Changing Responses to Climate and Environmental Threats (2021)

We live in an era of more public cynicism and distrust.  We are also a nation of citizens who occasionally have strong and differing value priorities and political stances.  It can be troubling when our country does not seem that united and does not respond effectively in times of major crisis, such as in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Partisan political interests can undermine reasoned moral discourse, negotiation, and problem solving.   We can question our nation’s capacity for making important decisions when disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories exist and influence public perceptions of basic facts.  These and other reasons for pessimism exist, particularly for our responding successfully to increasing climate and environmental threats.  Rather than being greatly discouraged by existing attitudes, at least some of us detect reasons to be fairly optimistic that we can rise to the huge challenge of global environmental threats.   

Climate scientists have long warned us that many human production and consumption practices are not environmentally sustainable.   A large majority of the American public seem to believe that climate threats are real, alarming, and need to be confronted, according to recent polls and surveys.  The critical question is if we are actually willing to support policies and actions to avoid the worse consequences of climate and environmental threats.   I believe that the American public is at that point in time now, or will be very soon.    

The concept of “tipping points” was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his best-selling book over twenty years ago.  A tipping point is the moment in time when a phenomena, social behavior, or idea reaches such a level that it suddenly gains momentum and then spreads extremely quickly.   This concept has often been used to describe the precise time when future human survival becomes impossible as a consequence of global climate changes.  Reputable scientists disagree concerning exactly when a tipping point occurs for the impossibility to reverse climate conditions to ensure human survival.  Some scientists and commentators even claim that we are beyond that point now.  Most of them, though, indicate that this tipping point is coming in the near future, if significant change and investments for our future do not occur soon.    

We are obviously far away still from any tipping point for actual responses that counter climate and environmental threats.  Yet we finally do seem to be nearing a tipping point for serious commitments from the private and public sectors to combat these threats.  Why is that the case?          

First of all, the evidence of approaching disasters is becoming much more apparent to key decision makers.  We can see that the private sector is more committed to real changes with each passing year.  Major industries and corporations have disproportionate lobbying power and other influences on governmental policies.  The relatively short-term economic interests of larger corporations dominate their particular strategies, policies and actions.  But what started shifting decades ago is now increasingly clear.  Key economic priorities for more companies in the private sector are being viewed by CEOs and boards of directors as actually threatened by climate and environmental consequences.  When these consequences are viewed as more immediate and directly threatening, corporate management strategies and actions must take these threats into account.  For example, top executives of 70 large corporations, including Nestlé and PepsiCo, recently called on all governments to set policies to reach more ambitious goals related to the Paris climate agreement.     

Even top management teams at major fossil fuel corporations are impacted by changing perspectives on climate and environmental threats.  Activists winning seats on corporate boards (Exxon Mobil) and shareholder resolutions passing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Chevron) are in the news.  Whether it’s accelerated emissions cuts due to legal court rulings (Royal Dutch Shell) or corporate termination of huge pipeline construction projects due to political and protest efforts (the Keystone XL project by TC Energy), the messages being delivered to managers at traditional energy companies in 2021 are more difficult to ignore or resist.   

Second, there have been recent shifts in state-level commitments and policies, beyond renewed federal-level initiatives.  Louisiana is one example.  As heavily invested in traditional energy and chemical industries as Louisiana is, we would hardly expect our state to respond as soon or as dramatically as many other states.  But our state can ill afford to be much of a laggard given our greater vulnerabilities of coastlines and delta country which are impacted by hurricanes, storms, and flooding.  Governor John Bel Edwards last year committed the state to a 25-28% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, a 40-50% cut by 2030, and getting to “net zero” by 2050.  He announced in May 2021 plans for Louisiana to join the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan group of state governors committed to goals and actions to reduce emissions.  Louisiana became the first Gulf state to join this growing alliance. 

I’m probably more optimistic than most commentators concerning progress toward combating climate and environmental threats.  Yes, there are obviously those who still deny the need soon for serious environmental investments.  Even commitments and actions taken do not guarantee positive results in countering threats.  I do believe though that we can and will muster the critical mass to respond accordingly to more troubling global climate and environmental threats.  Technologies that already have developed will help tremendously.  Many of these methods have been described in publications and sources such as Project Drawdown, a nonprofit, global organization of scholars, scientists, and entrepreneurs founded in 2014.  These technologies and others being applied now will be developed further, and new ones will be discovered.  Climate and environmental threats are global, as are the talented scientists and technologists worldwide who are motivated and working together.  

Developing existing and new technologies and speeding up their actual application will demand large resource investments.  Actual commitment in the USA and in Louisiana to begin making many of these investments is a critical step that was delayed too long, but it is becoming more of a certainty.