Climate Change Controversies

Welcome back to my civic issues blog focusing on environments and progress. It is widely accepted that climate change is a real and serious issue caused by pollution and emissions from human industrialization. However, now that the cause is settled, we will be highlighting 3 key controversial solutions to the climate change crisis.

1. The Role of Nuclear Power

Nuclear Energy: Pros 

The United States is moving towards a green energy grid and soon harmful fossil fuels will become a thing of the past. However, it is uncertain how the country will fill the gaps for all the power fossil fuels currently generate. Solar power and wind power are excellent options, but these are dynamic and dependent on the elements. Solar power can generate thousands of megawatts one day and almost none the next. Conventional nuclear is steady rather than responsive and would provide enough stable and reliable energy. 

Nuclear Energy: Cons 

Nuclear power generates 20% of the U.S. electricity supply; it’s the single largest source of non-fossil energy generation in the U.S. and the second-largest globally. However, this is predicted to scale down because nuclear energy is expensive. At the V.C. Summer project in South Carolina, two new reactors were in their fifth year of construction were abandoned after $9 billion dollars had already been invested. 

Nuclear energy is being reinvented, to produce less waste, become smaller, more flexible, portable, better cooling reactors, and so much more. However, these projects are still in the works, and it is uncertain how much it’ll cost in the long run. Currently, the estimated commercial value would be $82 per MWh. To put that into perspective, gas at its peak is $64, wind is $40, and solar is $36. 

2. Migration:

Today 1% of the world is an unlivable hot zone, by 2070, this number will go up to 19%. Billions of people call this land home. Beginning 5 years ago, hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans fled north toward the United States. In a city called Alta Verapaz, where precipitous mountains covered in coffee plantations became dense, the dry forest gives way to broader gentle valleys the residents have largely stayed. Now, though, under a relentless confluence of drought, flood, bankruptcy, and starvation, almost all people have begun to leave. Almost everyone here experiences some degree of uncertainty about where their next meal will come from. Half the children are chronically hungry, and many are short for their age, with weak bones and bloated bellies. The families face the excruciating decision to stay in their holmes and suffer the effects of climate change or move out. They have chosen to migrate. 

Scientists have learned to project such changes around the world with surprising precision, but recently little has been known about the human consequences of those changes. As their land fails them, hundreds of millions of people from Central America to Sudan to the Mekong Delta will be forced to choose between flight or death. The result will almost certainly be the greatest wave of global migration the world has seen.

Is migration necessary as a result of the climate crisis? The March 2020 publication of the IPCC report on impact, adaption, and vulnerability led to headlines prophesying doom, with tales of climate change to displace millions. In fact, the report argued migration could provide a way for some to deal with climate change, reducing vulnerability for many populations. It also included much more, but the immigration issue could be folded into other news controversies. Similarly, those seeking to migrate because of climate change find themselves working within harsh and rigid legal and cultural systems which are the product of other political and economic problems and fights.

3. Geoengineering

Tampering with the chemicals and elements of the earth is extremely dangerous, however, it may be our only choice in the first against climate change. Some scientists argue this is our only option, the planet has run out of time. United States scientists are on the case, too. Most climate change solutions prevent the emissions of CO2 to stop any further damage to the environment.  With geoengineering technology, scientists will be able to directly remove CO2 gas from the air.  

The National Academies last October launched a study into sunlight reflection technologies, including their feasibility, impacts and risks, and governance requirements. The study’s perspective authors held their first meeting in Washington, D.C., at the end of April. Speakers included David Keith, a Harvard University physicist who has developed his own patented technology for using chemistry to remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere, and Kelly Wanser of the Marine Cloud Brightening Project, which is studying the efficacy of seeding clouds with sea salt and other materials to reflect more sunlight back into space. The project is preparing for future field trials.

Geoengineers have excited for centuries, but these solutions are extremely risky. Altering the cloud chemistry could lead to poisonous rain for years. Removing CO2 directly from the atmosphere could backfire and remove other gases useful to our planet and leave us defenseless.  American researchers back in the 1960s suggested floating billions of white objects such as golf balls on the oceans to reflect sunlight. In 1977, Cesare Marchetti of the Austria-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis discussed ways of catching all of Europe’s CO2 emissions and injecting them into sinking Atlantic Ocean currents. 

While these grand climate crisis solutions sound effective, if they were to backfire, the consequences would be astronomical. Our planet is running out of time, and these solutions could save us. However, if we fold all of our efforts into geoengineering, we take away from the problem of emitting CO2 gas in the first place! Business corporations and entire counties will have no problem continuing to pollute and destroy our planet if a “solution” is found. Are these big geoengineering ideas the answers to our prayers? Or are they an excuse to continue our businesses-as-usual pollution habits? 

Works Cited:

“10 New Climate Change Controversies – Now That the Cause Is Settled.” Road to Paris – ICSU, roadtoparis.info/top-list/10-climate-change-controversies-now-that-cause-settled/.

Fred Pearce • May 29, et al. “Geoengineer the Planet? More Scientists Now Say It Must Be an Option.” Yale E360, e360.yale.edu/features/geoengineer-the-planet-more-scientists-now-say-it-must-be-an-option.

Lustgarten, Abrahm. “The Great Climate Migration Has Begun.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 23 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/climate-migration.html.

Podesta, John. “The Climate Crisis, Migration, and Refugees.” Brookings, Brookings, 4 Sept. 2019, www.brookings.edu/research/the-climate-crisis-migration-and-refugees/.

“We’ve Been Having the Wrong Debate about Nuclear Energy ” Yale Climate Connections.” Yale Climate Connections, 28 July 2020, yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/weve-been-having-the-wrong-debate-about-nuclear-energy/.