Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

David Ray Griffin ... Bio David Ray Griffin is Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology, Emeritus, Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University (1973-2004); Co-Director, Center for Process Studies. He edited the SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought (1987-2004), which published 31 volumes. He has written 30 books, edited 13 books, and authored 250 articles and chapters.

UNPRECEDENTED ... Can Civilization Survive the CO2 Crisis? By David Ray Griffin

ISBN: 978-0-9860769-0-9 $34.95 506 pp. Jan. 1, 2015

Ebook $24.00 ISBN: 978-9-9860769-1-6

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SYNOPSIS

Can we act quickly and wisely enough to prevent climate change – better called climate disruption – from destroying human civilization? There is no greater issue facing humanity today.

This book provides everything people need to know in order to enter into serious discussions and make good decisions:

• The latest scientific information about the probable effects of the various types of climate disruption that threaten the very continuation of civilization.

• The reasons why the media and governments have failed miserably to rein in global warming, even though scientists have been warning them for decades.

• The additional challenges to saving civilization – religious, moral, and economic.

• The amazing transformation of solar, wind, and other types of clean energy during the past few years, making the transition from a fossil-fuel to a clean-energy economy possible; and the falsity of the various claims that fossil-fuel companies and their (hired) minions have made to belittle clean energy.

This book combines:

(1) the most extensive treatment of the causes and phenomena of climate change in combination with

(2) an extensive treatment of social obstacles and challenges (fossil-fuel funded denialism, media failure, political failure, and moral, religious, and economic challenges),

(3) the most extensive treatment of mobilization, and

(4) in discussing the needed transition from fossil-fuel energy to clean energy, it provides the most complete, most up-to- date treatment of the various kinds of clean energy, and how they could combine to provide 70% clean energy by 2035 and 100% before 2050 (both U.S. and worldwide).

ANNOTATED TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I: UNPRECEDENTED THREATS

Introduction: The basic issue is whether global warming, besides leading to a hellish existence for our children and grandchildren, will destroy civilization. Each chapter in Part I addresses 3 possible responses: Plan B (mobilization), Plan A (business as usual), and Plan C (wait and see).

1 Extreme Weather: Prior to discussing four types of “extreme weather,” this chapter discusses extreme weather in general and how global warming is responsible for it.

2 Heat Waves: This chapter deals with the phenomenon that comes to mind most readily when people think of “global warming,” namely, warmer weather, which will include hotter and more frequent heat waves. The danger is that the temperature will make life hellish, eventually intolerable.

3 Droughts and Wildfires: Drought has thus far been the climate effect most harmful to people. Aggravated by global warming, its pernicious effects include dramatic increases in wildfires.

4 Storms: Various types of storms are becoming more extreme and increasing in number: rainstorms (deluges), which increase flooding; major snowstorms – as in the 'Snowpocalypse' of 2009; hurricanes, which are becoming bigger and stronger (such as Katrina and Sandy); and tornadoes, which have been shown by recent evidence to be also intensified by global warming.

5 Sea-Level Rise: This chapter deals with scientific projections about sea-level rise if business as usual continues (perhaps 7 feet by end of century) and what this will do to island nations and the coastal areas of the USA, China, and many other countries.

6 Fresh Water Shortage: Although national security experts have long worried about peak oil, “the real threat to our future,” said Lester Brown, “is peak water.” There are substitutes for oil, but there is no substitute for fresh water, which is getting less plentiful in many parts of the world, due to melting glaciers, shrinking snowpack, decreasing water in lakes and rivers, and the depletion of aquifers.

7 Food Shortage: According to Oxfam, “Increased hunger is likely to be one of climate change’s most savage impacts.” Food shortage will be increased by extreme weather, water shortage; and global warming’s “equally evil twin” - ocean acidification - which, if it continues, will lead to a world without seafood.

8 Climate Refugees: Climate refugees have to leave home because of some type of climate-influenced change, such as sea- level rise, upon which this chapter focuses. If climate change continues, the refugees will number in the millions and eventually billions. Going with anything other than Plan B will be catastrophic.

9 Climate Wars: Climate disruption is also important because of ways it could threaten national security and the world’s political- economic order, due primarily to increasing resource scarcity. Conflict over scarcity may end up influencing more people than any of the other results of climate change. Plan B is the only way to minimize international strife.

10 Ecosystem Collapse and Extinction: Although any one of the changes in Chs. 1-9 could become catastrophic, even worse will be the occurrence of some of these changes simultaneously, which could lead to global ecosystem collapse. With business as usual, the sixth mass extinction, which we are already in, will eventually include us.

PART II: UNPRECEDENTED CHALLENGES AND FAILURES

11 Climate Change Denial: Worst in America, climate-change denialism has resulted from a concentrated campaign by the fossil-fuel industry to repudiate the scientific consensus and promote public uncertainty. This chapter examines techniques previously used by big business to impact public opinion in relation to smoking, acid rain, CFCs, and the ozone layer, showing how they are now being used by the fossil-fuel industry to dispute the conclusion of virtually all climate scientists that fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas - are imperiling our planet. The fossil-fuel industry, which knows its claims to be false, has deceived many citizens into accepting its propaganda over the evidence provided by climate scientists. This chapter debunks a large number of the claims against climate science,

12 Media Failure: The fossil-fuel industry’s denialist strategy has been forced upon, if not willingly embraced by, the major American corporate media, leading to their failure to adequately address either the science or the urgency of climate disruption. Examined here are various media techniques geared to produce public uncertainty on the issue: reduced coverage, inadequate contextualization of extreme weather events, and false balance (giving the opinions of propagandists paid by Big Oil as much attention as the views of renowned climate scientists), and going even beyond that to explicit denialism.

13 Political Failure: This chapter documents the historical record of global failures to successfully address climate change and explains reasons why. It demonstrates the extent to which politicians have overruled the findings of science and analyzes their motives. The record of US Presidents on climate change is examined. Charting the Republican stampede toward absolute climate change denial since 2011, it names specific malefactors pursuing their selfish private interests to shed light on what British journalist George Monbiot terms “the greatest political failure the world has ever seen.”

14 Moral Challenge: There is a basic global ethic related to global warming implicit in our understanding of human rights as well as religious principles. The primary issue is intergenerational justice - whether today’s generation will finally act fast and decisively enough to save a tolerable planet for our descendants or continue to act within the boundaries of its narrowly defined self-interest. The notion of moral obligation in relation to climate protection, along with the capacity of morality to make a difference, is re-enforced by parallels to successful global justice campaigns: the abolition of slavery and divestment from South African apartheid.

15 Religious Challenge: American religious culture has mainly revolved around theism, which comes in both traditional and non- traditional forms. Traditional theism, which holds that the supreme being is omnipotent, is held by most Evangelical Christianity. This view often results in climate complacency, holding that the world will not be destroyed by global warming unless God wants this to happen - an attitude expressed by several members of the U.S. Congress. Some Evangelical Christians resist this tendency, instead fighting strongly to stop global warming. But there are forms of theism that more fully support climate concern.

16 Economic Challenge: Besides being impeded by limited moralities and false religious ideas, society’s task of saving civilization has also been impeded by false economic ideas. Starting with the complacency of Yale’s William Nordhaus, this chapter traces the mounting urgency of coming to grips with the projected costs of climate disruption through the thinking of Oxford’s Nicholas Stern and Harvard’s Martin Weitzman – who warns that the costs could be infinite. Whereas Nordhaus argued that going full out to reduce carbon emissions as quickly as possible would damage the economy, a growing number of economists have realized, with Stern and Weitzman, that going full out is the only way to save the economy. This chapter ends with the policies most needed: a carbon tax and the elimination of fossil-fuel subsidies.

PART III: WHAT IS TO BE DONE

17 Transitioning to Clean Energy: Fossil-fuel industry propaganda has claimed that clean energy is too expensive and could not, in any case, power civilization. But developments over the past decade show that clean and renewable energy is now not only achievable but also affordable. This chapter discusses various types of clean energy, including solar, wind, geothermal, and ocean energy, showing how these, combined with hydropower, could provide far more than enough energy to power civilization. Also discussed are automobiles, trains, and airplane fuels that could make 100% clean transportation possible. The great untold story is that the planet’s energy could be 70% clean by 2035 and 100% clean by 2050.

18 Abandoning Dirty Energy: The “carbon budget” - meaning the most additional carbon that could be burned without catastrophe - shows that, if there is to be any hope, fossil fuels must be quickly phased out. Coal and oil have long been the primary threats to the planet. But natural gas, alleged to be a “bridge” to clean energy, has become equally harmful, especially with the rise of “fracking.” And oil is now more dangerous than ever due to the exploitation of “tough oil.” Fossil fuel companies have been irresponsible global citizens and a primary threat to civilization. Now that there are numerous alternatives, we should have no regrets about swiftly phasing them out of business.

19 Mobilization: Lester Brown, author of Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, says that quickly moving from fossil fuels to clean energy “will take a massive mobilization - at wartime speed.” Any global mobilization would likely need to begin in the United States: The President should declare a national climate emergency and implement pro-climate policies on an appropriate scale. Such US leadership should then enable, indeed unleash, a similar mobilization worldwide. This mobilization will require leadership of many different levels and types, mounting from all sectors of society (academic, activist, agricultural, business, entertainment, labor, media, political, scientific, and so on) to enable such presidential action.

Conclusion: We are facing an unprecedented challenge. This chapter drives home the need to devote ourselves to the task wholeheartedly for the coming decades, until the transition to a clean-energy economy has been made.

REVIEWS:

'If you can read only one book on climate change, make it be Unprecedented. With extraordinary clarity and comprehensiveness David Griffin has masterfully depicted both the severe dangers confronting humanity and the best available escape routes. If reading this book does not change your life, nothing will.'
RICHARD FALK
Emeritus Professor of International Law, Princeton University

'As always, David Ray Griffin is meticulous in this research, startling in his conclusions, and thought-provoking in the way he frames issues. A brilliant addition to the literature on climate change and its terrible consequences!'
THOM HARTMANN
Author and Talk Show Host

'A very comprehensive and accessible book, providing a much-needed corrective to omissions and falsehoods propagated in the media... a fine contribution in the tradition of Griffin's long and distinguished work.'
HERMAN E. DALY
Founder of ecological economics

'One of the most excellent compilations of renewable energy facts and context that I've read.'
ZACHARY SHAHAN
Director of CleanTechnica.com and Planetsave. com

'Unprecedented is a tour de force of enormous importance for our planetary future. In his superb analysis of climate change through the lens of science, politics, economics, energy, morality, and religion, Griffin has provided a wealth of insight for how to move forward. This will be an indispensable book for raising awareness that civilization itself is at stake.'
MARY EVELYN TUCKER
Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University

'Theologian David Ray Griffin brings to bear his considerable skills of synthesis to lay out, from the best current sources including Lester Brown and Bill McKibben, a comprehensive snapshot of the climate crisis, its dark threat of planetary desertification, and the urgent need for us all to act swiftly to close the era of fossil fuels and switch to clean energy. This would require as much moral will as it does political skill: Griffin makes a strong case that humanity's differing faiths, world views and ethical creeds, including the secular, have enough in common to allow us to act now on behalf of the next generations if we can only begin to act from our full humanity and face the climate challenge squarely.'
VINCENT STANLEY
Co-author, The Responsible Company: What We’ve Learned From Patagonia’s First 40 Years.

'Griffin’s book is itself without precedent in the climate literature. Crossing the whole secular and religious spectrum, it offers brilliant clarity, indispensable quotes, trusty data and crystallized arguments that you will start borrowing right away. And somehow it performs neither apocalyptic alarmism nor chilly factualism but an engagingly urgent, calmly activating overview.'
CATHERINE KELLER
author of Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement. Professor of Constructive Theology, Drew University

'Myths and Big Lies proliferate about global warming. Griffin's new book is must reading. It explains what everyone needs to know. It does so responsibly. In lucid detail like everything he writes. Global warming is one of the most important issues of our times. Survival may depend on resolving it responsibly.'
STEPHEN LENDMAN
author of Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity