Interview with Emily Mah on the Williamson Cattle Company Ranch (where Jack Williamson wrote his earliest SF.)

You may have heard about this. Sunday morning early, a truck carrying almost 9000 gallons of gasoline hit a guardrail, rolled over, burst into flames, and effectively brought traffic in the East Bay to a screaming halt. The damage is pretty spectacular–the miraculous thing is that the thing happened at 3am, no other cars were involved, and even the driver escaped, albeit with second degree burns–but it’s confined to a relatively small chunk of highway. Unfortunately, it’s a relatively key chunk of highway, known around these parts as the Macarthur Maze.

The Maze connects several different highways in Oakland, leading on and off the Bay Bridge. For all those people who live in the East Bay and work in San Francisco who drive to work, this is long-term trouble. The problem is steel. As I understand it, the actual construction work would go pretty quickly, but it may take a long time to get the steel. There’s an international shortage of steel, it seems. So commuters and travelers are going to have to get used to detours for six months at a minimum. I’m hoping this means a permanent increase in public transportation, but given the devotion of Bay Area drivers to their cars, that may not be very likely.

The SF writer in me (especially the SF writer in me who wrote a post-apocalyptic novel set in New York City) is fascinated by the image of a melted highway. It might be more SFnal if the highway had been tied into a neat bow, but what we got is still pretty spectacular.

Update: Corrected carbon dioxide levels to reflect latest research.

Shakespeare once asked, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

What we name things, for the most part, is arbitrary. Numbers, on the other hand—despite what I told my sister when we were young*—are non-negotiable. They are what they are, and they are the same no matter what you name them. Three apples is three apples if you live in Delhi, New York, or Pluto.

I’ve avoided posting regarding global warming lately, despite the numerous milestones that have recently been reached, in large part because the main verdict in the latest IPCC findings is so clear, and so dire. To paraphrase the Oracle, you seem like good people, and I hate giving good people bad news.

But the news is dire. There is no getting around it. Business as usual means that eventually our atmosphere will contain 1,000 ppm of carbon dioxide, resulting in green skies, bacteria-choked, purple-and-green seas, a sodden, dead, steamed, ecosystem. Maybe some small subset of humanity will ultimately survive, albeit greatly diminished, under the business-as-usual scenario. And no doubt in several tens of millions of years, there will be another thriving ecosystem, if Earth has another cycle or so in her, as I suspect she does. But it does not take a lot of imagination to see her moving on without us, and without all the marvels of life that surround us, on the land, in the skies, and in the seas.

When I first heard that many experts believe we are nearing global peak oil, if we are not already there, I thought that maybe that would mean at least the worst global warming effects would be averted. But it actually might make things worse rather than better. For instance, our system of large-scale agriculture, which feeds about 6.5 billion people (more numbers!), depends upon natural gas for the fertilizers that boost yields enough to feed so many. It also depends on transportation to carry the goods to distant lands. Contrary to what many believe, peak oil does not mean the end of oil. It means the end of cheap oil. It means our civilization will be struggling to suck in enough energy to support itself, like an emphyzema patient trying to get enough air into his lungs, while governments become overwhelmed by crisis, less able to afford research into alternate energy technologies, and so forth.

Global warming deniers seem to be gradually losing the public relations argument that the science is not there, and are now arguing that there is no point in doing anything, or that the effects might even be good. But don’t let their obfuscation, nor the complexity of the minutiae buried in the science of global warming, fool you. Climate science is hugely complex. There is room for discussion about the size of various effects. Scientists are notorious for being cautious in their explanations, with lots of caveats and digressions.

But there is no ambiguity about one thing. Further global warming means lots of people will die, and many more species will go extinct. Pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentrations were at 280 ppm. They are now at 381, and headed upward at an accelerating rate. Regardless of what we do, there will be famine, drought, sea level rises. Violent storms. Heat waves. There is no way to stop global warming. But we can put the brakes on. Scientists believe that if we can cap our emissions such that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 goes no higher than 450 ppm, we can avoid the worst outcomes. The higher we go, the worse the outcomes. The worst outcomes are truly catastrophic.

My family has two hybrids, now. As soon as the technology is available, we are going to convert our cars to plug-ins. We purchase wind energy (90% of our energy, anyway, the maximum allowed here in NM) to heat our home. I have decided to begin bicycling to the grocery store and pharmacy, and to use canvas bags (the plastic ones use petroleum) and buy locally grown produce and meat whenever possible. The experts also recommend unplugging our appliances, when they are not in use—they tell us up to 20% of our energy use is the slow drain of plugged-in, turned-off appliances. Using compact fluorescents in lieu of incandescents not only cuts way down on carbon dioxide emissions, it saves you lots of money.

This all sounds so trivial, but it makes a difference. And it is within your grasp.

Folks, I’m not shitting you. Global warming is the single biggest issue of our time. You don’t have to do everything. Just pick one thing to do differently, to reduce your impact. Find the political will to pressure your representatives to regulate carbon emissions. Find the personal will to make a few small changes in your life. It will make a difference. Act now.

That’s what the numbers are telling us.

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*I insisted, most persuasively, I’m told, that at higher altitudes, two plus two equalled five due to the decrease in gravity. I didn’t believe it but just wanted to torment her. I’ve since learned that two plus two can indeed equal five, for sufficiently high values of two and sufficiently low values of five. Nice to find out that for sufficiently high values of two, I’m not a terrible liar.