2, which will come out of the tailpipe and go into the atmosphere. I cannot see or hear it or smell it, and I generally do not even think about it. If I am like most people, I will probably assume that my trip will have no effect on the worldās climate, and so I will ignore the consequencesā.1 If the trip by Nordhaus were unique, the consequences would be negligible. However, it is typical of much more numerous sets of social practices. An easy way to remember the consequences of fossil-fuelled social practices is as follows. If you drive the average 3500-pound midsize car a distance in miles equal to your weight in pounds, you are emitting your weight of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on that one trip: a 200-pound person driving 200 miles emits 200 pounds of carbon dioxide. Hence, think about the weight of CO2 emitted by millions of people commuting to and from work in cars, usually one person per car, in urban sprawled metropolitan areas. This has to be understood in its global context. The average car will be driven about 10,000 miles yearly, so it will emit about 10,000 pounds of CO2 annually. There are about one billion cars in the world. Therefore, by simple arithmetic the global fleet of cars is emitting about 10 trillion pounds of CO2 every year.
In addition, imagine the weight of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere by the combustion of jet fuel lifting and powering a heavy plane, multiplied by the distance travelled per plane every year and the number of planes. Moreover, there are ships of all sorts and fossil-fuelled industries, including those that combust fossil fuels to extract, transport, and refine fossil fuels. Cement is the essential constituent used worldwide in concrete buildings, roads, bridges, dams, pipes, etc. Its manufacture by combusting fossil fuels emits a weight of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere almost equal to the weight of cement in these heavy structures. All this carbon pollution of the atmosphere continues year after year. The scale of carbon being taken from safe storage in the ground and emitted into the atmosphere is enormous. Carbon dioxide, which the US Supreme Court in 2007 ruled a pollutant in terms of the Clean Air Act, remains in the atmosphere for on average one hundred years and piles up, then descends to acidify the oceans.2 Our planet and its atmosphere used as a carbon waste dump are huge so it takes time to pollute them, but that implies it will take much time for them to be restored to their beneficial state, if that proves possible.
Fossil fuels have been and remain the energy source that has powered modern society since industrialization. Even ecological saints with the best intentions can not avoid using fossil fuels, either directly by gassing up their vehicles or indirectly by flying in a plane, using air conditioners and social media. Every individual, every company, and every country is a carbon polluter and has contributed to global warming. But this fact should neither legitimate carbon pollution in terms of a we-are-all-sinners ideology nor lead to fatalism. The significant variables are the amount of emissions and whether action is being taken to decrease them or increase them. This varies enormously. There are colossal pollutersāhuge even relative to their industry (Freudenburg 2006)āand groups that promote fossil fuels and therefore emissions. Nevertheless, there are also small polluters, and groups that try to reduce emissions. A small number of gigantic corporate carbon polluters have major consequences for global warming and climate change, but so does a massive number of much smaller individual polluters, and the latterās pollution loading varies greatly according to their social class and specific practices. Hence, the fossil-fuelled practices of both huge oligopolistic companies and those of ordinary people and institutions need to be examined.
Many readers might be tempted to assume that Nordhaus is mistaken because five American gallons of gasoline only weigh about 31 pounds. Where do the remaining 69 pounds of CO2 come from? But Nordhaus is right. His example demonstrates how insidious fossil-fuelled social practices are, and how important it is for the population, decision-makers, and social scientists to ground their understanding of global warming on natural scienceās comprehension of biophysical dynamics. This is one of the reasons why Chapter 2 gives a brief outline of the natural science understanding of fossil-fuelled climate change,3 including an explanation of the Nordhaus example and the cement illustration. Pielke (2010: 46ā50) claims there is an āiron law of climate changeā that describes the populationās refusal to support a price on carbon pollution anywhere near what is needed to prevent fossil-fuel combustion causing greenhouse-gas emissions and global warming. This book argues that the refusal is at least in part contingent on lack of a practical understanding of how ordinary fossil-fuelled practices are contributing to the problem. Scientists communicate in the language of gigatonnes, but non-scientists think in pounds or kilograms. Hence, an everyday grasp of the fossil-fuelled climate crisis is being lost by lack of translation of the abstract theoretical knowledge of science into commonplace units. Safran Foer (2019a: 13; 2019b: R14) states that āmost of us would find it difficult to explain how our individual and collective behavior is boosting hurricane winds by almost thirty miles per hour or contributing to a polar vortex that [sometimes] makes Chicago colder than Antarcticaā. This book strives to promote as much as possible a practical comprehension of the fossil-fuelled climate crisis.
Is It a Crisis?
The term āglobal warmingā was suitable when Wallace Broecker of Columbia University introduced it in 1975, and āclimate changeā was fitting when the National Academy of Sciences announced it in 1979. But subsequent massive emissions have made the carbon accumulation in the atmosphere and the greenhouse effect much worse (IPCC 2018; US Global Change Research Programme 2018; UNEP 2018). Because of those emissions, the global surface temperature has increased 1 degree Celsius since the pre-industrial period and already hurricanes, deluges, droughts, wildfires, etc., are more intense. Most nations agreed in the Paris Accord of 2015 to limit the increase to 2 degrees. The 2018 emissions gap report documented, however, that few countries are on track to achieving the goal, that most of the highest emitting countries are not meeting their near-term targets much less the more ambitious ones to start later, and that the present global trajectory is leading to an increase of 3 degrees (UNEP 2018). This would result in foreseeable dire consequences and likely some unforeseeable ones. There is strong backlash against the Paris Accord: the USA withdrew; a carbon tax in France resulted in riots in 2018; the Canadian government is promoting the extraction of high-emissions bitumen by purchasing a pipeline, and conservative parties oppose a price on carbon pollution; Australia is combusting and exporting coal; etc. In 2011, Victor (2011) published a book entitled Global Warming Gridlock. Nine years later in 2020, the gridlock persists. The Global Carbon Project (2018) documented that emissions, far from decreasing, have increased 2% in 2018 to a new record high.
Government policies to control greenhouse-gas emissions are often not implemented, or are overturned by the next government in the name of stimulating econo...
