“What have future generations done for us?” Justin Gillis from the New York Times quotes a banner hung from a freeway bridge in California. He says that there is an implied second question here: “Should we spend our heard-earned money trying to make the world better for them?”
These are no longer hypothetical questions. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Climate Assessment have issued reports that are pretty clear. Climate change is here right now and will be worse for future generations unless we do some hard work of installing more renewable energy and reducing our reliance on greenhouse gas producing fuels. We have 15 years before we make life miserable for our descendants.
James Gustave Speth, author of “The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Captialism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability,” is dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. In the preface to his book he writes, “All we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and biota and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today.”
Like almost all Americans, I am the descendant of immigrants who came to this country to make a better life for themselves and their children. They were willing to experience some privation, dislocation and loss of culture and customs so that those who came after could have a better life. We are the beneficiaries of that sacrifice and hope, and I for one do not want to say that the hope died with my generation.
We already have been told that the generation that follows us will not have as high a standard of living. That may be OK because we have used more than our fair share of the planet’s resources. But they are not going to live as long because of the way we have poisoned the soil, water, air and food.
Then add the destructive elements of climate change with its increased heat waves, droughts and floods, sea level rises, increase in certain diseases, ocean acidification and possible food shortages and we are giving them a tsunami just waiting to engulf them, a bubble loan that cannot be paid, a diagnosis of disastrous proportions, the kind of which the doctor says, “If you had just come earlier when you started experiencing symptoms, we could have done something.”
We know what we need to know. We have our diagnosis. We know our treatment: reduce our use of fossil fuels. It can be done if we have the political will. It can also be done if businesses get on board.
Ideally, a revenue neutral carbon tax passed by Congress would be a great help in making renewable energy play on the same field as fossil fuels and also help oil, coal, and gas pay for their contribution to environmental degradation. I am hopeful that enough Americans will say enough is enough to our dysfunctional Congress and that this solution will be adopted.
One thing that would be helpful for all of us to understand is that it is not true that we have to choose between jobs and the environment. On June 2 a REMI report (Regional Economic Model) will be released indicating that with a carbon tax scaling up to $100 a ton over 19 years we can get the emissions reductions we need and benefit our economy. Iowa is in one of the regions that would especially benefit.
The Rev. Barbara Schlachter is a retired Episcopal priest who is active in several environmental groups in Iowa City including 100Grannies for a Livable Future and Iowa City Climate Advocates.