ANN ARBOR, MI — If there’s anyone in Michigan who really understands the nature of climate change, it’s Henry Pollack, an emeritus professor of geophysics and part of a panel on the topic that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
Dr. Pollack knows how serious the potential effects of a warming earth may be; he is the author of a highly reviewed 2010 book on the topic, A World Without Ice, and has been doing research into the changing nature of the earth for decades.
Yet he is not willing to say things are hopeless – or to despair. “With every difficulty there is an opportunity,” he said during an interview at the University of Michigan last week, the school where he earned his doctorate in 1963 and has done award-winning research on all seven continents for more than half a century.
He knows the world has warmed, and calculates that man-made activity has been responsible for most of that since about 1950.
But he thinks it is not too late to essentially save the planet, or at least most of it, if we are willing to act.
“There is a lot that can be done. The difficulty is to persuading everyone who needs to be persuaded that not only does it needs to be done, but it needs to be done quickly.”
That’s in part a political problem, of course. Dr. Pollack knows that the Trump Administration doesn’t share the view that man-made climate change is a top priority.
But everything he knows indicates it should be. Three years ago, 195 of the world’s nations signed on to the Paris Agreement on climate change, pledging to take action to try to limit greenhouse gas emissions to control rising world temperatures.
The goal was to make sure that average temperatures in 2100 were no more than two degrees higher than before the industrial era began – they are already more than one degree now.
That’s critically important, because warmer temperatures mean melting polar ice and rising water levels that could threaten the lives and livelihood of millions.
That would be hard enough to achieve – but in recent months, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group that shared in Al Gore’s Nobel Prize, has been calling for a new goal: a decade-long campaign to make sure temperatures rise by only 1.5 degrees by the turn of the next century.
Will that be easy? Not at all, given that both the Trump Administration and China are opposed to doing what is needed.
But it may be crucial to saving millions, the geologist said.
“I wouldn’t say it is too late to save most settings. The most vulnerable right now are regions that are vulnerable to rising sea levels – the Mississippi Delta, the Nile Delta, the Ganges.”
Only a small rise in water levels could mean that millions might become homeless, and especially in a crowded country like India, it isn’t easy to see where they would go.
That could easily have effects that would reach the Great Lakes as well. But regardless of whatever politicians are in office, there are a number of positive signs. More energy-efficient cars, for example.
“The low-hanging fruit has always been – quit wasting energy. The cheapest and cleanest energy you’ll ever find is that you don’t use,” he noted with a small grin. For years, there has been a strong and growing move to more and more renewable sources of energy – primarily wind and solar, which emit no greenhouse gases.
The use of coal is certain to keep declining, Dr. Pollack said, regardless of any particular political policies.
Still, the stuff that causes global warming – the burning of carbon-based fuels – still account for about 80 percent of our energy use. Nuclear energy is clean, as far as reduced carbon emissions and the earth-warming greenhouse gasses are concerned.
But the costs associated with building new nuclear plants are tremendous, and politically out of favor. That leaves conservation and a faster move to renewables as the main ways of getting there.
What is needed is more incentives to move business, industry and consumers to cleaner energy. “Right now, as far as sending greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, utilities, automobile users, everyone – they get to treat the atmosphere as an open sewer.
“We don’t allow them to pollute lakes and rivers that way. Oh, there are rules on particulate matter, but the climate-changing aspects are still a free ride.”
That needs to be addressed, but he thinks it may not be that long before we do. Twenty years ago, Professor Pollack got a call asking if he could come to the White House to meet with Vice-President Gore about climate change.
“I looked around to see which of my colleagues was playing a practical joke on me,” he said. But the call was real, and he and the vice-president have become friends and close allies.
Dr. Pollack, now a youthful 82, is a close advisor to Mr. Gore’s Climate Reality Project, which has trained perhaps 40,000 activists to speak and write about the issue in their communities.
He is also intrigued by the “Green New Deal” legislation that was introduced in Congress this year. “There are a lot of things here, but climate is sort of the foundation,” he said.
Henry Pollack knows it will never be enacted as a package, but he thinks some of it may well be – and it does raise awareness.
“With every difficulty there’s an opportunity,” he said again.
And if this is an opportunity to help show that the costs of slowing climate change now would be so much less than the costs of dealing with the consequences of doing nothing … he’ll take it.
