Earth Day is Everyday

For the Biden Administration, Earth Day is …Everyday

“This is a case where conscience and convenience cross paths, where dealing with this existential threat to the planet and increasing our economic growth and prosperity are one in the same. When I think of addressing climate change… I think of jobs.” 

President Joe Biden

Monday was Earth Day 2024, and on that day U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) announced that the Hawai‘i Green Infrastructure Authority will be receiving $62.45 million in Federal grant funding from the EPA which will fund solar power systems for many of Hawaii’s low-income households across the state.

“The new Solar for All grant funding will help low-income households across Hawai‘i take advantage of solar power and save money on energy bills – all the while cutting pollution and creating good-paying jobs statewide,” said Schatz.  The program is designed to provide financial assistance towards the funding of residential rooftop solar projects, as well as energy storage, and further enable the deployment of community-owned solar systems.  The solar grants being awarded are directed to projects expected to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and is projected to save U.S. households $350 million annually in reduced energy costs.

On the campaign trail, President Biden reminded voters that, “… Despite the overwhelming devastation in red and blue states, there are still those who deny the climate is in crisis.” “My MAGA Republican friends don’t seem to think it’s a crisis. They want to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides the funding for the vast majority of climate-related energy projects, and roll back protections for clean air and clean water.”

In addition, the Biden administration also announced the launch of a new website for the American Climate Corps (ACC), a national program aimed at training young people for clean energy and climate resilience jobs. The Nature Conservancy (Hawai‘i) and Kupu are among local organizations accepting ACC applications.

Tenth consecutive monthly heat record alarms and confounds climate scientists

This is the 10th consecutive monthly record in a warming phase that has shattered all previous records. Over the past 12 months, average global temperatures have been 1.58C above pre-industrial levels. And now exceeds the 1.5C benchmark set as a target in the Paris Climate Agreement but that landmark deal will not be considered breached unless this trend continues on a decadal scale.

Climate experts warn that if the heating anomaly does not stabilize by August, ‘…the world will be in uncharted territory in facing ever-rising temperatures’

Another month, another global heat record that has left climate scientists scratching their heads and hoping this is an El Niño-related hangover rather than a symptom of worse-than-expected planetary health.

Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, one of the vice-chairs of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), noted the planet has been warming at a pace of 0.3C per decade over the past 15 years, almost double the 0.18C per decade trend since the 1970s. “Is this within the range of climate variability or a signal of accelerated warming? My concern is it might be too late if we just wait to see.” 

Michael E Mann, the scientist whose 1999 “hockey-stick graph” showed the sharp rise in global temperatures since the industrial age, said the current trends were to be expected given the continuing rise in emissions. But he said that should not be a source of comfort. “The world is warming AS FAST as we predicted – and that’s bad enough,”

Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, noted that temperature records are being broken each month by up to 0.2C. “It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate scientists’ predictive capabilities more than 2023 has.”

Based on preliminary analyses, Schmidt added:  “If the anomaly does not stabilize by August – a reasonable expectation based on previous El Niño events – then the world will be in uncharted territory. It could imply that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated.”

The core of the problem – fossil fuel emissions – is well-known and largely uncontested in the scientific community. A survey of nearly 90,000 climate-related studies shows a 99.9% consensus that humans are altering the climate by burning gas, oil, coal, and trees (as in biofuels).

In 2023, global levels of the greenhouse gas rose to 419 parts per million, around 50 percent more than before the Industrial Revolution. That means there are roughly 50 percent more carbon dioxide molecules in the air than there were in 1750.  As carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere, it traps heat and warms the planet – period!

“Stopping further warming requires rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” said Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Living in Denial

Opposition to climate science comes from a variety of vested sources, but not too surprising is the fossil fuel industry – in particular the 57 companies linked to 80% of greenhouse emissions – and stands to lose trillions of dollars in the current global transition to a clean energy economy.

Just last month, Saudi Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser was applauded at an oil industry conference in Houston for declaring: “We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas.”