By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: November 21, 2012
In upper-middle-class suburbs on the East Coast, the newest must-have isn’t a $7,500 Sub-Zero refrigerator. It’s a standby generator that automatically flips on backup power to an entire house when the electrical grid goes out.
In part, that’s a legacy of Hurricane Sandy. Such a system can cost well over $10,000, but many families are fed up with losing power again and again.
(A month ago, I would have written more snarkily about residential generators. But then we lost power for 12 days after Sandy — and that was our third extended power outage in four years. Now I’m feeling less snarky than jealous!)
More broadly, the lust for generators is a reflection of our antiquated electrical grid and failure to address climate change. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave our grid [ ], prone to bottlenecks and blackouts, a grade of D+ in 2009.
So Generac [ http://www.generac.com/ ], a Wisconsin company that dominates the generator market, says it is running three shifts to meet surging demand. About 3 percent of stand-alone homes worth more than $100,000 in the country now have standby generators installed.
“Demand for generators has been overwhelming, and we are increasing our production levels,” Art Aiello, a spokesman for Generac, told me.
That’s how things often work in America. Half-a-century of tax cuts focused on the wealthiest Americans leave us with third-rate public services, leading the wealthy to develop inefficient private workarounds.
It’s manifestly silly (and highly polluting) for every fine home to have a generator. It would make more sense to invest those resources in the electrical grid so that it wouldn’t fail in the first place.
But our political system is dysfunctional: in addressing income inequality, in confronting climate change and in maintaining national infrastructure.
So time and again, we see the decline of public services accompanied by the rise of private workarounds for the wealthy.
Is crime a problem? Well, rather than pay for better policing, move to a gated community with private security guards!
Are public schools failing? Well, superb private schools have spaces for a mere $40,000 per child per year.
Public libraries closing branches and cutting hours? Well, buy your own books and magazines!
Are public parks — even our awesome national parks, dubbed “America’s best idea” and the quintessential “public good” — suffering from budget cuts? Don’t whine. Just buy a weekend home in the country!
Public playgrounds and tennis courts decrepit? Never mind — just join a private tennis club!
I’m used to seeing this mind-set in developing countries like Chad or Pakistan, where the feudal rich make do behind high walls topped with shards of glass; increasingly, I see it in our country. The disregard for public goods was epitomized by Mitt Romney’s call to end financing of public broadcasting.
A wealthy friend of mine notes that we all pay for poverty in the end. The upfront way is to finance early childhood education for at-risk kids. The back-end way is to pay for prisons and private security guards. In cities with high economic inequality, such as New York and Los Angeles, more than 1 percent of all employees work as private security guards, according to census data.
This question of public goods hovers in the backdrop as we confront the “fiscal cliff” and seek to reach a deal based on a mix of higher revenues and reduced benefits. It’s true that we have a problem with rising entitlement spending, especially in health care. But I also wonder if we’ve reached the end of a failed half-century experiment in ever-lower tax rates for the wealthy.
All this has coincided with the decline of some public services and the emergence of staggering levels of inequality (granted, other factors are also at work) such that the top 1 percent of Americans now have greater collective net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent.
Not even the hum of the most powerful private generator can disguise the failure of that long experiment.
The remains of a roller coaster that was knocked off a New Jersey amusement pier by Superstorm Sandy might be left there as a tourist attraction.
Seaside Heights Mayor Bill Akers says officials have not made a decision on whether to tear down the coaster which is partially submerged in the Atlantic Ocean.
But the mayor says he is working with the Coast Guard to see if the fun fair ride is stable enough to leave it alone because he believes it would make "a great tourist attraction''.
Efforts to rebuild the storm-ravaged town are continuing.
Mayor Akers says construction on a new boardwalk is expected to begin in January and be ready by Memorial Day.
5 Charts About Climate Change That Should Have You Very, Very Worried
Two new reports highlight the alarming consequences of staying our current course.
By Christopher Mims and Stephanie Gruner Buckley Nov 24 2012, 10:11 AM ET
Two major organizations released climate change reports this month warning of doom and gloom if we stick to our current course and fail to take more aggressive measures. A World Bank report [ http://climatechange.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/Turn_Down_the_heat_Why_a_4_degree_centrigrade_warmer_world_must_be_avoided.pdf ] imagines a world 4 degrees warmer, the temperature predicted by century's end barring changes, and says it aims to shock people into action by sharing devastating scenarios of flood, famine, drought and cyclones. Meanwhile, a report [ http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=14682 ] from the US National Research Council, commissioned by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other intelligence agencies, says the consequences of climate change--rising sea levels, severe flooding, droughts, fires, and insect infestations--pose threats greater than those from terrorism ranging from massive food shortages to a rise in armed conflicts.
Here are some of the more alarming graphic images from the reports.
1. Most of Greenland's top ice layer melted in four days
During a week in the summer of 2012, Greenland's ice cap went from melting on its periphery to melting over its entire surface (World Bank)
These shots published in the World Bank report show an unusually large ice melt over a four-day period, when an estimated 97% of Greenland's surface ice sheet had thawed by the middle of July 2012. Normally, ice sheets melt around the outer margins first where elevation is lower and allow for warmer temperatures. The event is uncommon, though not unprecedented. A similar event happened in 1889, and before that, several centuries earlier. There are indications, however, that the greatest amount of melting during the past 225 years has occurred in the last decade.
2. America just had its worst drought in over 50 years
Serious drought conditions across the US (World Bank/National Drought Mitigation Center)
This past summer, the US experienced its worst drought in more than a half a century--severely reducing farm yields, livestock production, and raising food prices globally. The World Bank shared this snapshot of drought conditions covering some 63% of the contiguous US on Aug. 28, 2012. Serious droughts have hit the US in the 1950s and the 1930s, with some areas experiencing worse drought than during the dust bowl. (The reason we're not experiencing Dust Bowl II is thanks to better soil management practices.) Studies suggest we should expect severe and widespread droughts over the next few decades, if not longer, thanks to global warming.
3. Coral reefs are doomed
Outlook for coral reefs is bleak (World Bank / Hare et al./Rogelj et al./Schaeffer et al.)
Coral reefs, which protect against coastal flooding, storm surges, wave damage, and also provide homes for lots of fish, are doomed on our current course, says the World Bank. Coral reefs are dissolving because of ocean acidification--the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more gets dissolved in the oceans. The illustration shows the impact on coral reefs at various CO2 levels. Coral reefs may stop growing as CO2 concentration levels approach 450 ppm, which is expected over the coming decades. By the time the concentration reaches around 550 ppm in the 2060s, coral reefs will start to dissolve.
4. Wildfires are multiplying
Fires on the rise (National Research Council)
This map published in the National Research Council report shows how rising temperatures and increased evaporation will cause widespread fires in the western US. Fire damage in the northern Rocky Mountain forests, marked by region B, is expected to more than double annually for each 1.8 degree Fahrenheit increase in average global temperatures. With the same temperature increase, fire damage in the Colorado Rockies (region J) is expected to be more than seven times what it was in the second half of the 20th century.
5. Civil wars on the rise
Armed conflicts spiked in 2011 (Themnér and Wallensteen by Sage Publications/National Academy of Sciences)
In 2011, the world witnessed a spike in the number of active conflicts, rising to 37 from 31 in 2010. It was the largest increase between any two years since 1990--though still below the peak of 53 active conflicts in the early post-Cold War years. The growth was primarily driven by an increase in conflicts in Africa, and also to events tied to the Arab Spring. There's conflicting evidence about whether climate change causes increasing violence, though one study found that between the years 1000 and 1900, low temperatures in Europe coincided with an elevated risk of interstate war. Over the long term, the theory is that climate-related problems such as water shortages will lead not to wars across borders, but rather to violent conflicts within states.
Finally, this last one is not a chart, but if talk of climate change and how it all works is baffling, here's a helpful video [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pznsPkJy2x8 ] that explains it well:
Arctic sea ice larger than US melts, UN reports; climate change happening ‘before our eyes’
By Associated Press, Nov 28, 2012 08:30 PM EST
DOHA, Qatar — An area of Arctic sea ice bigger than the United States melted this year, according the U.N. weather agency, which said the dramatic decline illustrates that climate change is happening “before our eyes.”
In a report released at U.N. climate talks in the Qatari capital of Doha, the World Meteorological Organization said the Arctic ice melt was one of a myriad of extreme and record-breaking weather events to hit the planet in 2012. Droughts devastated nearly two-thirds of the United States as well western Russia and southern Europe. Floods swamped west Africa and heat waves left much of the Northern Hemisphere sweltering.
But it was the ice melt that seemed to dominate the annual climate report, with the U.N. concluding ice cover had reached “a new record low” in the area around the North Pole and that the loss from March to September was a staggering 11.83 million square kilometers (4.57 million square miles) — an area bigger than the United States.
“The alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the far-reaching changes taking place on Earth’s oceans and biosphere,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said. “Climate change is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records.”
The dire climate news — following on the heels of a report Tuesday that found melting permafrost could significantly amplify global warming — comes as delegates from nearly 200 countries struggled for a third day to lay the groundwork for a deal that would cut emissions in an attempt to ensure that temperatures don’t rise more than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) over what they were in preindustrial times. Temperatures have already risen about 0.8 degrees C (1.4 degrees F), according to the latest report by the IPCC.
Discord between rich and poor countries on who should do what has kept the two-decade-old U.N. talks from delivering on that goal, and global emissions are still going up.
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, urged delegates to heed the science and quickly take action.
“When I had the privilege in 2007 of accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC, in my speech I asked the rhetorical question, ‘Will those responsible for decisions in the field of climate change at the global level listen to the voice of science and knowledge, which is now loud and clear,’ ” he said. “I am not sure our voice is louder today but it is certainly clearer on the basis of the new knowledge.”
Delegates in Doha are bickering over money from rich countries to help poorer ones adapt to and combat the impacts of climate change, and whether developed countries will sign onto an extension of a legally binding emissions pact, the Kyoto Protocol, that would run until 2020.
A pact that once incorporated all industrialized countries except the United States would now include only the European Union, Australia and several smaller countries which together account for less than 15 percent of global emissions. And the United States is refusing to offer any bolder commitments to cut its emissions beyond a non-binding pledge to reduce emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
“For developed country parties like the United States and the European Union, the pledges and commitments ... put forward on the table are far below what is required by the science,” Su Wei, a member of the Chinese delegation, told reporters. “And far below what is required by their historical responsibility.”
Developing countries have said they are willing to take steps to control emissions, but that they must be given space to build their economies. Although China is the largest carbon polluter and India is rapidly catching up, both countries lag far behind the industrial countries in emissions per person and still have huge populations mired in poverty. They don’t see emissions peaking anytime soon.
“We are still in the process of industrialization. We are also confronted with the enormous task of poverty eradication,” said Wei, acknowledging that the country’s emissions won’t peak by 2020.
“In order to eradicate poverty, to try to improve the living standards, certainly we need to develop our economy,” he said. “So the emissions will need to grow for a period of time.”
Extreme weather calls for action, U.N. climate chief says
By Alister Doyle
DOHA | Wed Nov 28, 2012 1:53pm EST
DOHA (Reuters) - Extreme weather from melting Arctic ice to Superstorm Sandy shows snail-paced U.N. climate talks have to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the head of the U.N. weather agency and its climate chief said on Wednesday.
"Climate change is taking place before our eyes," Michel Jarraud, the head of the U.N.'s weather agency, said of the shrinking of ice floating on the Arctic Ocean to a record low in September and other extremes.
And the first 10 months of 2012 were the ninth-warmest since records began in the mid-19th century, with early months cooled by a "La Nina" weather event in the Pacific, according to a report by Jarraud's World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
It also documented severe floods, droughts and heatwaves, in what the U.N. expected to add to pressure for action at the November 26-December 7 meeting among 200 nations in OPEC member Qatar.
"The message here for this conference is very clear," Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat told Reuters of extremes and rising emissions. "Governments need to hurry up and they need to be much more on track."
Superstorm Sandy, which struck the U.S. east coast after raging through the Caribbean, showed the United States "is not exempt from the vulnerabilities of climate change and that it also needs to do something," she said.
"We have had severe climate and weather events all over the world and everyone is beginning to understand that is exactly the future we are going to be looking about if they don't do something about it," she said.
SEA LEVELS
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N. panel of climate scientists, said the costs of defenses against higher sea levels would rise towards 2100 and could amount to five to 10 percent of gross domestic product of low-lying nations.
And between 75 and 250 million people in Africa alone could face greater stress on water supplies by 2020, hitting food output. "This would further adversely affect food security and exacerbate malnutrition," he said in a speech to the conference.
He said polls showed U.S. public opinion had swung towards wanting more action by President Barack Obama to slow global warming after Sandy. "But whether that's a lasting change it's too early to say," he told Reuters.
China, the United States, the European Union and India are the top emitters. None have announced plans to limit emissions at Doha despite wide pleas for action.
The U.N. meeting is struggling to overcome disputes about how to extend the Kyoto Protocol, the existing plan for cutting emissions by developed nations that will otherwise expire at the end of the year.
The European Union, Australia and a few other countries are willing to extend but Japan, Russia and Canada have pulled out, arguing that it is meaningless unless emerging nations led by China and India also sign up.
The United States never ratified the 1997 Kyoto pact. Without an extension of Kyoto, developing nations say they won't work for a global deal applicable to all and meant to be agreed by 2015 and enter into force by 2020.
Also, coal-dependent Poland won backing as the host for next year's U.N. climate talks after OPEC member Qatar, a double act that dismayed environmentalists who say both oppose action to drop fossil fuels and embrace greener energies.
"The prospect of Poland hosting the next global climate conference is hugely concerning. At a time when action is desperately needed, a host country should be firmly committed to climate protection," Greenpeace's Jiri Jerabek said.
Global Warming Threat: Permafrost Thawing Across Siberia And Alaska Poses New Concern, UNEP Reports
By Alister Doyle and Regan Doherty Posted: 11/27/2012 7:46 am EST Updated: 11/27/2012 9:03 am EST
DOHA, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Permafrost lands across Siberia and Alaska that contain vast stores of carbon are beginning to thaw, bringing with it the threat of a big increase in global warming by 2100, a U.N. report said on Tuesday.
A thaw of the vast areas of permanently frozen ground in Russia, Canada, China and the United States also threatens local homes, roads, railways and oil pipelines, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) said in the report which was released at the U.N. climate talks being held this week and next in Qatar.
"Permafrost has begun to thaw," Kevin Schaefer, lead author at the University of Colorado told a news conference in Doha.
An accelerating melt would free vast amounts of carbon dioxide and methane which has been trapped in organic matter in the subsoil, often for thousands of years, the report said.
Warming permafrost could release the equivalent of between 43 and 135 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, by 2100. That would be up to 39 percent of annual emissions from human sources.
Permafrost now contains 1,700 billion tonnes of carbon, or twice the amount now in the atmosphere, it said.
HIGHER TEMPERATURES
And a melt of the permafrost meant that U.N. projections for rising temperatures this century "might be too low", Schaefer said.
UNEP issued a report last week saying that rising world greenhouse gas emissions were on track to push up temperatures by between 3 and 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9F) by 2100.
That is far above a ceiling set by almost 200 nations at the U.N. climate talks in 2010 of limiting any rise to below 2 degrees C (3.6 F) to avert more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels.
But that report did not fully factor in the risks from the permafrost, UNEP said. A thaw would create a vicious circle, since the release of more greenhouse gases would trap more heat in the air and in turn accelerate the melting.
That could bring an irreversible, runaway effect.
Targets for emissions in any new treaty to combat global warming, which is meant to come into force by 2020 with curbs by all nations, "need to account for these emissions or we risk overshooting the 2°C maximum warming target," Schaefer said.
"Permafrost is one of the keys to the planet's future," Achim Steiner, head of UNEP, said in a statement. "Its potential impact on the climate, ecosystems and infrastructure has been neglected for too long."
The study said that a thaw could also undermine infrastrucutre, from bridges to power lines, and harm animal and plant life in the north, a region of forests and tundra.
It pointed to the 1994 failure of a pipeline to the Vozei oilfield in northern Russia, which led to a spill of 160,000 tonnes of oil, the world's largest terrestrial oil spill.
Authors suggested a special report about permafrost by the U.N. panel of climate experts and urged better monitoring of permafrost in the north.
But the vice-chair of the panel, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, said global reports by the panel due in 2013 and 2014 would include the latest findings. "It might be premature to say a special report is needed," he said. (Editing by Greg Mahlich)
National Wildlife Federation Naturalist David Mizejewski explores the relationship between sea ice and polar bears. As continued global warming leads to less ice in the arctic the bears have less opportunity to hunt for food. David outlines the direct link that sea ice has to the feeding habits of polar bears and why a warming climate is a danger to the species. With the help of Polar Bears International, NWF scientists learn first hand about the threat to these awesome creatures.
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