Can We Really Get Back to 350 ppm?
Today is 350.org’s International Day of Climate Action, during which people around the world are trying to call attention to our need to bring the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere back down to 350 parts-per-million (ppm). A noble cause, to be sure — but can we actually do it?
As of today, we sit at about 387 ppm (and about 435 ppm of “carbon dioxide equivalents,” which are other greenhouse gases like methane). Before the start of the industrial revolution a couple hundred years ago, we spent the rest of t
he years of human history at right around 275 ppm. Then, we started burning stuff, and before you know it, the Maldives might be under water. Most experts agree that 350 is the appropriate target toward which we should shoot if we hope to avoid some of the most catastrophic effects of a warming world. In fact, if the climbing CO2 levels soar past certain thresholds—we’re not exactly sure where—then various feedback loops might kick in and even with a complete stop on emissions we could run right through 800 ppm and maybe even reach 1000. This would not be good.
So how do we avoid that possibility? According to the great environmental writer and 350.org founder Bill McKibben, it involves “a very rapid halt to the use of coal, gas and oil so that forests and oceans can absorb some of that carbon.” This highlights the fact that this needs to be a global, top-down type of effort: it involves changing how the entire world uses its resources, and, although I’m sure many will disagree with this, it doesn’t really involve you buying a hybrid instead of an SUV. It involves the SUV not existing, or the gas to power it being completely priced out of your range. To quote an off-the-record President Obama (well, candidate/Senator Obama at the time): “We can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house.”
So, as usual, I return to things like Waxman-Markey, the Kerry-Boxer bill in the Senate, and, most importantly, COP15 in Copenhagen. I would like to think that the 5,242 climate action events in 181 countries today will help motivate our soon-to-be-Copenhagen-bound leaders to get something done, but I have my doubts. I can’t think of another so clearly scientific issue being dealt with on so purely a political level before; there isn’t precedent for it. The number 350 hangs in the air over all our heads, and we’re relying on a gathering of politicians and diplomats to make the gas match the fantasy.
[Images courtesy of 350.org on Flickr.]
Excellent blog. Yes we are waiting on and hoping that a group of politicians will make the right decisions. In the meantime, we can do our part, with or without the politicians’.
We can walk rather than drive. We can limit the amount of stuff we buy, choosing instead to reuse what we already have, to make do, to do with less, to be HAPPY with what we already have. We can eat responsibly (organic, local, less meat, etc.). We can have less children. We can teach our children to conserve. We can use solar power. We can hang our clothes on a line. We can go to bed earlier, removing the need to light up our lives until midnight. We can recycle. We can compost. There is so much that WE can do.
If we wait for a handful of people to solve 6 billion people’s problems, we will have a hand in whatever horrible fate awaits us. let’s have a hand in a hopeful fate instead!
“walk not drive”, “hang our clothes on line” — what an inspiring vision of the future! Too many people have very little to do (rather that join some luddite protest) as a result of technological progress; what an irony!
The goal being ” a very rapid halt to the use of coal, gas and oil…” is not going to be obtainable.
Well, if it is it will certainly make the world a lot poorer, as with less people buying stuff, there will be less manufacturing, less workers needed, more unemployment etc…
Also interesting that Renee M is advocating population control, dictating what people eat, when they go to sleep, how we must get to work… my what an orwellian future we have coming, I hope I don’t live to see the world turn into Renee’s vision of the future.
Well, everyone who accepts the orthodoxy of 250/350 obviously believes man has tremendous power to control world climate. All we did was burn a little coal and oil and it trumps the stupendous power of the 30-million year-old ice house. Just by doing this one little thing we can restore the earth to the ice-free state it has been in for 95% of its history.
WOW! I think we should have enormous gratitude. I was in despair over the Ice House. Until we discovered that by burning a little hydrocarbon we could dominate The Ice, you have to admit Man’s future was bleak. By a lucky break civilization developed in one of the tiny respites inside 30 million years of utter cold. This split second is called The Holocene and it is now 13,000 years old. The Ice is due to return any time. I had no hope whatsoever we could stop it from covering the North down to Chicago with a mile of ice. Now I know Man is powerful, triumphant and heroic: We can stop the Ice Ages!