The Trump Effect

from cnbc.com

Donald Trump made energy a pillar of his economic policy, and now the president-elect is poised to unwind President Barack Obama's key climate change initiatives and potentially torpedo an international global warming initiative years in the making. 

The change could happen quickly, too, in no small part because of the way the Obama administration advanced much of its own agenda. 

Realizing early on that there was little he could accomplish through legislation while Republicans held both houses of Congress, Obama pieced together a large number of initiatives to reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption, largely through regulation. 

That means Trump can order regulators to stop enforcing the rules by using the same executive authority Obama exercised to set them in motion.

What has been, done can be undone. There is hope however. While Trump has made numerous comments questioning the very existence of climate change let alone any relation to human activities, he also said (from LA Times) :

Trump has said he also supports expanding renewable energy. In comments published in September on the website of Science Debate, a nonpartisan science initiative promoting political debate on scientific issues, Trump wrote, “There is still much that needs to be investigated in the field of ‘climate change.’ ” 

After mentioning the importance of clean water and fighting disease, without linking those issues directly to climate concerns, he continued, “Perhaps we should be focused on developing energy sources and power production that alleviates the need for dependence on fossil fuels.”

So. Who knows what the real Donald Trump is thinking or planning to do. He has promised both sides to almost every issue over the past several years so people can choose to hear what they choose. That time is over. Over the next four years, the real Donald Trump will emerge and some people will be severely disappointed. But who? Perhaps he will move to the middle, embrace science rather than fear mongering and that was his plan all along. Or perhaps he will stay with the win now at all costs mentality leaving a scorched Earth policy to not only American environmental policy but also American values and reputation in the world. Time will tell. 

Paris climate agreement comes into force today! Will it work? Will it last?

From cnbc.com

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For many, November 4th will go down as an important day in the battle to save the planet and we need to go back to 2015 to understand why.

At last year's COP21 summit in Paris, after days of painstaking and fraught negotiations, world leaders agreed to make sure global warming stayed "well below" 2 degrees Celsius and to "pursue efforts" to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.

Today, that agreement comes into force.

"It's an historic day for so many reasons," Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment (UNEP), said in a recorded statement released in the hours before the agreement passed. "It shows the shift to a greener world is irreversible," he added. "It shows we're able to set aside differences to tackle common problems with consensus. It shows the world is swayed by good science and solid evidence."

On Friday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated that the agreement's ratification and coming into force showed that the world was "finally committing to tackling climate change" while WWF International's Manuel Pulgar-Vidal – who leads the body on climate change – wrote in a blogpost that the agreement had created "a unique framework for partnership among governments, businesses, civil society, faith groups and communities to collaborate and rally behind this crucial common cause for the planet."
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While there is some excitement for this being a step in the right direction, few believe this will be a complete solution to address the climate change issues. To add even more uncertainty, the upcoming US elections could completely change the optimism. Donald Trump has a very legitimate chance of winning the US election and has stated that he not only doesn't believe in man-made causes to climate change, but has stated he will dismantle the treaty. If the US and it's massive release of CO2 (in addition to hosts of other climate changing substances) withdraws, what are the chances other nations will continue to do the hard work while the US reaps any benefits. One look at a temperature map from 2016 and, if it is indeed a harbinger of things to come, and one has to worry.

Average surface temperature departures (source NASA GISS)

Population growth – and the end of the world as we know it.

The human population. The key to making the Earth and it's ecosystem and resources sustainable in addition to maintaining and improving the quality of life. From around 1 billion humans to 7 billion in 2011 and over 11 billion by 2100, there is a issue - a problem. 

The population problem must be addressed if humans are to have any hope of tackling the pollution, the climate, food and water resources, disease, over-harvesting of plants and animals, and a myriad of other topics. Assuming the doubling of the sum of human consumption (which doesn't even account for hundreds of millions, or even billions, of people attaining more a Western lifestyle and consumption) of fish, trees, iron ore, oil, deforested acreage, water as well as the release of twice as much pollution, CO2, sewage, chemical waste, fracking water, and a host of other substances and behaviors that damage the environment, it presents a stark problem. This is especially true if this happens for not just one year, but year after year, and decade after decade and, if humans are so 'lucky', century after century and millennium after millennium.

Imagine the clearcut forests, empty fisheries, extinct species, rivers that never reach the ocean, dust bowls, and not a glacier to be seen. Imagine vast new deserts with extreme heat and withered crops making marginal parts of the world inhospitable and forcing the relocation of tens of millions of people. Efficiency, technology, and even lifestyle choices can go a long way, but a population that grows without end will certainly create problems that no amount of science nor austerity can solve.

There is hope however. With development, education, women's rights and stable societies birth rates are going down in much of the world. By looking at map of birthrates, it's easy to see the clusters of high birthrates are around areas that lack many of the basic advances enjoyed by many of the Northern nations.

With concentrated efforts it does seem feasible that all nations could perhaps get their birthrates in a state of balance and from there the other problems will seem more ... solvable.