Climate Change: Investigations and Great Big Walls

Let’s move away from politics for a moment and talk about climate change. There are two great stories in the July 14-28 issue of Rolling Stones.  The first is “The Exxon Investigation,” and the other is “Can New York be saved?” 

Try not to be too surprised…  An investigation into Exxon shows that they have known that climate change is real and that if we want to stop it’s devastating effects we will have to reduce burning fossil fuels.  They knew it because their did their owns studies in the early 1980s that confirmed what the majority of world scientists were saying. Now wait for it…  They intentionally tried to mislead people into thinking that the science wasn’t conclusive, so that their stock would not lose value. They paid millions to organizations to create doubt. The really cool part of the story is that the New York Attorney General is using the same strategy to go after Exxon, which was used to sue tobacco companies. We will have to see how this story turns out – people still smoke even when they know it’s killing them.

Can New York be saved?  Based on this story – probably not, and for the same reason nothing ever gets done: political will. No one is willing to stick their neck out to insist on long term solutions, when they have to run for re-election. So what they have come up is a great, big (10 foot) wall to protect Lower Manhattan.  It is supposed to be part of a larger project, but when you read the story, you will see that only the wealthiest people will benefit from “The Big Wall”, and it will be damn near impossible to protect all of their 500+ miles of coastline. I compare this solution to politicians wanting to just drain more water out of the California Delta region to save the Central California farm land. They don’t care what that will do to the delta environment or the people up north who depend on the Delta to make a living.  Big walls seem to be on everyone’s list of quick, cheap solutions these days – damn the consequences.