In the first `100 days of 2024 we will explore 100 climate solutions that may “empower you to evaluate, engage, and act” to address on-going climate change as an individual on your terms.
Every action matters. The climate crisis is a call of “all-hands-on-deck” and each of us can make a difference if we decide to. Having self-awareness of our personal gifts and talents, and what lies at the heart of our motivations, is essential to sustain individual actions needed to have an impact. The problem is complex and diverse solutions are required. It is likely you can, if you seek it, discover and take actions that motivate and sustain you.
“All this beautiful diversity of perspective, experience, and passion is needed to address this grand societal and environmental challenge”
Heidi Roop
There are many individuals actions that we will explore in the first 100 days of 2024, and many of them, if they are interesting to you, may motivate you to move beyond acting as an individual and into a broader community. For you, it may be taking on the challenge of effective climate communication and battling disinformation in your local government councils and organizations, or your school, church or other group. In doing so, you may help others move forward in their journey to address climate change on their terms – with a profound, multiplicative effect.
Personal leadership starts with “identifying your strengths, passions, and motivations”, then seeking the knowledge and skills to act, committing to it, and (perhaps) broadening your scope to a larger community in which your actions will have the greatest effect. In this way, you may find the personal satisfaction that will sustain you in your journey.
In the first `100 days of 2024 we will explore 100 climate solutions that may “empower you to evaluate, engage, and act” to address on-going climate change as an individual on your terms.
A large part of my anxiety about the future of climate change is the magnitude of the problem and helplessness at my ability to make a difference – to have an impact the outcome of what I consider to be an existential threat to humans on this planet. In outlining Climate Action 1, Heidi describes you and me, as an individuals, as “statistically blameless”. You have choices: acting on feelings of hopelessness and doing nothing, or becoming an activist and join with groups like Extinction Rebellion, which advocates and organizes “non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency”, among others.
“Determination and passion, paired with civic engagement and political action, can be a force to turn the tide on climate change”
Heidi Roop
I’m with Heidi – every action matters. Understanding the urgency of the crisis, committing to and learning about what you can do, and taking action as best you can can personally “turn despair into determination”. This is particularly true for those in the US which has historically contributed the most to the emission of greenhouse gases that are the cause of the crisis. You can find details in Project Drawdown, which is a science-based approach with a roadmap that is intensely focused on advancing effective, science-based climate solutions and strategies, fostering bold, new climate leadership, and promoting new narratives and new voices. With data, they highlight that individual and households in the US (and other significant emitting countries) CAN have a profound effect on reducing the emissions needed to head off the most dire predictions of climate science if we stick to business as usual.
In the first `100 days of 2024 we will explore 100 climate solutions that may “empower you to evaluate, engage, and act” to address on-going climate change as an individual on your terms.
In Climate Action Handbook, Heidi Roop starts off with an overview section briefly covering the why of climate action, including where greenhouse gases come from, the scale of the problem, the source of inequities in a world with a changing climate and a snapshot of the climate impacts in various regions of the US. You can find a great deal of information compiled by Jon Hester in The Frog Blog, for instance see Before Our Eyes: Evidence of the changing Earth we can see.
It is critical to understand the scale of the problem. Based on the most recent IPCC report, there are five key statements about global climate change, as summarized by Kimberly Nicholas:
It’s warming
It’s us
We’re sure
It’s bad
We can fix it
I assume if you are reading this, you accept some or all of this. Hopefully, this includes #5. To address this with urgency requires action through both mitigation and adaptation. If you search adaptation and mitigation strategies for climate change you will find numerous Venn diagrams of the overlap of these two separate, but interconnected strategies – climate mitigation to keep the problem from getting worse and adaptation to the changes already underway.
A critical challenge, as Heidi points out, is that because of “historical inequities, systemic racism, colonialism and divestment… historically marginalized communities… are often already experiencing the negative impacts of climate change”. Any and all strategies implemented on the a global scale must proceed through addressing the inequities and if executed well hold the hopeful promise of an “exiting range of opportunities to design and build healthier, stronger, and more equitable communities”.
We need everyone doing what they are capable of with urgency. Heidi offers 100 actions that can be explored by any thoughtful individual who wants to play a part, organized into ten categories:
Starting and Sustaining Your Climate Action Journey
Energy Production and Transportation
Travel and Work
Food and Farming
Shopping and Consumer Choices
Actions Around the Home
Nature-Based and Natural Solutions
Health and Well-Being
Civic and Community Engagement
Education and Climate Information
I intend to work my way from 1 to 100 over the first 100 days of 2024. I am somewhat motivated to become more disciplined in my writing, and in doing this project I hope to organize my thoughts and hopefully discover new actions that make sense for me and family to implement. I encourage you to do the same.
I grew up in Arlington, VA where my memory of Christmas Eves was warm, wet, and foggy – I don’t remember a single white Christmas. Having moved to the Twin Cities over 30 years ago, I am starting to get used to cold and snowy weather, and despite being a transplant, I am enough of a Minnesotan to feel cheated when we do not have a White Christmas.
In the first 100 days of 2024 we will explore 100 climate solutions that may “empower you to evaluate, engage, and act” to address on-going climate change as an individual on your terms.
I accepted the facts of global warming tied to human production of greenhouse gases in 2006, and have worked with increasing anxiety and urgency since then to do my part to address it as an individual living in a complex, interconnected world. I have read widely on all aspects of climate change, both mitigation – strategies focused on reducing and eliminating greenhouse gas accumulation – and adaptation strategies focused on adjusting to the impacts of the changes in the climate already underway.
Until a few weeks ago, however, what I read did not satisfy as a guide to a complex subject that could be made personal. As an individual, I was conflicted by the fact that what I did would not have any real effect on the inevitability of a warming planet, especially knowing that fossil fuel companies and other interests have perpetrated a cynical disinformation campaign to deflect responsibility from “them” to “us”. [See The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet by Michael Mann]. “Climate change is your fault, not ours” they say. Recycle. Drive less. Don’t eat beef. Use paper straws. If everyone does more individually, it will add up to enough to solve the problem.
The issue with this is described in systems thinking as the Tragedy of the Commons: a system of individuals that have access to a common resource. In general, individuals pursue actions that are beneficial to themselves, but without controls to regulate the use the resource, it can be (and typically is) overused by individuals which inevitably results in the resource being diminished to the detriment of all – read The Lorax for more a perspective.
For the concerned individual trying to take action in the face of the overuse of a shared critical resource, those actions actually put the individual at a disadvantage compared to those who continue to use the resource. If climate change can only be addressed through concerted, widespread action driven by governments and international entities, you, as a concerned individual, have a decisions to make on actions to take that contribute. It certainly would be helpful to have a resource to guide you on personal actions that will make a difference and be satisfying for you.
I am privileged to work with Heidi on the Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership and have listened to her speak in a variety of venues. Reading the book, it condensed within me a framework for action and a motivation to write about a difficult subject that represents an existential threat for all of us. Starting in January, The Frog will present the 100 climate solutions for everyone as presented by Heidi in her book. I encourage you – in keeping with Action 46: Make More Thoughtful Online Purchases – to incorporate a trip to your local bookseller in your next round of errands and pick up a copy.
Given the fact that there was a huge blizzard that just hit the Midwest, this article could not have been written at a better time. I know at least in Brookings, South Dakota, we are having a lot of issues with clearing out the snow, even from snowstorms that occurred weeks ago. We rely mainly on these snow trucks that would come and clear out the snow with their shovels, but sometimes, I still see people out there in the negative degree temperature and trying to blow snow away from driveways and neighborhood streets! And although the streets do get cleared eventually, in the short run, it can increase workplace disruptions and create hazardous sidewalks for pedestrians.
The good news is that scientists have figured out a way to melt snow and ice apparently on its own, by attempting to build roads that can do that automatically. This idea is not a novel one; there have already been studies on trying to make roads safer by incorporating chemicals like chloride that could increase its snow and ice melting abilities. Therefore, this unfortunately means that there are environmental costs to this solution.
However, these scientists have figured out a method to increase snow melting without the use of chloride. Instead, they used surfactants, which reduce surface tension, silicon dioxide, sodium bicarbonate (an important component of baking soda), and blast furnace slag (waste product from power plants) and grinded it all into a fine powder and coated it all with a solution. They mixed that in with the asphalt to be built into the road.
After testing this, it seemed that if the road was 5 cm thick, it would be effectively melting ice for around 7-8 years, and it was capable of melting snow that was on the side of the roads as well, meaning that expensive machinery would not have to go through and plow it out the edges as well.
Most people may not be familiar with the uses of slag, so it’s probably best to drop a few of these links down here for reference:
Writing is something that I carried with me throughout my life. I spent some parts of my childhood reading books from the library and collecting all that information in a giant notebook. Just like how I was as a kid, my reasoning for doing this was to bring awareness into the world about environmental issues and to help other fields understand that you don’t just have to be in the environmental field to make an impact on issues like climate change. I write because it’s important for the world to understand that ultimately, figuring out this issue will benefit humans the most. The planet is flexible and will be able to adapt to the situation on hand, but if humans are not able to adapt at all, we will perish as a species. So, in essence, we are saving humankind from extinction in a way.
Of course, that’s not to say that something like that will happen; this is probably a worst-case scenario. But it’s still daunting to think about because that brings another thought of why are we doing the things that we’re doing if the world might end? All our societal expectations wouldn’t mean a thing. All our technological advances would be meaningless, and all of the things that we’ve created as a civilization would all be for naught.
Although this would seem like extremely negative thinking or even being a bit melodramatic, if we as a society continue to go down this path, we may end up in this type of situation. Now, the question is, is it better for people to have false hope that we could potentially alter our path, or is it better to have no hope at all and not be severely disappointed when we don’t meet our environmental limits and just accept the harsh reality? That is something that I struggle with quite a bit.
I believe that regardless of which belief we have about this topic, we shouldn’t stop trying. We should not give up. We should continue to improve and grow, even though the times ahead will be tough. It is the very existence of our beings that we are fighting for.
Please welcome Yolanda Sung to the Frog Blog. Yolanda is passionate about anything and all things related to climate change and accepted the invitation to contribute The Frog Blog.
For now, Yolanda’s words will be appear under my name, and as soon as Jon Hester gets around to it, Yolanda will be charting her own course here.
There are any number of guest and/or permanent contributors posts available at the Frog Blog, if you want your voice heard. Please start writing and contributing as you see fit.
We received a dire warning a few weeks back in the form of the Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC tends to be dense, fact driven and intense, even in their Headline Statements. As the keeper of the data for on-going climate change, IPCC scientists tend to be cautious and thoughtful even as they scream at the frog to get the hell out of the rapidly heating water.
I had intended to boil it down for Frog Blog readers, but I will rely on climate change communication expert John Cook who previously said it succinctly using ten words:
The Frog Blog did not acknowledge this critical event. The definitive statement from science on the state of the most profound existential crisis in modern human history appears, and two scientists committed to exploring the nuances of climate science say nothing.
I have spoken with Jon, but will not speak for Jon. For myself, even with the usual ADD-related barriers to sitting down and focusing, I have not been able to draft any coherent blog-ready sentences, despite having a fair-sized pile of good ideas. It has been frustrating.
I don’t consider myself a “real” writer, rather I feel I have a voice that can add to Jon’s focus in this “site created by a scientist to seek truth and act on the climate crisis”. I keep waiting for the words to flow, but nothing gets published. Truly a mental block.
But my view has transformed in the past few weeks through a discussion with an accomplished science writer and another with a high school colleague who has recently started blogging in a disciplined and effective way. Both gave me advice that prompted this post – and which I hope will sustain me for many more.
Before addressing “why we write”, let’s explore some of the reasons why I haven’t written recently:
Too busy. Yep, we are all too busy.
Too distracted. Welcome to life in a global pandemic and the unraveling of the representative democracy in the US. A great deal to do, see, and think about. Poor excuse as the world burns and floods.
I write for work. I spend my day sitting and writing proposals and editing the words of others. I am much more at ease standing and talking – writing and editing uses up a substantial portion of my extroversion energy. A barrier to overcome, for sure.
I mostly write like a scientist. I was taught to write about science using a process to that keeps the experimenter out of the write-up of the experiment through the use of the third person passive voice. “This was done”. “That was accomplished”. Not very compelling for a blog and a bit of inertia to overcome sometimes. But with practice…?
I tend to seek perfection and a big impact. I had a colleague at work who was a prolific inventor, but had impossibly high standards for the quality of work that he deemed suitable to file a patent. He only wanted to file the “big one” and many of his “smaller” ideas remained in his notebooks. I think a little of that manifests in me as a desire to only create posts with profound insight.
No one reads what I write anyway. We are all immersed in information and points of view. Add mine to your TBR pile, if I am lucky. Otherwise it is chirping crickets. The question before me is what do I expect. Not sure. Anyway, I haven’t written all that much, so I have no standing to use this as a barrier to future contribution.
It just doesn’t matter. OK here we have a problem. Finding your voice when writing about climate change, especially in light of the new IPCC report, is daunting. Motivation to write about climate change thins once you reach the conclusion that it is unlikely that any one individual can make much of a difference in the unfolding calamity.
It causes me pain. Climate (or ecological) grief is real. It can have a powerful impact on emotions. Grief is painful, and wading through it, overcoming it, or putting it aside to write dispassionately about the science of climate change is a challenge. [Since this is a post written to prompt future posts, I am promising a deeper exploration of climate grief sometime soon].
So I have been struggling. No one is listening and it is too damn hard. But a few weeks back I met someone who just gets up and writes every day: an accomplished science journalist with an impressive collection of published articles, who had just delivered a new manuscript for a book on sewers to an editor a couple of days before she arrived in Minnesota. [I will post a link when the book is published – it is likely to be compelling, what with all the poop and fat blobs].
I talked to her about the personal barriers I have in writing routinely about the climate, and we compared strategies (agreeing that the Pomodoro Technique was effective). She then provided a simple insight that was (for me), profound:
You have to budget time for “hobby writing”
Weirdly, I had never considered writing for this blog as a hobby. Of course it is. Somehow I was thinking about it more in terms of ikigai “a Japanese concept referring to something that gives a person a sense of purpose, a reason for living”.
I think I was spending too much time on the right side of the ikigai Venn diagram, in the “what the world needs” circle. Looking to provide the big idea or elusive deep insight as I am so inclined.
Upon reflection it appears that what I am seeking is more likely found somewhere around the passion/mission intersection on the ikagai diagram (which overall seeks to define total work/life balance). More “I really like doing it” and “I hope to be good at it” and less “It’s what the world needs” is the needed adjustment to my approach
So… my hobby is writing about climate change. In this context, it has the hallmarks of a satisfying hobby, and as long as I keep the spirit and focus of The Frog Blog as guardrails, I think it will satisfy my desire to contribute a unique point of view. [Maybe occasionally say something profound?]
But the barriers to the actual writing of it remain. Where to get the discipline to practice (and hopefully get better at) this hobby?
This week, in the spirit of chance favoring the prepared mind (à la Pasteur) I struck up a online conversation with a high school colleague who just started a blog that I enjoy reading. I have not seen him for a very long time, I don’t know him that well, and we only exchanged a few posts, but he provided the needed strategy for discipline. It may Bloggers 101, but it made surprisingly good sense to me:
Set yourself a weekly word count (mine is 1500), publish it come hell or high water, whether anyone reads it or not, and don’t stop revising a post till it doesn’t suck.
So, there it is… the plan. Write about climate change as a hobby knowing that I have something to say – (at least) 1500 words published weekly come hell or high water. Exploring the complexities and depth of the 5 ideas embodied in these 10 words – it’s real, it’s us, experts agree, it’s bad, there’s hope – that is why we write.
If this post seems more about me and less about the climate, it is. I am writing this for myself as an investment. I needed to just write something. And these are the words that showed up. Thanks to two chance encounters with writers giving me insight that I processed with my prepared mind, I have arrived back to The Frog Blog with a renewed sense of purpose.
One of the labels often pinned on those of us who choose to speak up about the climate is “tree hugger”. You probably have your own vision of what that it means, but the implication is that we somehow care more about the Earth than the people who live on it.
My response is typically “the Earth is indifferent”. Over many millions of years it appears (from ice core analysis) that the Earth does what it can to keep the CO2 concentration somewhere on average between 200 and 300 ppm. Humans invented fire and found it convenient and advantageous to dig up and burn fossil carbon – sometime in the early 1900s the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide went above 300 ppm and has been going up ever since.
The Earth does not care if we do nothing to arrest and reverse the accumulation of carbon dioxide pollution and the disastrous changes to the climate that comes along with it. If we do nothing and create a climate that we cannot survive, the Earth will not care. Without us, the Earth will begin a long, slow process to bring the CO2 concentration back to a manageable level, including growing tropical forests, letting them die and decay and turning what once was carbon dioxide back into hydrocarbons with heat and pressure.
As much as I am personally relieved by the results of the 2020 US presidential election, the Earth doesn’t care that Joe Biden just got elected, even if his Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice is likely in its best interest – at least better than anything the US in play right now. As much as I am relieved, it is disheartening to know that US politics have gotten to the point that the act of simply doing the right thing has become Herculean. I despair that without progressive if not radical action, our approach to the climate crisis will be that status quo maintaining, incremental thinking we embrace now.
If the Earth were watching and actually had an opinion, it may observe with keen interest our attempts to turn around our thus-far appalling inaction on the very real pandemic crisis that immediately threatens so many of us, and then see if we leverage that action to address the existential crisis of climate change.
As often is the case, Greta Thunberg is a voice of reason and urgency. In a recent interview in The Guardian she warns of too many loopholes in existing climate agreements, and too little action not fast enough: “We shouldn’t be focusing on dates 10, 20 or even 30 years in the future. If we don’t reduce our emissions now, then those distant targets won’t mean anything because our carbon budgets will be long gone.”
“As long as we don’t treat the climate crisis like a crisis, we can have as many conferences as we want, but it will just be negotiations, empty words, loopholes and greenwash.”
Greta Thunberg
It is encouraging that Biden uses the term “environmental justice” so prominently. His plan includes a focus on a clean energy economy, achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, building climate resilience, working globally and supporting those communities most at risk. A plan far better than the denial, distraction and distrust that forms the official position of the current US administration.
But Greta Thunberg is quick to condemn most politicians: “I wish there was one politician or one party that was strong enough on these issues”. It is, however, justice she seeks, saying “that’s why we are fighting for climate justice, social justice. They are so interlinked, you can’t have one without the other.”
“Leaders are happy to set targets for decades ahead, but flinch when immediate action is needed” – Greta Thunberg
I have to admit to being quietly optimistic about the future again, after a long, hard four years. But as William Arthur Ward says, “the pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, and the realist adjusts the sails”. Despite the damage inflicted by a disastrous US administration, despite the sustained assault on science, despite racism and injustice, we have to center ourselves, embrace the essential reality of our climate crisis and commit to the long, and difficult fight that we cannot and must not lose.
Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions Visualized by NASA
In undergraduate chemistry labs we do a multi-step experiment to help students explore chemical reactions. I like the part where we add concentrated nitric acid to a beaker containing a US penny (it has to be minted before 1982 when they were made entirely out of copper). You can tell that there is a reaction right away – exciting and vigorous bubbling, the solution turns blue green and a dark reddish-brown gas pours out of the beaker. You can see it here.
If you craft the balanced chemical equation for this reaction you find that one of the products is gaseous nitrogen dioxide or NO2, formed by the oxidation of the copper by the nitric acid (copper (II) nitrate and water are also formed in the reaction).
Even if you did not know that concentrated nitric acid is very dangerous (it is), the minute you see that deeply colored reddish-brown gas bubbling out of the beaker, you would probably take a step back and make sure your safety glasses were fixed firmly on your face. It looks ugly and chemical. If you caught a whiff, it would be pungent and acrid (we do the experiment in a fume hood). The gas does everything it can to scream “poison”, which it is.
Nitrogen dioxide is one of a couple of gases that are referred to collectively as a NOx (as in “knocks”) – a mixture of nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide. In addition to the reaction of metals with nitric acid, NOx gases are formed by chemical reactions in internal combustion engines.
In an engine cylinder, the hydrocarbon fuel reacts with the oxygen in the air to make carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and water, and nitrogen gets converted into NOx. Untreated, the mixture of gases released from the tailpipe includes pollutants – carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and NOx. Complex technology has evolved to deal with the products of these complex reactions.
In the early eighties, before I started studying chemistry seriously, I hiked part of the Pacific Crest Trail in California north from the Mexican Border to the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains. Aptly named, the trail runs along the crests of the western mountains. Around Los Angeles, you walk through the San Bernardino and Angeles National Forests, and the ridge trail sometimes runs a zigzag course from the west to the east side of the mountains and back again.
When I was hiking in that area, I hated when the trail led you to the west. You would cross a ridge and descend into the foul, brown photochemical smog from Los Angeles that butted up against the mountains. Relief only came from crossing the ridge back to the east towards cleaner air.
In the seventies, we started to like the idea of clean air and decided we had to do something if we wanted to continue to drive and continue to breathe. Carbon monoxide will kill you, hydrocarbons stink and cause cancer and NOx is an acrid poison which also interacts with moisture in the air to form acid rain. We saw the ugly pollution and the devastating health effects and acid rain caused by untreated vehicle exhaust and decided to regulate the automotive industry and mandate the use of catalytic converters in our vehicles.
With the development and adoption of three-way catalytic converters, the oxygen sensor and advanced engine control technology, our cars are now optimized to balance performance and fuel efficiency, and are able to convert exhaust carbon monoxide and excess hydrocarbons to carbon dioxide and water, and convert the NOx gases to nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Today, if all goes well in your car (the fuel and air are in a stoichiometric balance), the only gases that come out of your tailpipe are nitrogen, carbon dioxide and water. The history and future prospects of the catalytic converter are interesting and important to know.
Back when I was on the trail, before catalytic converters were on all cars, you knew Los Angeles was polluted because you could see it. Like most major cities, it had an ugly brown haze that hung over everything. As a nation we addressed the visible problem and because of government regulations, catalytic converters are now reliable and effective in reducing dangerous vehicle emissions. And our air is cleaner. And we like it.
We no longer tolerate billowing smoke from cars, coal plants and factories. Smoky coal plants with massive smokestacks have given way to “clean” natural gas plants (like combined cycle power plants). We call them cleaner because all they emit is carbon dioxide and water. The exhaust stacks on gas plants can be shorter and less obtrusive with no noxious smoke – check out St. Paul, MN before and after the conversion to “clean” natural gas. We like how it looks, it makes us happy and we call it progress.
Coal fired power plant (top) in St. Paul, MN was replaced by a combined cycle natural gas plant (below). Images from Power Magazine.
We think air pollution is better now because our air appears to be cleaner. We cleaned up the air and kept driving. We cleaned up the air because we tuned the tailpipes so all that came out was nitrogen, carbon dioxide and water. We felt good because we could not see the pollution anymore.
But now the existential threat is a gas we cannot see when we make it. Colorless and nontoxic, carbon dioxide from all those combustion sources accumulates in the atmosphere, confounding the global energy balance on the planet we live on, trapping more energy and causing devastating global warming. We can’t see it, and it doesn’t make us cough or our eyes water, but if we don’t act, it will end up killing us all.
Maybe we would act with the urgency of the sixties and seventies if we could just see carbon dioxide – maybe if instead of being colorless, it was red or brown and we could see it everywhere, we wouldn’t be so complacent.
In Minnesota, you can only see vehicle exhaust emissions in the winter as the water vapor condenses into a cloud. We see plumes on every heated house and from the stacks on the power plants. If that gas did not dissipate invisibly into the air, but rather hung over us as an ugly red cloud, we would act. If only we could see it.
NASA’s visual of the generation and circulation of carbon dioxide around the globe is scary, hypnotic and compelling:
Seeing carbon dioxide pollution for what it is, even if it is a false color video, allowed me to fix a vision in my mind of carbon dioxide pollution as a red plume coming out of anything that is burning – car exhausts, heating vents on houses, and industrial and powerplant smokestacks.
Visualizing the sheer amount about of carbon dioxide emitted is also a big challenge. Carbon Visuals is a group “making the invisible visible”, starting with the premise that, all things being equal, a metric ton (a “tonne” or 1000 kg) of carbon dioxide gas would fill a balloon that was 10.07 m or 33’ in diameter.
The balloons look like this:
One tonne (1000 kg) of carbon dioxide fills a 10.07m (33′) diameter balloon. From Carbon Visuals.
Imagine driving through New York City and seeing carbon dioxide balloons filling the streets:
At the end of a year the 54.3 million tonnes that New York City emits is a mountain of carbon dioxide balloons. As you can see below, if New York had to actually deal with 54.3 million 33’ balloons clogging the streets, it would take immediate and dramatic steps to reduce their carbon dioxide pollution – the hidden cost of fossil fuel use visualized as a mountain of carbon dioxide gas balloons.
The mountain of 54.3 million 33′ diameter balloons representing the annual carbon dioxide emissions of New York City. From Carbon Visuals.
Globally, the scale of the emission of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is so immense that we measure it in gigatonnes or 1 billion tonnes. Last year humans emitted 35 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide or 35 billion balloons. If you live an average life in Minnesota, you personally contributed 15 balloons to that total – using natural gas (75 therms per month), using electricity (750 kWh per month) and driving 10,600 miles at 25 MPG a year all add up to 15 tonnes of carbon dioxide annual emissions per capita. Try and imagine where, at 33′ in diameter, you would store your 15 annual carbon dioxide balloons
We need a way to have a visceral reaction to “seeing” an invisible gas. Maybe it works for you to think of carbon dioxide pollution in terms of blowing up a 33’ balloon. Start seeing carbon dioxide balloons – coming out of the tailpipe of the car in front of you, spewing out and piling up outside of the power plant in downtown St. Paul, and from blowing up on your roof when you heat your house in the winter. See them accumulate in mountains across the landscape.
If you try really hard you might reduce your personal yearly emission from 15 carbon dioxide balloons to maybe 12 (you can explore the impact of your greenhouse gas emissions here). It might make you feel good… like you were contributing. And it is certainly a good thing to increase our awareness and tend to our personal carbon footprint.
But to save ourselves we have to do really big things as a global society to avoid our dismal and dangerous future. We figured out how to dramatically reduce smog and rebuild the ozone layer, through political will, regulation and legislation, through technology and innovation, and most importantly by clearly seeing the problem and knowing we had to act. We will have to do it again and soon.
We cannot express enough gratitude for Howard and Heidi’s exploration and guidebook to practical action, pushing back against the much-ignored…