Though at first it seems counterintuitive, the terrible ice, sleet and snowstorms in Texas in mid-February probably are a result of climate change.
Yes, greenhouse gases create an ever-thickening blanket in the upper atmosphere that prevents normal heat escape from the warming rays of the sun. Yes, in general the earth’s surface is heating, now almost 1.1 degree centigrade above preindustrial times.
But it seems that the excessive heating of the Arctic in recent decades has intermittently shifted the strong winds that compose the jet stream, causing them in turn to release energy that interferes with the low-pressure polar vortex which spins above the jet stream. This destabilizing of the polar vortex, pushing it south, had been described by scientists several years back as having the potential to cause severe winter storms by pulling lower-atmospheric Arctic air into the middle latitudes. The result: 5 million people lost power and 40 people died in Texas in February because of the cold and precipitation.
I have been corrected by friends more than once when I have called what is happening climate change. No, say the experts, though warming is the norm, it is actually climate chaos that is occurring, precipitated by rapid and integrated shifts in our atmosphere produced by human burning of fossil fuels.
What are we doing about the rapid advance of climate chaos? The over-arching answer to the question is, still, not enough. Though our hard-fought efforts to elect an administration that understands the words science and equity have begun to pay off in the U.S.’ rejoining of the United Nations Paris Climate Accord, on Friday UN Secretary Antonio Guterres told us that of those 75 countries (not yet including the U.S.) who had submitted their updated Nationally Determined Contributions, the predictions of future greenhouse gas emissions, only the U.K. and European Union have significantly strengthened their goals, and what has been offered does not approach the 45% cuts needed by 2030 to prevent more than 1.5 C degrees of warming.
This is a recipe for more Texases, more chaos and more death.
Yet, honestly, hope is rising. In 2020 renewable energy surpassed coal and nuclear production of electricity in the United States. It is still trailing gas, which continues to rise in use, but this was a landmark victory and hails our path to a livable planet.
Other good news: The Biden administration not only rejoined Paris, it immediately said to the world, contrary to the lies of the Trump administration, that emitting greenhouse gases carries huge cost to our economy and society. In 2008 a federal appeals court told President Bush that the government was responsible for measuring that cost — in illness and death due to storms and heat, lost crops from drought and pests, damage to fishing and coastal communities and the near-endless losses that will be suffered from climate change — per ton of carbon emitted.
The Obama administration answered a year later, declaring the cost to be $52 per ton. Eight years later, the king of deceit whittled that number to as low as $1 per ton, essentially ignoring the problem to relieve industry from the burden of regulations to reduce emissions. Last month Biden immediately restored the cost to $52 with the promise to more carefully recalculate.
Scientists and leading economists are pushing hard to raise that cost much higher, to $125/ton or more, in order to support the programs and investments that will be needed to cut emissions as deeply as required to limit temperature rise.
Is this all sounding too academic? Think Biden’s Build Back Better Plan, projected to cost $2 trillion (much less than many experts demand). Republicans howl that it is far too costly. But measure that price tag against the real cost of continuing to burn fossil fuels and warm the globe. The damage wreaked by the storms in Texas add up to $200 billion. That one storm alone accounts for 10% of the Biden plan and emissions now will create disasters for decades.
Climate change destruction is tangible, painful and expensive. It is well worth the cost of preventing.
Texas has taught us other lessons besides the cost of continued dirty energy use.
It illustrated well that corporate refusal to invest in safety — preparing infrastructure for predicted worsening cold weather — leads to deadly consequences. Power outages are rare in the coldest weather in northern states where investments have been made to protect the sources and the grid.
And it was a stark reminder of the class division of the burden of climate chaos’ consequences: A poor Latino 11-year-old froze to death in his mobile home while Sen. Ted Cruz snuck off to Cancun to escape his power outage. Poor people did the least to cause the problem but pay the highest price for its effects.
The U.S. is in a position to answer both Mr. Guterres’ rebuke of member nations’ failure to address their emissions cuts responsibility and the careless refusal of politicians and corporations to prevent climate disasters that are most devastating to the vulnerable. We need a massive and just green infrastructure program to meet the chaos.
Marty Nathan is a retired physician, mother and grandmother who writes a monthly column on climate change.