The Presidential Debate and Climate Change
Confusing stories and claims of windows getting smaller, birds getting killed by “windmills”, and numbers by the scale of millions, billions, and trillions were thrown around the last presidential debate that was held at Belmont University last week. With the first debate having little to no coverage on science, including the topics on climate change, and the second debate getting canceled, the last debate had what it could call prime airtime to discuss the candidates’ plans for climate change.
The debate on climate change, all while creating new jobs for the American people, was started and moderated fairly well by moderator Kristen Welker compared to the previous debate that took place almost a month prior. Even though it had around 15 minutes of airtime for the discussion on climate change, most of it was rather spent diverting the talks to foreign policy, false claims, and employment trends by both of the presidential candidates. However, some key points surrounding oil and gas production, pollution derived from it, and the cost of transitioning from oil and gas to alternative energy sources were able to take place.
Pulling statistics on the year 2018, the United States was the second biggest contributor to the CO2 emissions as a country, the thirteenth biggest contributor per capita, and the biggest cumulative contributor by that year. While developing countries such as China and India are rapidly contributing to this statistic, the United States has historically been and currently is one of the biggest players in the doomsday game that is climate change. With wildfires ravaging through Southern California and throughout the globe, an increase in devastating storms and natural disasters, and food insecurity caused by drought in impoverished nations, climate change has no prejudice against who it targets. However, its effects are most felt in countries that aren’t economically developed to handle such devastation.
With Climate Clocks being erected in major cities such as Berlin, New York, and Paris, our future on our blue planet is looking grim at our current rate. A red countdown timer, which currently displays 7 years, 65 days, 11 hours, 36 minutes, and 47 seconds, shows how much time we have until carbon emission levels contribute and pass the 1.5°C threshold, a point of no return. If we dive deep into the numbers of what’s causing the countdown and what we could do to slow it down, there are mainly four factors to pay attention to.
The four factors are that of population size, economic growth, energy intensity, emissions per energy unit produced. The first two factors are simple and easy to observe. The bigger the population in a country, statistically on average the more energy it uses. We can see this from countries such as India, China, and the United States. However, we suddenly come to see countries such as Bahrain and Kuwait having much higher CO2 emissions per capita than the developed countries like the United States. So, it’s not solely the size of the population that can be responsible for the blame. Secondly, economic prosperity can also be used as an indicator for a country to determine its carbon footprint. Drawing on GDP per capita, developed countries tend to use more energy, dubbed as “lifestyle emissions”, than other developing countries. A shocking fact is that one programmer in the US produces more carbon dioxide than 50 farmers in Uganda combined on average. While only looking at two factors, we can see that a developed country with a population of around 330 million people, the third biggest populous country in the world, can be a huge contributor to climate change. There can’t be much done to control these factors as they naturally grow as time goes on, but better access to higher levels of education and increased standard of living has been shown to contribute to economic growth and population size without sacrificing the cost of emissions.
The next two factors, energy intensity and emissions per energy unit produced can, directly and indirectly, affect how much emissions we output using different sources and technologies. Initiated by European countries in 2015, energy intensity looks at how efficiently we can use energy and reduce emissions. This strategy has also been adopted by multiple countries since and propelled multiple innovations such as smart meters, energy labeling, and contributed towards efficient energy in multiple developed countries. Lastly, emissions per energy unit produced looks at how much an energy source contributes to carbon emissions. While non-renewable energy sources such as coal have been traditionally used for hundreds of years, alternatives such as solar, hydroelectric, and wind power have started to constitute a growing part of energy production in the US. However, there is still much more that could be done, especially as a country with resources abundant like the United States.
Leveraging the economy and innovation that has prospered on this land and directing it towards a global issue that affects all of us is not an easy challenge but one of paramount importance. Contributing to higher levels of education, better standards of living, investing in innovative technologies, reducing the usage of fossil fuels, and increasing renewable energy sources all could delay the process of irreversible consequences and bide enough time for us to find a way of living that does not hurt our planet, and in return, ourselves as well.
