[Massplanners] The United States and Climate Change

[Mark Archambault]

To Massplanners,
The letter to the editor I post below, which I sent to the Boston Globe recently, was prompted by my realization, recently reinforced by the Supreme Court decision gutting the EPA's authority to regulate power plant emissions - that nothing will be done about climate change in time to prevent the worst-case scenarios as modeled by climate scientists.  I believe it's pertinent because it has a bearing on what we as Planners do every day.  If the economic growth we promote leads to warming that contributes to societal collapse and ecological meltdown in several decades, shouldn't we be doing more to sound the alarm and perhaps even, gasp, get political to a degree? Shouldn't we be advocating for a steady-state economy? It doesn't seem to me that we can decouple economic growth from intensive reliance on fossil fuels, without a World War II type global mobilization to change the way our economy is structured.  These thoughts prompted me to write the following.  I sent it as a private citizen and didn't mention my profession.
Let's Face It:
Let's face it, the United States isn't going to address the causes of climate change in a timeframe that will matter. Between the Supreme Court, all Senate Republicans and Senator Joe Manchin, the USA has lost the last best opportunities to transition its economy from over-reliance on fossil fuels (Build Back Better, the EPA Clean Power Plan).  If the United States doesn't take the lead on seriously cutting its emissions, can we expect other countries to do better? Consider that the extreme heat waves, wildfires, superstorms and flooding we're now seeing are with an increase of only 1.2 C in global average temperatures over the pre-industrial climate. What will conditions be like in two to three decades when the world hits the ominous 2.0 C degree threshold, with an increase of at least 3.0 C being likely by the end of the century?  Warming past 2.5 - 3 C will likely feed on itself no matter the level of human emissions. The World Bank has stated that warming of 4.0 C is 'incompatible with global civilization'.  Will humanity rise to the challenge or keep on with a business as usual that will bring civilization and Nature to its knees?
Mark Archambault
(Ayer Town Planner
Town Hall, One Main Street
Ayer, MA 01432)

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://masscptc.org/pipermail/massplanners_masscptc.org/attachments/20220719/fa76c083/attachment.htm>