We've all heard the climate scientists warning us that we need to act as soon as possible to reduce our emissions and stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. But somehow most people still don't usually fully grasp the extent of our actions when it comes to polluting the Earth.
What we are doing to the atmosphere now is going to leave a lasting impact for millennia, according to Shauna Theel, a clean energy policy expert and a Louis Bacon Environmental Leadership Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Theel recently spat out 10 amazing tweets that completely sum up what we are doing to the Earth, the "long tail" of climate change, and how our actions now will impact our descendants. The tweets came out of what she called a "sobering talk" that Harvard professor Daniel Schrag, the Director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, gave to Theel's Energy Policy class.
It went something like this:
There's currently more CO2 in the atmosphere than at any other time in human history (1) pic.twitter.com/pgowTeVTBz
— Shauna Theel (@ShaunaDeNada) September 10, 2015We WILL be at 500 ppm. The question is how much higher. No climate scientist can tell you exactly what that will lead to. (2)
— Shauna Theel (@ShaunaDeNada) September 10, 2015But it will be dramatic and difficult to deal with. We are doing an experiment on the Earth that hasn't been done in millions of years (3)
— Shauna Theel (@ShaunaDeNada) September 10, 2015Half of what's in the atmosphere now will still be there 1,000 years from now. 1/3 will still be there 20,000 years from now. (4)
— Shauna Theel (@ShaunaDeNada) September 10, 2015Decisions we make now will not save us from climate effects we have already locked in. They will have a moderate impact on our children (5)
— Shauna Theel (@ShaunaDeNada) September 10, 2015Decisions we make now will have a dramatic effect on people 1000s of years from now. That is the long tail of climate change. (6)
— Shauna Theel (@ShaunaDeNada) September 10, 2015We may not be willing to pay in order to avoid that, but should we morally? What will those in the future think of us now? (7)
— Shauna Theel (@ShaunaDeNada) September 10, 2015The timescales of climate change mean we need to think about cumulative emissions reductions, annual reductions are a bad measure. (8)
— Shauna Theel (@ShaunaDeNada) September 10, 2015Natural gas reduces our short-term emissions but may lock us into a fossil economy. Our policies need to be shaped around the long tail (9)
— Shauna Theel (@ShaunaDeNada) September 10, 2015So stick that in someone's pipe to smoke next time they tell you renewable energy will raise our electric bills a few cents. :)
— Shauna Theel (@ShaunaDeNada) September 10, 2015Enough said.
