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But, How will we tell the kids? [1]

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Date: 2023-07-29

But, How Will We Tell the Kids?

I feel I should be proud of this year’s Maryland General Assembly for taking what are, admittedly, giant steps towards reducing our carbon emissions. Instead, I feel both angry and scared.

I recently attended two climate activist events. The most recent was last night at Bowie State University, where a draft Path to Net Zero was presented. Maybe a month or so ago, I attended a celebration of the passage of Maryland’s Climate Act. This was held at Red Emma’s in Waverly. Both rightly celebrated climate accomplishments.

My fear, though, is based on something I heard at the Maryland Clean Energy Center’s (MCEC) legislative luncheon towards the end of this year’s legislative session. It changed my perspective. I’ll get back to this in a minute.

Maryland’s claim to be the climate leader in the U.S., is based in fact. For me, though it rings hollow. Another expression comes to mind. “The operation was a success, but the patient died.”

If anyone remembers this far back, the goal of keeping atmospheric greenhouse gases below 350 ppm was the key to fighting climate change. If you do remember, you, too, will be scared. The last time I checked, the actual count was 418 ppm. Now, if the science was wrong, maybe this would turn out to be a false alarm. Maybe we would not be seeing signs of global heating.

No, the science was correct. Everywhere one looks, weather and climate conditions are changing. Glaciers are melting. Droughts and major storms are intensifying. Phoenix is frying. Canada is burning. New England is flooding. The oceans are heating.

Ellicott City has multiple 500 year floods. Central Maryland has snowless Winters. The Chesapeake Bay is also heating up. It is all starting to hit home.

So, if Maryland truly is a climate leader, its plan to reach Net Zero by 2045 seems nearly suicidal. The math is simple. Under this plan Maryland will continue to emit greenhouse gases for the next 22 years.

As bad as things are now, how much worse will this get if we keep doing this for another generation? If we are the leaders and the rest of the world is worse, that 2045 deadline seems way too far in the distance.

An even bigger problem, now, is the goal. Net Zero is simply not good enough. As long as we have 400+ ppm of GHG in the atmosphere, the heat will continue to build. The ten hottest years on record were all recorded from 2010 until today. 2022 tied for the hottest year ever.

Now most of this heat is stored in the oceans. Water holds heat quite well. The oceans are quite big. So, no matter what we do, we already have a baseline of hotter than normal weather that will persist for a long time.

Hot and getting hotter is not an acceptable future. We need a plan not just to reach Net Zero, and quickly, but to reach a Net Negative. We must both eliminate emissions and remove GHG from the atmosphere.

This is what I heard at the MCEC luncheon. One of the speakers, I think he was from Constellation Energy, used this metaphor. If you put a crab in a cool pot of water and gradually turn up the heat, the crab will not react as if it fears death. That is what we are doing to ourselves. In this metaphor humans are not only the crabs. We are also the people turning up the heat under the pot.

Maryland’s current plan claims we reach net zero only by importing 32% of our clean energy from some unnamed, “Somewhere else”. That is not nearly good enough. That certainly does not fit under any definition of leadership.

Twenty more years heating the stove is too long. Twenty years just to set the pot, “To simmering,” is way too long. We need a plan to shorten the heating, turn off the stove, and begin a cooling process.

At last night’s public hearing on Maryland’s Climate Path, there were a lot of good ideas, but not enough urgency. There were not a lot of signs that people were willing to take risks to avoid disaster. On the other hand, there were few students in attendance. This can likely be attributed to the fact that although the hearing was at Bowie State University, school was not in session. I suspect a larger student audience would have been more insistent on greater urgency.

If climate reality was presented to students as, “We intend to keep pumping GHG emissions into the atmosphere for another full generation. Then, we’ll just let the planet continue to heat on its own.” I think there would have been screams of outrage.

No one much talked about carbon-capture, at least not beyond planting additional trees. There is a reason for this. Most current carbon capture technologies create as many GHG’s as they capture. Why? They are powered by fossil fuels.

There is, however, a way around this. A few people at the meeting talked of the potential of nuclear energy to help solve the problem. Nuclear energy could power carbon capture without creating its own emissions. We certainly need to explore this option.

Nuclear energy is not only clean, but it is the most likely energy source to help de-carbonize the atmosphere. Admittedly, some folks have fears about nuclear energy. Yes, we must do our, “Due diligence,” to ensure safety and costs concerns are addressed. While there now are many new promising nuclear energy technologies, there may be some small risk.

That risk is dwarfed by the reality we are now facing. We simply cannot afford to keep turning up the heat for another generation. We can’t afford a plan that even after that generation of heating simply leaves the stove on simmer. We need a faster path to both turn off the heat and to begin cooling.

Maryland cannot solve global warming by itself. But, if we are going to be leaders in the effort, we must show how it can be done locally. If we are the leaders and we fail, the globe is at tremendous risk. To avoid the greater risk, we may have to take some smaller ones. We absolutely need a shorter timeline and a path to Net-Negative.

So, here is a simple first step. Expand our options. Put nuclear energy back into the mix of possible solutions. See if it can work.

The problem is that failure really is an option. We need to take every step possible to avoid it. Then, maybe, we can talk to the kids.

Bill Temmink [email protected]

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