"There Is No Cavalry" - Cities Face Prospect Of Dealing With Climate Issues On Their Own

[hatrack]

St. Petersburg, Florida, is far from the largest city in the United States. It’s not even the largest city in the state of Florida. But it just pledged to do something that could make a big impact on climate action: transition its electricity to 100 percent renewable energy. The pledge — which was voted on unanimously by the city council in November — makes St. Petersburg the 20th city in the United States to pledge to move its electricity generation to 100 percent carbon-free sources.

“It moves us beyond just rhetoric to real, concrete action,” St. Petersburg city council member Karl Nurse told ThinkProgress of the city’s commitment. “The danger in politics is rhetoric. This is the real work of how do you make your city more efficient, and how do you spur your community into a series of moves that move you towards renewable energy.”

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In St. Petersburg, where sea level rise and heavier storms are already overwhelming the city’s aging sewer system, Hidalgo’s words ring especially true. For politicians and residents, the impacts of climate change aren’t something to be dealt with in the distant future — they are a reality that needs to be tackled today. “We have data in our harbor of how much sea level has risen. It’s not a big, philosophical idea,” Councilor Nurse said. “People are beginning to see the connection between these issues, so it helps. It’s not a left or right issue.”

Faced with a federal government about to be headed by a man who has called climate change a “hoax,” and a state government headed by an infamous climate denier, Florida cities, as well as cities around with country, will have to look inward for action on climate — at least for the next four years. “There is no cavalry left. We are the cavalry,” Darden Rice, St. Petersburg City Council member and chair of the city’s Energy, Natural Resources & Sustainability Committee, told ThinkProgress. “It’s left up to cities to be the innovators, to be the agents of change, and to do it in a practical way.”

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https://thinkprogress.org/st-petersburg-renewable-cities-climate-action-965d95c5c16e#.egage3se7

[NickB79]

1. When societal collapse hits in full force, we'll see a lot of city-states emerge

The weight of repeated, massive climate calamities with no end in sight will bankrupt entire nations over the next few decades, and they will fracture when social safety nets start to fail. States, and possibly major cities within those states, will become the defacto governments in many areas.

[Blue Shoes]

2. Not quite so fast.

First world countries have enough capital and resources to stem some of the major effects of climate change in the short and medium term, their fundamental problem however is that they are dependent on oil to do so. It leads to a vicious cycle because every action to combat the effects of global warming only creates more greenhouse gases. They will only collapse when peak oil is reached and they are unable to produce enough energy to combat the effects.

Third world countries, however will suffer rapidly and brutally. Many lack major manufacturing and have little capacity to build major levy systems, sea walls, etc. to combat serious sea level rise. Those are the countries that will collapse in the next several decades.

[NickB79]

3. We do not have nearly enough capital or resources for what's coming in this century

For example, this little jem: http://phys.org/news/2016-11-west-antarctic-ice-shelf.html

Studies have suggested that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is particularly unstable, and could collapse within the next 100 years. The collapse would lead to a sea-level rise of nearly 10 feet, which would engulf major U.S. cities such as New York and Miami and displace 150 million people living on coasts worldwide.

Think about that for a minute. Imagine all the major coastal cities of the world facing sea level rises of this magnitude. Now imagine trying to either build dikes around them, or evacuate hundreds of millions of people. You can't build effective dikes fast enough and strong enough to protect even a fraction of the world's coastal cities, especially those prone to storm surges when hurricanes and typhoons strike. We will be forced to pick and choose which we keep, and which we surrender. Moving hundreds of millions of people is guaranteed to cause massive social impacts, most of them very, very bad: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/01/climate-change-trigger-unimaginable-refugee-crisis-senior-military

“Climate change is the greatest security threat of the 21st century,” said Maj Gen Munir Muniruzzaman, chairman of the Global Military Advisory Council on climate change and a former military adviser to the president of Bangladesh. He said one metre of sea level rise will flood 20% of his nation. “We’re going to see refugee problems on an unimaginable scale, potentially above 30 million people.”

Now think about how this would impact the global economy, once we lose major shipping terminals to rising seas. We can rebuild some on higher ground, but that takes time and money, and must be started before the seas start rising too rapidly to keep up. IE, right now, but we aren't even close to doing so. Without those terminals, grain grown in the US sits in place, unable to be shipped and rotting in silos, or in fields, putting farmers out of business. Oil terminals and refineries near shorelines shut down, so fuel supplies are disrupted globally. Food shortages in some parts of the world; shortages of raw materials or finished goods in others. We are a global economy now; without cheap cargo ship transport it all collapses.

Now throw in extreme weather destroying crops in places like Europe and America. Forest fires raging as temps spike, rain falters and insects attack. Droughts hitting drinking water and hydropower facilities. Spread of tropical diseases like we're now seeing with Zika.

And the Third World countries that are hit the hardest first will become breeding grounds for terrorism against the developed nations, wasting even more precious capital and resources fighting them off (look at the billions we squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan so far, with more to come now that President Agent Orange is in the White House).

No, we do not have nearly enough to weather what's coming our way. Not even close.

[Blue Shoes]

4. Theres no disagreement on long term issues.

Correct me if I'm wrong but were only disagreeing on the decade we are discussing. My post was on short to medium term effects (~75yrs) which have an order of magnitude fewer effects then the 100yr mark. The estimates I have seen for 75yrs is about ~5-6ft sea level rise, increasing to ~9-10 at 100yrs.

But these estimates assume we will continue to be completely impotent on the effects of global warming, which to be dismally grim isn't that unlikely.

[NNadir]

5. The "pledge" is useless and meaningless and is sure to fail.

So called "renewable energy" has not worked; is not working; and will not work.

St. Petersburg is simply announcing it will burn dangerous natural gas and pull accounting games that will pretend that they are not doing so.

This morning, after the expenditure of trillions of dollars on so called "renewable energy" in the last decade the data at Mauna Loa for the week ending November 27, 2016 is 3.63 ppm higher than the same week last year.

In previous years, this would have been an astounding result; in 2016 it's "ordinary," if "ordinary" is a word that can describe a catastrophe.

Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Observatory

It makes no difference whether one denies climate change or if one announces that one will embrace a useless finger in a dike holding back rising seas; the result is the same.