Local View: Fight global warming at home

Local View: Fight global warming at home
ROGER HOLMES, April 10, 2014 journalstar.com

This week the United Nations will release its latest assessment of global warming. By all reports, it will paint a frightening picture of the future on a heated-up planet. Without drastic measures, it will say, our fate is sealed. Are we capable of such measures?

Many, apparently including the editorial board of the Lincoln Journal Star, think not. Adaptation, not fundamental change, is either all that is warranted or all that is possible.

I am not yet ready to run up the white flag. While some of the effects of global warming have been made unavoidable by years of collective indifference to this man-made calamity, there is still time to mitigate rather than capitulate.

Measures to slow or halt global warming will not be easy or inexpensive; they will require sacrifice and fundamental changes in the way we live. But no one should imagine that “adaptation” will be any less disruptive or painful.

The task is as vast as it is daunting. We all contribute to global warming every day — we heat our houses with gas; we run our appliances and machines with coal-fired electricity; we buy food, clothing, computers and most everything else, the production and shipping of which rely heavily on fossil fuels.

You can, of course, not buy that pair of imported shoes, dial back the furnace a degree or two, or buy locally grown produce. These individual actions help. But, as the U.N. report will indicate, we are in need of more, much more. Sound impossible? Remember that in a matter of months, we redirected almost the entire U.S. economy to the production of materiel and services for fighting World War II. Global warming poses no less dangerous a threat and will require a similar commitment to remedy.

What can be done? We don’t have a lot of time to ponder answers. The processes driving global warming are relentless and cumulative. So, rather than waiting for a national or even state initiative, I think we, the citizens of Lincoln, can ourselves initiate some of the bold action required.

Every day almost every adult in Lincoln is directly responsible for spewing greenhouse gases into the air. All it takes is a turn of the ignition key in your car. We, and our fellow U.S. citizens, produce nearly half of the greenhouse gases released in the world by cars and light trucks. There is something we, here in Lincoln, can do about this.

We can challenge ourselves and our elected officials to reduce by half the number of personal vehicles on Lincoln’s roads in 10 years. This is doable entirely on our own. We wouldn’t need to negotiate with distant power plants, await the creation of electric or hydrogen-fueled cars, or find local sources for all the goods we depend on. We have only to figure out how to get where we want to go — half the time — by means other than our personal cars. Those means are already at hand; what we have to provide is the effort and ingenuity to put them together.

And, most of all, the commitment to do so.

What good would it do? Admittedly, our efforts alone would hardly remove a ripple from the sea of greenhouse gas emissions. But what if we inspire other towns and cities to action? We, as members of the worldwide community, have to start somewhere. Why not at home?