John’s Blog/Newsletter: SEA LEVEL RISE NOW

Today is my father, Bernard Englander’s 100th birthday. Needless to say, I am truly fortunate to be visiting with him in Escondido California to celebrate with a small group of family and friends. Even at this age, “Bernie” has good periods of lucidity. Talking to him gives a great perspective of change over the last century. Perhaps more important, it gives an opportunity to consider how the world will change over the next hundred years.

For perspective, looking back to 1918, quick research reveals a few milestones:

• Global population was about 1.8 billion. (Today it is more than four times that.)
• Women won the right to vote in the UK. (two years ahead of the U.S.)
• Woodrow Wilson, US President delivered his “14 Points” that would lead to the armistice settlement of the first “World War” later in the year.
• The Russian revolution was in its second year
• The Spanish flu killed 30 million world wide
• The US introduced Air Mail postal service between New York, Philadelphia and Washington D.C.

A century ago, climate change was not an issue. Sea level was essentially stable. If there was any discernible change in the glaciers, they were likely increasing in size. Though we did not have the technology or tools back then to see it, we were at the turning point between the roughly 20,000 year warming phase, and the 80,000 year cooling phase of the natural climate cycle that would soon be identified as the “ice age cycles.”

Industrialization was booming fueled by the exploding use of petroleum. A few visionaries, most notably Alexander Graham Bell, were warning of the danger to keep burning fossil fuels, which would likely change the atmosphere and warm the planet. Despite his recognition for the telephone and other inventions, that warning would be ignored.

For a brief perspective about my dad, he was a pacifist as a young man and had been given “conscientious objector” status before World War II began meaning he did not have to serve in the military. Yet as Hitler proceeded, even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, my dad realized there was a time for pacifism and a time “ to stand up to madness.” He volunteered, flying as a navigator on a B-17 bomber in the British Air Force and then with the US when they entered the war, flying 34 combat missions. It was incredibly dangerous, and traumatizing, with ninety percent casualties on some missions. Dad was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

The powerful point to me is that he went from a deeply held belief, to changing his position, realizing that the real world required decisive action which he then did boldly, even putting his life on the line. It was a moral question. (With similar purpose and commitment later in life, he would do that for the civil rights movement, literally working alongside Dr. Martin Luther King and others, to organize the famous 1963 March on Washington.)

Even in this last decade my father was also able to see that climate change would be a “game changer”, requiring the same type of World War II level mobilization of countries to confront this global issue facing humanity.

As we look over the horizon, a full century in the future to 2118, it is hard to see clearly, but several characteristics are reasonable to predict:

• World population will likely be around ten billion, about 30% more than present, stressing our natural resources even further than now.
• Fossil fuel use will be negligible, having been replaced by renewable energy sources.
• Hopefully we will have gone through peak greenhouse gas levels, perhaps even with some ‘geo-engineering’ efforts to  remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
• If CO2 levels were not contained to under 500 ppm or so, there could be massive species extinction, perhaps reaching the threshold of a “mass extinction” which would be the 6th.
• Sea level will likely be at least five feet higher and possibly as much as ten or twenty feet, depending on how much of the Antarctic ice sheet has melted and collapsed.
• Adaptation to higher sea level will likely have been one of the transformative events of the last century.
• Trillions of dollars of coastal real estate and infrastructure would have been destroyed globally. Thousands of communities would be inundated.
• Hundreds of millions of people will have been displaced causing national security and humanitarian challenges the world has never seen.

Looking for a positive side:

• There would almost certainly have been tremendous economic growth from adaptation to rising sea level and the rebuilding of new communities, higher and inland.
• Hopefully humanity would have learned how to live within the limits of this “Spaceship Earth” and our relationship to the natural world.
• Maybe the reality of being challenged by the inexorable rise of the ocean, will have taught us some things about how to govern ourselves.

Every century, perhaps even every generation has its defining challenge. Dad’s generation is often referred to as “The Greatest Generation.”  This century presents us with our own huge challenge.

Like my dad’s example, we too need to recognize what is at stake and take a stand, even if it means risk and setting aside old positions. Again, it is a moral question.

Finally, I have to wonder if in 2118 will they look back and wonder what we were thinking in 2018.

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