Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 94

The U.S. Government Wants To Cut Food Waste In Half

Food waste is a huge problem — each year, around 40 percent of food in the United States ends up as waste, contributing to food insecurity and climate change and costing the country billions of dollars. If the greenhouse gas emissions created when food waste decomposes were a country, it would rank only behind the United States and China in terms of contribution to global emissions.

Over the past few years, advocates — aided by successful pilot programs at some retail stores — have waged campaigns aimed at educating consumers about the woes of food waste. Now, the United States government is stepping up its contribution to the fight.

An average family of four leaves more than two million calories, worth nearly $1,500, uneaten each year

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency announced the first official national goal for decreasing food waste across the country. Launched in partnership with state and local governments, private sector companies, and charitable organizations, the goal aims at reducing food waste by 50 percent by 2030.

“The United States enjoys the most productive and abundant food supply on earth, but too much of this food goes to waste,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said during the announcement. “An average family of four leaves more than two million calories, worth nearly $1,500, uneaten each year. Our new reduction goal demonstrates America’s leadership on a global level in in getting wholesome food to people who need it, protecting our natural resources, cutting environmental pollution and promoting innovative approaches for reducing food loss and waste.”

The announcement, which comes a week before the United Nations will meet to address global sustainable development goals, was met with praise by both environmental groups and industry. Leslie Sarasin, president and CEO of the Food Marketing Institute, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that since the food retail industry operates on “razor-thin” margins, reducing food waste makes good economic sense.

Dana Gunders, project scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Food and Agriculture program, told ThinkProgress that the announcement marked “a historic day for anyone who eats and wants to do so into the future.”

“We just can’t afford to continue wasting food, and I’m thrilled to see the administration is recognizing that,” Gunders said.

Food waste has been growing in the United States since the Second World War, nearly tripling from 12.2 million tons in the 1960s to 35 million tons in 2012. Over the same period of time, the number of food insecure Americans — those who have a problem enjoying consistent access to food — has grown from one in 20 in 1968 to one in six in 2014.

When food is thrown away without being consumed, however, it does more than contribute to food insecurity — it also helps to worsen climate change. Food that is thrown away ends up in landfills where decomposes, releasing methane — a potent greenhouse gas 86 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Globally, the total emissions released from food waste in 2007 was more than twice the amount of greenhouse gases released by all the road transportation in the United States in 2010. Food that is wasted also means that all the resources that go into making food — fossil fuels for farm equipment and transport, water for irrigation, land for farming — are wasted as well.

“Let’s feed people, not landfills,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said of the announcement. “By reducing wasted food in landfills, we cut harmful methane emissions that fuel climate change, conserve our natural resources, and protect our planet for future generations. Today’s announcement presents a major environmental, social and public health opportunity for the U.S., and we’re proud to be part of a national effort to reduce the food that goes into landfills.”

There’s not one action the government could take that is going to achieve these reductions

This isn’t the first time that the government has waded into the issue of food waste — in 2013, the USDA and EPA launched a program called the U.S. Food Waste Challenge, which brought together food producers, retailers, consumers, nonprofits, and government agencies for the shared purpose of reducing food waste. That program, however, did not set any official targets for reduction, instead focusing on reduction through increased awareness of the issue. Beyond setting a specific reduction target, it’s unclear how yesterday’s announcement goes beyond the U.S. Food Waste Challenge. As of publication, the USDA had yet to respond to a ThinkProgress request for clarification.

The reductions are voluntary, but Secretary Vilsack told NPR that there are many ways that even voluntary measures could help reduce food waste, such as programs that educate consumers about how to shop and cook in ways that reduce waste. According to NRDC, about 25 percent of the food that Americans buy is thrown away.

Still, some worry that the new targets put too much pressure on the consumer, without tackling food waste that occurs at the farm and retail level.

“I think [the reduction goals] are a good step to show federal leadership by way of a goal,” Jordan Figueiredo, food waste activist, told ThinkProgress. “However, they are very consumer-focused and seem to have forgotten that more than half of all wasted food comes before the store and home.”

Figueiredo is the figure behind @UglyFruitAndVeg, a social media campaign aimed at bringing attention to food waste caused by industry standards that encourage retailers to prioritize aesthetics over nutrition and safety. Earlier this summer, Figueiredo teamed up with nutritionist Stefanie Sacks to launch a petition aimed at encouraging Walmart and Whole Foods to sell “ugly” produce at a reduced cost, similar to programs piloted in France and the U.K.

Gunders cautioned, however, that there isn’t a silver bullet for tackling the issue of food waste.

“There’s not one action the government could take that is going to achieve these reductions. It’s going to need to be a set of different programs and policies and funding priorities, and it’s also going to need to be a partnership with the food industry, local governments, and Americans overall,” she said. As far as tangible steps the government could take to reduce food waste, Gunders suggests “low hanging fruit” like better food waste data or standardized expiration dates.

Gunders agrees with Figueiredo that the preliminary announcement lacked hard details on exactly how the USDA and EPA plan to cut Americans’ food waste in half in just 15 years, but she said that it signals a step in the right direction. When Gunders released NRDC’s initial report on food waste in 2012, she told ThinkProgress, hardly anyone was talking about the issue.

“Now it’s 2015, and we have our government setting pretty aggressive goals on the subject,” Gunders said. “Even if they don’t have all the nuts and bolts worked out, it’s a clear indication that we’ve come a long way.”

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Climate ChangeFood Waste

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The Planet Set Three Major Heat Records In August

Like a broken record, we are breaking records for temperature over and over and over again. NOAA’s latest monthly State of the Climate Report reports that the Earth just experienced the hottest August on record, the hottest summer (June to August) on record, and the hottest year to date.

And it wasn’t even close. Each of those records was broken by 0.18°F (or more). So, yes, 2015 is going to be the hottest year on record — by far. Last month, climate scientist Jessica Blunden, who works with NOAA, said it’s “99 percent certain that it’s going to be the warmest year on record.” That is crystal clear from this NOAA chart:

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Year-to-date temperature anomalies for 2015 (black line) to the six warmest years on record: 2014, 2010, 2013, 2005, 2009, and 1998 (via NOAA). Each month along each trace represents the year-to-date average temperature: The January value is the January anomaly (departure from the 20th century average temperature), the February value is the average of both January and February, and so on.

Again, there never was any slowdown in surface temperature warming. This year won’t just top the previous global temperature record set just last year, 2015 will crush 2014. That’s especially likely since the strong underlying global warming trend is being boosted by an emerging “Godzilla El Niño,” as a NASA oceanographer put it.

Bottom line: 2014 was the hottest year on record. 2015 will easily top that. And 2016 may well beat 2015, as discussed here. The long-awaited speed up in global warming is at hand.

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Climate ChangeNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

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New Study Shows Just How Deadly Air Pollution Really Is

Air pollution is deadly, a new study has confirmed.

The study, published this week in Nature, found that outdoor air pollution kills 3.3 million people around the world every year. And that number is set to rise in the next 35 years — if worldwide emissions continue unabated, the number of deaths caused by air pollution each year could double to 6.6 million by 2050.

“This projection should sound alarm bells for public-health agencies around the world,” Michael Jerrett, professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA, wrote in a letter accompanying the study.

The study found that China and India — the world’s first- and third-highest greenhouse gas emitters — have the highest rates of death from air pollution. In China, a country that’s suffered from off-the-charts air pollution that’s closed schools and forced some residents to stay indoors, air pollution kills nearly 1.4 million people each year. India — which is home to Delhi, a city which has the most toxic air of any city in the world — sees about 645,000 deaths due to air pollution every year. In the United States, according to the study, air pollution kills about 54,900 people annually.

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The main causes of air pollution-related death are cerebrovascular disease (which affects blood flow to the brain), certain forms of heart disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Residential and commercial energy use — which includes burning things like coal and wood on a small scale and using diesel for fuel — contributes most to deadly outdoor air pollution worldwide. The second-largest contributor to dangerous air pollution is, surprisingly, agriculture — the study found that ammonia released from fertilizer and animal waste reacted with traffic and power plant fumes to create dangerous particulate matter. In the United Kingdom, nearly half of all pollution-related deaths are tied to agricultural pollution, according to the study.

The study only looked at outdoor air pollution — meaning the total number of deaths from air pollution worldwide is even higher than 3.3 million. According to the study, indoor cooking and heating causes an estimated 3.54 million deaths each year.

Other studies have quantified the death tolls and health impacts from air pollution, but this one is one of the most detailed to date. The World Health Organization reported in 2014 that air pollution kills 7 million people each year — a number that roughly lines up with the total deaths caused by indoor and outdoor air pollution cited in the Nature study. A study from last month found that 17 percent of all China’s deaths are related to the country’s air pollution. And a major report published in June in The Lancet sounded the alarm on air pollution and climate change’s deadly impacts — high temperatures drive up ground-level ozone, pollution that can damage lungs.

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There’s Now A Way To Find Out How Much Of Your Retirement Is Invested In Fossil Fuels

Hidden inside almost every American’s retirement plan are fossil fuel companies that emit huge amounts of carbon. Now, for the first time, individuals and employers have an easy way to find out exactly where their money is going and how many of their funds have holdings in fossil fuels.

A new investment web tool called Fossil Free Funds, launched Tuesday, is giving people accessibility and power over their mutual funds and retirement plans. It is a project through As You Sow, a shareholder advocacy non-profit group founded by Andrew Behar.

“Ninety-one million Americans have a mutual fund account in some way, and nobody actually knows what they own. We didn’t know what we owned either,” Behar told ThinkProgress. After a lot of time spent digging through databases, Behar said he and his team found that a lot of As You Sow’s shares had holdings in Exxon, Chevron, other fossil fuel based companies.

We hope to make people empowered with what they own

“We decided to redo our own 401(k) plan, and thought we needed to make this tool more robust when people started to notice and ask us questions about their own funds,” he said. That’s when he decided it was time for this type of tool to be open and free for public use.

To begin the quest for fossil-fuel-free funds, a person can search for mutual funds by name or ticker symbol, or browse through the database using different filters. The data can be broken down into categories such as diversified funds and socially responsible funds, or funds that are fully free of fossil fuels. Searches can be further filtered to include shares listed in the Carbon Underground 200, the “Filthy 15″ coal and mining companies, all coal, all oil/gas, all fossil-fuel-fired utilities, or all flagged holdings.

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Fossil Free Funds shows what percentage of different funds are invested in fossil fuels.

“This is a way for people to actually express themselves and feel empowered,” said Behar. “We hope to make people empowered with what they own.”

After analyzing the data, the final step of the process for a person who wants to divest from fossil fuels would be to talk to a financial adviser or manager about moving holdings to a plan free of fossil fuel holdings.

Odds are you or someone you know owns shares in fossil fuels. The five major fund families that control 75 percent of all employer-sponsored retirement plans — valued at $5.6 trillion — do not offer any socially-responsible diversified mutual funds that are free of the 200 largest fossil fuel companies.

“The two largest funds in America have already divested from coal, but before this tool nobody would know that,” said Behar. “You would have to go and check one by one through the data, so that’s what we are doing on the back-end to save everyone time.” Without this tool, it would also be almost impossible to know the Alerian MLP ETF fund is made up entirely of oil/gas shares. With the ability to know what they’re invested in, people can align their investment plans with their own moral values.

According to Fossil Free Funds’ website, the modern fossil fuel divestment movement stems from a simple realization: “If it’s wrong to destroy the planet through human-driven climate change, it’s also wrong to profit from that destruction.” Divesting — being the opposite investing — is to get rid of stocks, bonds, or investment funds that are unethical or morally ambiguous. Divesting from the companies that contribute most to climate change is a key way to break the hold the fossil fuel industry has on the economy and the world. And doing that, as Behar said, starts with taking ownership of what you own.

The two largest funds in America have already divested from coal, but before this tool nobody would know that

Not only are investments in fossil fuels damaging to the planet, but they come with personal financial risks. “What’s really happening is, these guys are spending more money exploring than the revenue they’re making. It’s not sustainable, this is a very risky industry,” said Behar. “What happened with the coal industry is happening with oil, and is a massive financial risk.”

The divestment movement started as a small concept on college campuses about four years ago and has rapidly gained more mainstream traction within the last year. With the Vatican announcing its consideration to divest this past July and the University of California removing $200 million worth of holdings in coal and tar sands from its investment fund just a few days ago, the movement has been heating up in recent months.

And the fight to combat climate change, through divestment and other strategies, is only becoming more urgent. A new study found that if temperatures rise 11°C (20°F) the earth would lose all of the Antarctic ice sheet- which is enough to raise sea level over 200 feet. If the world goes past a 2°C warming, these changes could likely cause irreversible damage. Scientists have repeatedly said that the primary cause of global warming is burning fossil fuels.

“We have the technology to completely replace to fossil fuel industry,” said Behar. “Change is here, it’s a matter of getting it implemented.”

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Republicans Got One Question About Climate Change At The Debate, And Totally Screwed It Up

After nearly three hours, CNN’s Republican presidential debate came to a close on Wednesday night with only one mention of human-caused climate change. The answers went on for about three minutes before debate moderator Jake Tapper abruptly changed the topic to vaccines.

The question, though, was framed in an interesting way: Ronald Reagan’s own secretary of state, George Shultz, has advocated for some kind of action on climate change, just as an “insurance policy.” Tapper asked, why not follow Reagan’s example, and take out an insurance policy to respond to what scientists overwhelmingly believe will be devastating impacts of climate change?

Three candidates responded: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. All three argued that nothing should be done by the American government to combat the problem, and Christie even said that he “respectfully disagrees” with Reagan’s secretary of state (gasp!). But all three also backed up their argument using a factually murky claim: that government efforts to combat climate change won’t do anything to solve the problem.

Rubio said that the EPA’s regulations on carbon emissions from coal plants “will do absolutely nothing to change our climate.” Christie said he agreed, that regulations “will not do a thing to lower the rise of the sea … [or] solve the drought here in California.” Walker was more measured, saying “the Obama administration has said will have marginal impact on climate change.”

Republicans have loved this argument lately, seemingly because it’s moderate — it falls between denying climate change is happening, and admitting that anything should be done about the problem. The idea is that regulations to limit carbon emissions won’t help solve climate change on their own, but they will cost coal jobs and raise Americans’ electricity bills. So why do it?

The argument fails for a few reasons. As Vox’s David Roberts points out, it’s just untrue — carbon regulations will make a difference in fighting climate change, albeit a small one. In addition, unilaterally solving global warming was never the intention of carbon regulations. The intention was to do our part, thereby motivating other countries to do theirs. And our part is especially important — Rubio tried to deflect blame to China during the debate, saying they are the number one emitter of carbon in the world. But the U.S. has contributed more to global warming than any other country — even China.

But the candidates on tonight’s debate stage did not acknowledge this, nor did they acknowledge the devastating personal and economic effects that climate change is expected to have, and is already having. Nor did they mention the numerous studies that have shown that the EPA’s climate regulations will also have net economic benefits, due to jobs created in the renewable energy and technology industries and a healthier population.

Roberts lays it out like this: “What’s the alternative? Unchecked climate change will lead to immense suffering, concentrated in but not confined to the world’s poorer countries. Unless we’re willing to accept that suffering — and you never quite hear Republicans own up to that — we have to do our part.”

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Chris ChristieClimate ChangeCNN DebateElection 2016Marco RubioScott Walker

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Climate Denier Candidate Opens Debate By Making Joke About California’s Drought

Environmentalists were anxiously hoping that Republican presidential candidates would be asked about California’s severe drought and wildfire situation during Wednesday night’s debate, which was held in Los Angeles. In the days leading up to the event, groups had been asking CNN moderator Jake Tapper to bring up the issues, and their connection to human-caused climate change.

Turns out Tapper didn’t even have to ask. In his opening statement, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) mentioned the drought. But instead of talking about its connection to climate change or its devastating impacts, Rubio attempted a joke.

“I’m aware that California has a drought, so I made sure I brought my own water,” he said, holding up a full plastic bottle.

No one appeared to laugh.

Rubio’s joke was referencing his infamous “water-bottle-gate” moment of 2013. He was delivering the Republican rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union speech when he became visibly overwhelmed, and took what many considered to be the most awkward sip of water ever seen.

But the drought itself may not have been the best choice for a joke. Right now, an unprecedented wildfire season driven by drought is raging through the state, displacing thousands. Economically, the University of California Davis estimates the drought has cost California about $2.7 billion this year.

Right now, California is drier than its been in 500 years, and many scientists attribute the severity to climate change. But Marco Rubio doesn’t think climate change is a problem, which added to the awkwardness of his drought joke.

The reaction from Twitter was less than positive:

Rubio tried a drought/brought my own water joke. Didnt work. Weird silence followed by his odd chuckle. #GOPDebate #CNNDebate

— Kathleen Madigan (@kathleenmadigan) September 17, 2015

Rubio makes stupid water joke at the expense of Californians suffering from a drought. Also a climate denier.

— Matt Murphy (@MattMurph24) September 17, 2015

did Rubio just make a joke about the horrific drought in california oh my god

— :\ (@VERSACESTALIN) September 17, 2015

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CaliforniaClimate ChangeCNN DebateDroughtElection 2016Marco Rubio

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Wildfire Victim Asks GOP Candidates To ‘Get Real’ And Discuss Climate Change

Sixteen Republican presidential candidates will appear on CNN’s debate stage in California on Wednesday night, and nearly all of them deny the science of human-caused climate change.

Jessica Jennings Pyska — a Californian who just lost her home in one of the three devastating wildfires currently raging across the state — would like those candidates to rethink that position, at least while they’re in her home state.

“Climate change is a nightmare that’s affecting us now,” she wrote Wednesday in an op-ed for the San Jose Mercury News. “We need the presidential candidates in Los Angeles today for the Republican primary debate to get real and address the issue.”

California is in the midst of an almost unprecedented wildfire season, driven primarily by severe drought and intense heat. Jennings Pyska is only one of approximately 13,000 Californians who have been forced to flee their homes, and her home is one of the 1,000 structures that have so far been destroyed across the state.

In her op-ed, she recounts the trauma of gathering her young children and belongings, banging on her elderly neighbors’ doors to warn them that a fire was coming, and feeling the hot wind blow against her face.

“I never thought I would feel the impacts of climate change so personally,” she wrote. “As I look at pictures where my house used to be, I still can’t believe that this has happened to me.”

This is why she’s calling on the Republican presidential candidates to take on the issue. Scientists increasingly attribute the severity of California’s wildfire season to human-caused climate change, which they say has made the state’s drought 15 to 20 percent worse than it normally would have been. While wildfires are common in the state, the average season burns around 500,000 acres — so far, approximately 700,000 acres have burned this year, with the season nowhere near over.

However, the Republican candidates have just not been asked that many questions about climate change so far in the campaign. At the first debate, held by Fox News last month, not one question was asked on the topic.

Environmentalists are hoping that won’t be the case tonight. On Twitter, they’ve been relentlessly prodding debate moderator Jake Tapper to broach the subject, noting his history of asking politicians about climate change and calling them out when their answers are scientifically inaccurate.

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CaliforniaClimate ChangeElection 2016Wildfires

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Prominent Climate Experts, Alumni Urge MIT To Divest From Fossil Fuels

Nearly three dozen well-known climate scientists, advocates, and alumni have called on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to heed its own experts’ advice and divest from carbon-intensive fossil fuel companies. I’m an alum, and I joined James Hansen, Michael Mann, and many others in signing this open letter to MIT President L. Rafael Reif.

The university has been wrestling with what to do about climate change for a while now. Although it is one of the leading centers of science and technology in the world — home to considerable expertise about climate science and its solutions — the university has no greenhouse gas target or any formal position on a host of key climate issues including divestment.

Indeed, way back in 2009, MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change clearly and powerfully spelled out the dangerous gamble humanity has been taking through its climate inaction — with its “Greenhouse Gamble™ wheels” (click here if you want to spin the wheels):

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Humanity’s Choice (via MIT): Inaction (“No Policy”) eliminates most of the uncertainty about whether future warming will be catastrophic. Aggressive emissions reductions greatly improves humanity’s chances.

The open letter notes that “the Climate Change Conversation committee that you set up, after extensive interaction with students, faculty, and outside experts, has recommended divestment from carbon-intensive fossil fuel companies.” The committee’s excellent report from June, “MIT and the Climate Challenge” opens bluntly:

Humanity has a limited window of opportunity to avert the most catastrophic risks of climate change.

The report makes clear MIT has a unique responsibility to “remain true to its mission, contribute to solving humanity’s greatest current challenge, and ultimately ensure it is on the right side of history.”

Significantly, the committee called on MIT to “take an active role in both countering disinformation and disseminating accurate information on climate change as part of its mission in service to the nation and the world.” Hear! Hear! The report notes that, “disinformation and misinformation are rampant in the climate arena and have strongly contributed to the gap between public perception and professional assessment of the looming threats.”

The committee also called on MIT to “establish a campus carbon price.” It would be incorporated into “planning capital and operational decisions.”

On the matter of divestment, the committee could not come up with unanimous agreement on a policy, but explained:

There is, however, support by a (three‑quarter) majority of the committee for targeted divestment from companies whose operations are heavily focused on the exploration for and/or extraction of the fossil fuels that are least compatible with mitigating climate change, for example, coal and tar sands.

Dozens of leading MIT faculty urged full divestment in their own open letter from June. As the faculty signers noted, “By continuing to invest in these [fossil fuel] companies, we knowingly endorse efforts to undermine MIT’s commitment to scientific analysis and practical action for the betterment of humankind.”

Of course, the price of coal company stocks has already collapsed. The two key questions are 1) when will the smart money realize the price of oil company stocks are inflated by petroleum reserves that will never be tapped and 2) is MIT’s endowment part of the smart money or not?

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These House Republicans Are Joining The Pope And Calling For Climate Action

Ten Republican representatives have reportedly signed on to a call for action on climate change, a move that’s a dramatic departure from their caucus, but broadly in line with the views of the American public.

Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY) will sponsor the resolution, which is expected to be released Thursday, ahead of Pope Francis’ Congressional speech next week. The pope is expected to specifically address climate change while in Washington.

“This is a call for ac­tion to study how hu­mans are impacting our environment and to look for consensus on areas where we can take ac­tion to mit­ig­ate the risks and bal­ance our im­pacts,” Gib­son told Na­tion­al Journ­al. ClimateWire first reported on the resolution.

Gibson has said the resolution will have three key elements: recognizing that human activity contributes to global warming, acknowledging future impacts, and committing to address greenhouse gas emissions in “economically viable ways,” ClimateWire reported.

Like 31 percent of Congress and 22 percent of the general public, Gibson is Catholic. More than half of the resolution’s confirmed co-sponsors are also Catholic. The pope has been an outspoken advocate for addressing climate change and environmental protection.

As a Catholic and a former military officer with 24 years of service, Gibson is particularly well-suited to be a Republican speaking out on climate change. The military has repeatedly identified climate change as a national security issue and has itself begun broadly transitioning to renewable energy.

Nearly all the Republican presidential candidates have downplayed the ramifications or outright denied the existence of anthropogenic climate change, but polls suggest the caucus is out of step with the American public and its constituents.

In a recent poll in New Hampshire — one of the first primary states — half of the likely Republican primary voters said they support the EPA’s current plan to limit carbon emissions from power plants. Swing state voters came down roughly 2-1 in favor of acting on climate change in a July Quinnipiac poll.

A co-sponsor of the resolution, freshman House member Chris Corbelo (R-FL), has been outspoken in the need to address climate change. Corbelo has noted that being on the right side of the issue will be critical in attracting young voters to the Grand Ol’ Party. Corbelo is also Catholic, along with four other representatives that reportedly signed the call to action: Pat Mee­han and Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and Richard Hanna and Elise Stefanik of New York. Ileana Ros-Le­htin­en of Florida, Robert Dold of Illinois, Dave Reich­ert of Wash­ing­ton, and Ry­an Cos­tello of Pennslyvania will also co-sponsor.

It is only in recent years that climate change has become a mostly partisan issue in Congress. In 2008, Republican candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) sought to address anthropogenic climate change in his campaign. More recently, though, Congressional Republicans have made stopping the Clean Power Plan and undermining international climate treaties a priority.

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Act on ClimateactionCatholicsChris GibsonclimateCongressHousePopeRepublicansresolution

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This Is Your Brain On Climate Change

We spend vast amounts of time and personal energy trying to calculate the most urgent threats posed by climate change. Washington, D.C. psychiatrist and climate activist Lise Van Susteren, however, says the most insidious danger may already be upon us. She’s not talking about heat, drought, floods, severe storms, or rising seas. She’s focused on the psychological risks posed by global warming.

Van Susteren has co-authored a report on the psychological effects of climate change that predicts Americans will suffer “depressive and anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, substance abuse, suicides, and widespread outbreaks of violence,” in the face of rising temperatures, extreme weather, and scarce resources. Van Susteren and her co-author Kevin Coyle write that counselors and first responders “are not even close to being prepared to handle the scale and intensity of impacts that will arise from the harsher conditions and disasters that global warming will unleash.”

There is currently no organized discipline for the study of the psychological risks of climate change, yet it is already taking a toll on many people who tackle this issue. Surprisingly susceptible are those who might seem to be immune.

“The climate deniers? I always say they‘re really too stressed to hear the truth,” said Van Susteren. “We see this kind of thing in my work all the time, where people who aren’t ready to hear the truth about something will simply say it doesn’t exist.”

Those who do acknowledge the problem face a different set of issues, particularly those who work on the problem. Lisa Van Susteren coined the term “pre-traumatic stress disorder” to describe the grief, anger, and anxiety clinging to the scientists and advocates whose job it is to gaze into a future that can look increasingly bleak.

The longtime counselor is profoundly empathetic, and her interest in pre-traumatic stress is intensely personal. Said Van Susteren, “Pre-traumatic stress disorder? It’s what I see. It’s what I live. It’s what I see others living.” Scientists and advocates suffering from pre-traumatic stress disorder, she explained, face frequent, intrusive thoughts about the future. “In the worst of cases, it sends them into a feeling of despair,” said Van Susteren. Those battling pre-traumatic stress have accepted the truth about climate change, but rather than turning to a coping mechanism like denial, they have soldiered on, and they have paid for it with grief, sadness, and worry.

Exacerbating the problem are the piles of research telling climate crusaders to lay off the apocalyptic rhetoric, meaning that, in order to be effective communicators, experts must often stifle their most dire predictions. The problem is that climate change threatens feelings of self-efficacy — the sense that we can control our destiny. This is precisely why social scientists urge communicators not to overburden the public with catastrophic predictions about the future, because doing so can inspire fatalism.

Van Susteren offers guidance for coping with climate-induced anxiety. Take care of yourself, she says. Sleep. Exercise. Nurture relationships with friends and family. Laugh, dance, and play games. But most of all, she says, do something. Climate action can make for powerful medicine. It can restore self-efficacy and banish fear and fatalism. Granted, said Van Susteren, “you still need to have a strong stomach and a certain resiliency to want to go down into the trenches.” But that way lies hope, community and a shared sense of purpose.

The psychiatrist has taken a healthy dose of her own medicine. She is helping to organize a rally for climate justice, to be held the morning of September 24th on the National Mall while Pope Francis addresses a joint session of Congress. The rally is the work of Moral Action on Climate, a coalition of social justice, environmental, and faith organizations. Said Van Susteren, “The faith tradition is bringing this incredible sense of the moral grounding in what we’re doing.” Organizers are preparing to host tens of thousands of demonstrators.

Van Susteren says that she is hardly sleeping these days; her commitment to the rally has consumed all of her time. Her cell phone buzzes unremittingly, even during interviews, prompting the psychiatrist to roll her eyes and silence the device with a forceful tap. But her fatigue and frustration are side-effects of a potent remedy. She is treating her fear about the future with the best medicine around.

She’s taking action, and she’s not alone. Together, activists are reaffirming a mastery of their fate. Said Van Susteren, “Together we can do what needs to be done.”

Jeremy Deaton writes about the science, policy, and politics of climate and energy for Nexus Media. You can follow him at @deaton_jeremy.

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