TRIAL BY FIRE

INTRODUCTION

The Berkeley, California City Council declared the climate emergency is worse than the World War II emergency. Children's book author Demi recounted a poignant story originally told by the Buddha.

“Once there was a man who had many children. While he was away… his house caught fire with the children still inside. Smoke and flames encircled the house when he returned. ‘Run out the door!’ he cried. But the children did not realize that they were in danger and continued to play. Suddenly the father thought of a new way to lure them outside. ‘I have new toys for you to play with,’ he shouted...” [A moment later, the children ran outside to safety.]

“The world is like a burning house. People are trapped inside, unaware of the flames of petty, worldly desires that threaten to destroy them.”

Similarly, our greenhouse gases ("GHGs") are burning up the planet. If your house is on fire, you don't:

• - continue with business-as-usual,
• - knock people over as you rush to the exit, or
• - quietly exit without urging others to do so.

Just as we first urge others out the door before leaving, we must first spread the word about GHGs and, as soon as possible, change our ways. There's no time to lose.

I’ll first outline some important numbers and dates. In the second half of this post, I discuss how I’ve changed my lifestyle to reduce my GHGs. If we collectively do so and communicate the best climate solutions, then we will solve climate change.

KEY NUMBERS AND TIMELINE

In December 2015, at the COP21 climate summit in Paris, 196 member countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement to pursue “efforts to limit” global warming to 1.5°C.

However, we recently eclipsed 415 ppm of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere, which is far above the safe zone of 350 ppm or less. This 350 ppm boundary was identified by the Stockholm Resilience Centre and is widely regarded as the established high bar limit, and was published in a 2009 Nature article "A safe operating space for humanity".

Consequently, the Earth is rapidly heating to “catch up” with our high atmospheric carbon levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a special report entitled “Global Warming of 1.5^o C." It stated that, “[g]lobal warming is likely to reach 1.5^o C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate. (high confidence)”

1. But there’s a little more to it than that. We need to avert global warming for two reasons.
   1. To prevent severe weather events and food and water shortages in a +1.5^o C world; and
   2. To avoid setting off the ice carbon bomb.

   Dr. Philip B. Duffy, Exec. Dir. of the Woods Hole Research Center (and former Senior Advior at the White House National Science and Technology Council) explained it best:

   “24% of the northern hemisphere land area is permafrost. We think that in that permafrost there is about 1500 gigatonnes of carbon, and for context that is about twice is in the atmosphere. [A]s the Arctic warms...[it] induces what we call a climate feedback loop where warming feeds more thawing. It is absolutely essential that this feedback loop not get going strongly. If it does there’s simply no way to control it, so where does the scientific failure come in….[It comes in] because none of this is in climate models and none of this is considered in climate policy discussions.”
   

   
   

   In January 2018, Harvard scientist Dr. James Anderson declared in a Forbes article that we must rapidly engage in a massive global movement to save ourselves from climate change. Dr. Anderson is widely considered one of the foremost climate scientists. The article stated:
   

   “The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero," Anderson said, with 75 to 80 percent of permanent ice having melted already in the last 35 years.

   This is the proverbial bad news. Stay positive and stay strong. ☺

   For the big picture on how we will collectively solve climate change, see Mirror Reflection, Vegan Reforestation, and Our Strategy. Below I outline the practical steps you can take to help solve climate change.

   ***A special note about coal. Just as timing is essential in an emergency, the timing of the climate solutions are essential. The vast majority of aerosols (fancy for air pollution that cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight) come from coal-fired power plants that do NOT have sulfur dioxide (SO2) scrubbers (flue-gas desulfurization). We cannot afford to take these dirty coal-fired power plants offline before we go vegan and reforest vast tracts of land. (Please check out our short 2 minute video "Sailesh Rao: The Best Plan to Reduce Greenhouse Gases" in the Carbon Goals of our app for a detailed explanation.) The world’s top SO2 emitter countries are India, Russia and China. Adding scrubbers to these coal-fired plants and eventually retiring them is inevitable since SO2 causes acid rain. (In the US, there are about 600 coal or oil-fired power plants; they are the dominant emitters of mercury, acid gases and many toxic metals.) Long story short, immediately switching to renewables is the way to go for most people in the US and Europe. In India, Russia and China, it depends quite a bit on your local energy provider.

   STOP, DROP, AND ROLL WITH IT

   As to our personal decisions, Nandhini and I address the climate emergency this way:

   1. First and foremost, we communicate strategy.
      1. Please see the videos in the Roadmap section of our United in Heart app for more information.
   2. We went vegan (June 24, 2017) – the day after I attended Sailesh Rao’s talk. Two reasons.
      1. Veganism is 5-15 times more efficient of a food source per acre than carnism. Reforestation of 41% of the extra land made available through veganism will sequester huge sums of carbon – more than the carbon added to the atmosphere from 1750 – 2015!
      2. Animal agriculture GHGs comprise 51% or more of GHG emissions.
   3. We signed up for and receive Green Source energy through PGE (available here in Portland, Oregon USA), which is 100% renewable energy! They advertise that you can “[g]et all of your electricity from renewable energy for about $6 more per month.”
      1. For non-PGE folks, search this database for an equivalent renewable energy source. Or just call your energy company up!
   4. We went solar.
      1. First we checked the solar savings potential of our roof on Google Project Sunroof, which is a free solar calculator with nifty heat maps.
      2. Next, we received two free quotes from solar panel installation companies…and jumped in feet first!
   5. We went electric.
      
      1. On January 3, 2020 we bought a 2016 Nissan Leaf with 35,000 miles listed for $13,300 ($14,034 was the actual purchase price factoring in Oregon registration fees).
      2. We bought our car at Platt Auto Group, and highly recommend folks check out their electric vehicle spreedsheets. Platt Auto is the largest EV distributor to Canada. I understand their listings are competitively priced and non-negotiable.
      
      
   6. We plant veganic, food-bearing trees.
      1. Veganic: Animal Ag. clears forests; so using manure to plant trees doesn’t make sense. To date, I am not aware of any major veganic tree planting organization other than Sadhana Forest (December 2020). So my wife Nandhini and I created our United in Heart app and documentary to empower people to plant food forests through Sadhana Forest at $1.50 - $1.75 per tree. A great price for high quality tree plantings.
      2. Food forests: Nandhini and I donate $105 per month. $105 on our app plants 60 veganic fruit, nut and edible leaf trees and thus uplifts 1 family a month. So between the two of us that's 12 families every year! The trees uplift families by establishing food security for them on their own land in Haiti, Kenya, and India within 5-7 years.
      
      
   7. Air travel.
      1. We ceased all recreational flying.
      2. In my humble opinion, flying in this day and age is like driving 90 miles per hour in a school zone. It's fine for emergency purposes. Otherwise, it shows a reckless disregard for life.

   Someday we hope to:

   1. switch / modify our gas appliances to electric ones (water heater, oven and stove). Natural gas is a sunset industry because methane (86 times more powerful than CO2 in the first 20 years) seeps out in the distribution process. Accordingly, Berkeley California became the first city in the world to ban natural gas in new construction homes.

   Remember, we must act fast and spread the word. If we shift collective consciousness, then governments will follow suit and rapidly engage in vegan reforestation.