Science Can Explain the Climate Crisis

Today, 80 percent of all the energy used in the world comes from burning fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas. Though mostly invisible — every minute of every day, all around the world — there are billions of tiny and large fires burning these fuels. Under the hood, in the internal combustion engines of cars, trucks, boats and planes, these fuels are being combusted. Huge power plants fire-up these fuels to generate electricity. Inside many homes, tiny flames power our furnaces, hot water heaters, clothes dryers, stoves and ovens.

Science has connected the dots. We burn these fuels; they pollute the air; we breathe in their toxic pollution; millions die from respiratory disease. Their carbon pollution accumulates in the atmosphere, trapping the sun’s heat like a blanket; the planet overheats, creating extreme weather and more death and destruction.

As the planet’s temperature increases, polar ice melts and ocean water expands, causing sea levels to rise and flood coastal communities. The hotter air sucks moisture from land and vegetation, creating drought and conditions ideal for wildfires. Hotter air also holds more water vapor, so that rain more often comes in deluges, like an atmospheric river. Hotter temperatures form long-lasting heat domes making life for all living things unbearable. This is what an economy fueled by coal, oil and gas looks like.

In essence, the climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis. The disease, death, and devastation we are experiencing are happening only because we have chosen to use these particular fuels rather than others. There are other energy options. Clean, renewable energy sources are readily available to replace fossil fuels. Indeed, solar, and wind energy are already cheaper in many places. These alternative fuels produce energy in a safer way and without disrupting our climate. Rather than burning stuff, we could simply point solar panels at the sun or place windmills in a breeze. After decades of study, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that the technologies and policies needed to mitigate climate change already exist — the only real obstacles to a clean energy future are politics and the fossil fuel industry, the IPCC concluded.

Politics will determine if — and when — we phase out these destructive fuels and transition to a clean energy future. While science explains how we created the climate crisis, politics holds the solutions. Political decisions — who we vote for, which parties and policies we support — will determine whether we decarbonize our economy before climate impacts overwhelm us.

Unfortunately, the political arena is heavily influenced by fossil fuel companies and their political allies. Through well-documented campaigns of deceit, deception and delay, the fossil fuel industry has successfully used its financial and political power to ensure the continuation of its business, regardless of the scientifically proven harms to the climate, environment and public health. The industry has spent millions to confuse and distract us from gathering the political will to quit these fuels and transition to clean alternatives. Their tactics are often subtle. They include promoting the idea of “carbon footprint,” which shifts our focus from their polluting fuels to our purported wasteful lifestyles, attempting to convince us that the climate crisis is our fault, not theirs. To justify producing more and more coal, oil and gas they spend millions promoting unproven technologies, including some that aim to capture and store emissions, rather than reduce emissions in the first place.

The Los Angeles Times put it this way in a recent editorial: “So much needless human suffering and ecological destruction could be avoided if oil, coal and gas companies saw the existential threat their business model poses and moved quickly to transition into selling safer, less expensive and more reliable renewable energy.” Instead, enriched with record profits, these companies are backtracking from climate pledges and resisting any efforts to give up their lucrative business. The L.A. Times editorial concluded, “We ought to be stigmatizing them as morally repugnant for continuing to add fuel to a house that’s on fire.”

In America today, our two major political parties could not be more different when it comes to climate. The Republican Party has consistently sided with fossil fuel interests in support of policies that continue and expand production and use of these fuels. In fact, 52 percent of House Republicans and 60 percent of Senate Republicans in the 117th Congress were climate deniers — denying the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change. The party’s climate plan sets no goals for reducing emissions and advocates increased use of fossil fuels.

Democrats, on the other hand, are incorporating climate policy at every level of government and have enacted the Inflation Reduction Act into law without a single Republican vote. This legislation alone promises to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030 while adding millions of jobs and improving health.

The only way to stop global warming and the rogue industry causing it is through political action, which means voting for those politicians who support phasing out fossil fuels and against those who don’t.

Of course, there are outliers in each party who are out of step with their party’s agenda — but on the whole, only one political party offers the political leadership we need to meet the climate crisis. In upcoming elections, and until Republicans support a clean energy future, let’s give Democrats the majorities they need to enact effective legislation, break the grip of a recalcitrant fossil fuel industry, and build a safe and sustainable economy in which Americans and all the world’s people can flourish.

Robert Taylor previously worked as an economic analyst for Shell oil company and is a freelance journalist who specializes in environmental issues. He was a contributor to “Reaching Net Zero: What it takes to solve the global climate crisis,” published in 2021.