The Climate Concern Is Putting Personal Change as Well as Industrial Adaptation on the Table
If you live in the West, as I did for many years, you quickly understand that two of the major concerns of the day are water and cars – both of which drew actions from the Biden administration this week, along with responses about burdensome sacrifice.
Just as water politics separate Northern and Southern California and feed disputes between agriculture and pool owners, gas pump prices, emissions, and mileage rules govern a disproportionate share of Western public policy concern.
The government’s actions this week signal recognition anew that the concerns of the planet’s survival are going to require personal cutbacks and changes across the country and beyond. The specific questions that arose this week, in seeking to impose distribution of water among several states from the Colorado River and setting rules to accelerate electric vehicle sales, belie much more serious attention that will be required to forestall worse effects from climate disruption.
We should expect that however sympathetic most Americans may be to facing climate issues, there will be substantial political and economic pushback from these government actions – just as there was in an opposite direction from opening selected Alaskan waters to further oil drilling just last month.
Apart from all else, the specific weather patterns this year resulting in record rain and snow in the West, refilling some reservoirs but not others, ironically launching concerns about floods from too much water at once really run counter to the measurable effects of 20 years of regional drought. Even with tremendous amounts of precipitation, it has been difficult to capture the rain and keep it from simply washing away, along with tons of mud and misery.
Wider Water Shortages
Pulling back the lens from California and abutting states, our global water systems are in crisis, according to the World Economic Forum. Billions of people lack safe water and sanitation, according to the United Nations, which highlighted water availability issues in a conference last month.
Basically, the argument is that water is a finite resource that we have been taking for granted for too long. Since the 1970s, the world has been focused on growth and development, building cities, and boosting farm yields under increasingly large, corporate ownership.
The UN conference highlighted a growing global population – 8.5 billion by 2030 – with unrestrained demand, building on unsuitable land and increasing consumption. It is a formula for failure and problems. Natural resources crises, including for water and food, come within the top 10 biggest risks facing humanity in the coming decade, in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023. A UN estimate places the gap between water demand and supply at 40% by 2030, with a “dramatic and unequal increase in demand between countries.”
In the West, several states are fighting about access to dwindling supplies from the Colorado River. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation stepped in this week to insist that the states take an equal share, though a final decision will come this summer. As levels in Lakes Mead and Powell continue to fall, there needs to be action to continue enough water through hydroelectric dams to ensure power to hundreds of thousands.
The resulting issue, of course, is who takes cuts in water. It looks as if the biggest effects will be city dwellers in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix under this plan rather than commercial agriculture or Native tribes.
However this distribution is resolved, the bigger issue is that we face a collision between more and cheaper on the one side and natural resources on the other. We should be preparing to hear the word sacrifice more often rather than derision for those looking at global changes in climate.
Writ large, the UN is telling us that water shortages will result in widespread hunger and forced migration. A quarter of the world’s population still does not have access to safe drinking water and half lacks basic sanitation. That, in turn, is resulting in poorer nations turning to the bigger, richer countries for help. An analysis by WaterAid suggests that investment needs to more than triple to at least $200 billion a year to get universal access to safe water and sanitation by 2030. There are few financial pledges on the table, and nationalistic policymakers are unlikely to respond positively.
Obviously, access to water and sanitation affects what can be grown, how people can spend their time and money, health, and industrial concerns.
Electric Cars, Too
On Wednesday, the Biden administration proposed two plans to ensure that two-thirds of new passenger cars and a quarter of new heavy trucks sold in the United States are all-electric by 2032.
The rule changes would accelerate changes already underway for the auto industry, where all-electric vehicle sales are still in single percentages, in an attempt to slash emissions at a pace that is meaningful for climate. At the same time, Republican opponents generally resist accepting climate change or global concern as central and promote more drilling for oil instead.
Previously, the Biden administration had ordered carmakers to increase their average fuel economy to about 49 miles per gallon by 2026, reversing a halt in such change under Donald Trump. The administration also has pressed for huge investment in creating charging stations across the country.
Once again, however, the climate concern is putting personal change as well as industrial adaptation on the table.
However our government leaders try to position a change to all-electric cars, homes, stoves, and appliances as investment in a more energy-diverse future that can be helpful to the environment, there will be a pushback. Right-leaning media this week renewed attacks on these changes as having minimal impact on worldwide temperature hikes, for example.
With the cost of new electric vehicles pegged at about twice the cost of most gasoline-powered cars, this climate policy also will call for personal sacrifice.
Perhaps we should be focusing on campaigns based on balancing sacrifice of luxuries for survival issues.
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