Reversing Climate Change
“I can take down a dictator without firing a single shot.” These words echoed throughout the Assembly Hall during tenured MIT professor Donald Sadoway’s address to the Academy during Climate Action Day on Wednesday Feb. 11, 2015. Sadoway’s workshop came after a required keynote address by Bill McKibben, a leading climate change activist. McKibben’s address focused on oil monopolies and the power of activism in a highly capitalistic system. Sadoway eluded to the same concept: change is not powered by righteousness, but rather money and public demonstration.
Walking into a cramped assembly hall at 8:40 a.m is never fun, especially when the invited speaker begins by informing you that the future is bleak at best. According to McKibben, the atmosphere is already polluted with an unsafe amount of greenhouse gases and the levels are only continuing to rise. If consumption continues at the current rate, another threshold may be passed by the end of the century that will take millennia to reverse. To avoid corrupting the future of our planet for generations to come, we must withhold from using many of the natural gas reserves currently being exhausted on the planet, the exact opposite of what is currently happening.
Oil monopolies are attempting to tap into vast oil reserves, releasing toxic amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. 350 ppm is the threshold of the healthy amount of carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere. We currently reside at 400 ppm. The pollution levels in New Delhi are abhorrent and Beijing is following within its wake. The keynote soon transitioned into politics and capitalism, with McKibben highlighting the direct correlation between money and power. As Melissa and my article from last week highlighted, according to McKibben the currency of change is social movement. He exemplifies this with his 350 movement, a coalition making demonstrations in many countries around the globe. McKibben stands at the forefront of this movement and climate change.
Next came Sadoway’s workshop which still stands as testament to the wonders of tenure: he had no filter! Over the next compelling, intriguing and downright amazing hour, I watched a simple electrochemist morph into God. His energy storage device, shorthand for a high-tech battery, greatly surpasses lithium-ion and may very well be at the forefront of combating climate change.
Sadoway not only credited his battery to the future of combating climate change, but also to the catalyst in changing the global energy front. “If we displace the need for petroleum, then the price of oil right now is really arbitrary,” Sadoway said. “The oil producers know that what they ask for, they’ll get, because it’s a strategic commodity.”
He continued to explain that if the world economy didn’t rely as heavily upon oil, we may see prices dropping to near twenty dollars a barrel! “They [oil conglomerates] are going to start tearing each other’s eyes out because they’re going to be producing so much petroleum as they can, and we aren’t going to need that much. And then they go into a cost war,” Sadoway continued. Although he focused the talk on his battery, the presentation filled with technical jargon greatly emphasized the battery’s impact on the global scale as well as its political and economic impact.
Patagonia emphasized high quality in its products and that consumer spending should depend on dependability and functionality rather than low prices. Vincent Stanley, Director of Philosophy at Patagonia, highlighted an ad campaign where Patagonia users were advised to buy Patagonia products rather than excess clothing. The point he drove home was that although expensive, Patagonia merchandise lasts and is more eco-friendly than other alternatives.
Most, if not all, of the events on Climate Action Day highlighted ways human society must reverse this ever-growing problem before it is too late. We were given stats, thresholds and numerous line, bar and pie charts, but underlying it all was the undeniable fact that things are changing. Subtextually, however, most speakers hinted at the inevitable role politics and economics play into this ever-changing problem.
McKibben mentioned that if the keystone XL pipeline is built, it will jeopardize the future. Although it may provide short-term benefit for oil corporations, it would decimate the air quality and pollution would exponentiate from the amount of carbon released.
Four hours after his speech, the House of Representatives passed the bill allowing it to be built. Now it’s up to the President—who may hold the future in his hand. ♥
Will he do the right thing?