America bears special responsibility in addressing climate crisis

Dear editor, “Physics does not care about our politics, and ultimately the world will continue to warm until we get global emissions of CO2 to (net) zero.” — Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather Before his appointment as U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright was the CEO of Liberty Energy, North America’s second largest fracking company. Wright recently asserted: “I am a climate realist. The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is, a global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world.”

However, stopping Earth’s warming is not consistent with the Trump Administration's agenda of “Drill, baby, drill!” and “American energy dominance.” While it’s true that some forms of fossil fuel generation are cleaner than others, they are all increasing the concentration of heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Limiting global mean temperature increase at any level requires global CO2 emissions to become net zero at some point in the future.”

This means reducing carbon dioxide emissions enough that they are balanced by CO2 removal, such as being absorbed by forests and dissolved in the oceans. Otherwise the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will continue to grow.

Disturbingly, the Earth has already warmed to the point that, instead of absorbing and storing carbon dioxide, the planet’s carbon sinks are becoming sources of CO2 emissions. Warmer oceans are less able to take up carbon dioxide. Moreover, permafrost is thawing, and forests are burning.

These climate feedbacks indicate that we are losing our allies in nature that are essential to the climate fight. In the words of Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end.” Urgently reducing greenhouse gas emissions, protecting forests and wetlands because of their ability to store carbon, and funding adaptation are among humanity’s greatest moral obligations. Even small changes in the trajectory of Earth’s warming could mean better lives for decades for millions of people.

Notably, the United States is the world’s greatest cumulative emitter, with historical emissions that are 71% more than second-place China. This is important because about half of the CO2 humans emit stays in the atmosphere for centuries or more.

And as the world’s most significant emitter and most powerful nation, America bears a special responsibility to embrace a leadership role in addressing the climate crisis.

Terry Hansen

Milwaukee