The problem with climate change explained by Bill McKibben

The problem with climate change is that it’s a timed test. If we don’t solve it very rapidly we will never solve it. I mean the sad part of this story is we knew everything there really was to know that really mattered back at the very beginning of the story. When you burn coal, gas, and oil you put CO2 in the atmosphere. We know that the molecular structure of CO2 traps heat that would otherwise radiate back out to space. We knew it was accumulating. The only things we didn’t know were how fast and how hard it was going to pinch. We are beginning to see this transition towards renewable and clean energy and that is a transition that will doubtless continue. Not just because it’s clean, but because these fuels are cheaper, too, than the fossil fuels they replace. The reason the Paris Climate Accords are not an official treaty is because at some point 10 or 15 years ago the rest of the world figured out that no treaty would ever get 2/3 of the vote in the U.S. Senate. The fossil fuel industry essentially owns one of our political parties. Its biggest contributors, the Koch brothers and their network, are one of the biggest oil and gas barons. And they continue to hold 50 seats in the Senate so it’s not an easy task to figure out how you go around it. It’s going to take continued efforts to soften some of their base and the most important of that work is what we’re calling the sort of “Just Transition” work, around making sure that workers in coal mines and oil fields have an easy transition to good-paying jobs. To the extent that that happens, some of that resistance will become less politically powerful. There’s been a shift in the zeitgeist of a profound dimension. Polling shows that most people now understand that climate change is a serious problem and they want government action. There’s been a decade of enormous organizing, of enormous engineering advance, and there’s been a decade of hideous climate effects. In California summer is a time of mild dread waiting for the next fire to break out. The Gulf Coast and Florida wait through hurricane season with bated breath. And that’s one of the reasons that so many of us continue to fight hard against these industries and try to weaken their political power. And the more that we can, the better the odds of some change along the way. Solar and wind and other clean technologies will come of their own accord. If we have enough time. But if it takes 75 years to get there, or even if it takes 25 years, then the world we run on sun and wind will be broken. And so the job of governments and all of us is to force the sprint, as it were. To make it happen much more quickly than we otherwise would.