Beyond the climate event horizon

The last disheartening presidential election debate of this interminable campaign is finally behind us - celebrate! Such a "nasty" forum, anathema to serious discussion.

Last night the climate got two whole seconds of attention. No hint that we face what Tim Flannery calls a climate event horizon, an atmospheric black hole, a "one-way trip into the unknown... abrupt, catastrophic and irreversible." It could be triggered by any of several known unknowns, like a collapsing Gulf Stream, rainforest destruction, or large-scale methane release. Or, who knows? Our best climate models are unclear. As our guest the facilities manager said on Tuesday, that his office must be prepared for the most extreme days of maximum peak energy demand, so we must prepare for the worst imaginable scenario awaiting us just beyond the horizon.

What's the best way to prepare for all those possible unknown triggers? Divestment. "Taking your money away from companies involved in extracting fossil fuels." We still don't know, at our school, how much of our money is still involved in extractcion. Our new governing board will soon be constituted. We need to make sure they know we want to know that. We need to be clear: keep it in the ground.

We do know some things. We know that politicians and lobbyists will do all they can to reinforce the knowledge deficit that forestalls sustained attention to climate science and commitment to climate action. We know that "climate skeptics hold greatest sway in the nations with the greatest investments in fossil fuels." We know that science denialism and techno-fantasy are nothing new. Did you know that in the 1950s "American oil men wanted to use nuclear weapons to mine Alberta's tar sands"?! Or that Rachel Carson was savaged by the chemical industry when she published Silent Spring?

We know that coal is still a huge factor in our overall electrical generation profile, on our campus and in our country, but that it's begun a precipitous decline (a quarter by 2020).

We know that our worst politicians, like Australia's, will always engage in "unconstructive behavior in international forums."

And, the good news: we know that "consumers are more powerful than ever, and social media allows them to organize efficiently to express their displeasure" with polluters and deniers and liars.

So what's stopping us?
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On this date in 1892, Chicago threw a parade to dedicate the World’s Columbian Exposition. The Columbian Exposition was a world’s fair commemorating the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas... Gottlieb Daimler displayed a boat and an automobile powered by combustion engines: an exhibit that would inspire Henry Ford to come up with his own “Quadricycle,” his first car, which he successfully tested three years later.

Happy birthday John Dewey, who "said there was so much knowledge at universities because the freshmen brought everything they knew to college with them, and the seniors never took anything away." WA

6 am/7:00, 72/78/49, 6:02