GOP Warms as the Earth Burns

Republicans are finally admitting that climate change is real and man made, but their proposed solution is too little, too late.

Maybe it is the fact that this July is the hottest month on record with 17 days straight of the highest temperatures not only in recorded history, but in over 100,000 years based on fossils, ice cores, tree rings, and ocean sediment. 

Or maybe it is that extreme flooding has caused major national insurers to stop doing business in Florida as the risk and cost is simply too high.

Or maybe it is the uncontrollable wildfires in Canada sending voluminous amounts of smoke to the US causing major cities such as New York and Chicago to have periods of time where their air quality was the worst on Earth.

Or maybe it is simply that over 70% of Americans acknowledge that climate change is happening, even though only half understand that humans are the main factor.

Whatever the tipping point might be, Republican politicians are finally admitting publicly that climate change is a problem. But it is too late for the too little solution they are suggesting.

Plant one trillion trees. That was the statement by Speaker Kevin McCarthy when asked about what could be done to combat climate change. This was also a solution that Trump had shown support for during his time in office.

An almost ironic twist is that the very basis for the plan is formed from acknowledging man made emissions are a problem. The Trillion Trees Act summary states:

“Studies show that restoring 1 trillion new trees globally would sequester 205 gigatons of carbon, an amount equivalent to two-thirds of all manmade emissions remaining in the atmosphere today.”

This is far from a quick or even realistic solution. You would need an amount of land equivalent to the continental United States to have enough room for one trillion trees. It would need to be land that doesn’t already have trees and has a climate that can support trees.

And it would take 20-30 years for all of these new trees to grow to maturity, time the planet doesn’t have.

As Canada is showing now and California has been showing for years, the current climate crisis is leading to more wildfires, a risk that one trillion additional trees would exacerbate. If the fires were common enough, those additional trees could worsen the climate crisis instead of improving it.

A final hurdle is that planting these new trees won’t make a difference if deforestation continues in many nations the way it has been for decades. Cutting down forest to make room for ranching, farms, or even housing is more profitable to developing nations than preserving their forests.

This is why the world has been attempting a solution to deforestation by offering to pay nations to reduce their greenhouse emissions and regrow their forests. 

There are now multiple versions of this type of program. The longest of which has been in the works for decades and the results have been slow. The way it works is that if a nation shows through independent analysis that its emissions have been significantly reduced for 5 years while regrowing forests, then the nation is granted money from the World Bank.

There have been positive changes such as Costa Rica which earned $16.4 million for increasing their amount of land covered by forests by 50%. 

With a different program, Norway has given Gabon $17 million of a promised $150 million for Gabon’s work in reducing their emissions and regrowing forests. 

The US government, along with twenty two companies including, Amazon, Airbnb, Bayer, and Delta, are working with the United Kingdom and Norway in a third initiative called LEAF, Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance, which has built a fund of $1 billion with more money expected in the coming years.

Despite these various programs, the world is still losing forests faster than it is saving them. Which is why we need to be realistic and see this as only one piece of a significantly larger effort to slow, and eventually reverse, global warming.

And that is the problem with the Republican party finally accepting both that climate change is real, and that it is from man made emissions. Not only is the GOP continuing to refuse to embrace reducing fossil fuel usage, they are actively trying to increase it. They are working to expand oil and gas projects despite the fact that the US is currently at a record high for oil production.

There is no solution that will solve climate change without a reduction in fossil fuel usage around the globe. Carbon capture has turned out to be a pipe dream that far over promised what it could deliver, reducing emissions from fossil fuel power plants by only ~10%, not anywhere near enough to keep fossil fuel as a viable power source. 

While several nations have announced plans to reduce their nations to net zero emissions, and many others have made a pledge, the progress is slow and the actions haven’t always matched up with the words.

Current projections have world wide CO2 emissions increasing by 10% by 2030, while scientists are predicting that the world needs a reduction of 45% by that same date.

Even with that level of reduction, the world would still increase another 1.5 degrees Celsius. A value that researchers accept as the best case scenario the world can now achieve after ignoring the problem for too long.

America accounts for 14% of the world’s CO2 emissions, the second largest behind China, and over twice as much as the third highest nation.

Every politician’s focus should be on saving our planet, not on helping increase the profits of rich corporations at the expense of humanity.

While the world continues to research and develop ideas to save the Earth from the man made crisis, there is only one solution that can meaningfully slow the devastation over the next 20 years: reducing the use of fossil fuels.