M L Berg , Minot

At a conference held in Bismarck on Columbus Day – also Indigenous Peoples’ Day — our Lt. Gov. said that the oil and gas industry had the means to solve the climate change crisis.

Really? Why didn’t he say that the Big Bad Wolf ought to be placed in charge of the Three Little Pigs, while he was at it? It just doesn’t make sense.

Joelle Gergis is a scientist who has investigated climate change for decades. She is now a professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. She writes primarily for an Australian audience, but the results of the research she discusses apply world-wide.

Earlier in 2022, she was one of many coauthors of a report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Hundreds of scientists around the world collaborated to produce these reports, which are subject to rigorous peer reviews. Gergis mentions that her section in one of the reports had been revised ninety-two (92) times to ensure complete accuracy.

The report issued in 2022 was the sixth one written by this panel, which is largely sponsored by the United Nations. This panel was awarded a Nobel Prize back in 2007 for its efforts “to build up and disseminate knowledge about man-made climate change”. The book Joelle Gergis wrote about the content of this report, and its significance for Australia and the world at large, is entitled Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope. It was issued in Australia in August, 2022.

(The quotation given above is found on page 42.)

At the Bismarck conference, the virtues of carbon capture were emphasized. Gergis herself feels that the long-term benefits of carbon capture have yet to be proven. As it is, she mentioned that the existing 27 operational installations only take care of 36.6 million tons of a total output of 39.4 billion tons, which amounts to just one tenth of one percent of global emissions.

As far as the future of carbon capture is concerned, Gergis writes “Pinning our hopes on non-existent or inadequate carbon-capture and storage technology as the climate crisis escalates is sheer madness” (page 196). Especially when alternative sources of energy are readily available now.

She then offers the case of Denmark, as a hopeful sign for other countries. Denmark once heavily relied on fossil fuels, but these days 65% of Denmark’s power generation comes from renewable energy, largely wind (page 243). If Denmark can do it, why not Australia, with its over-abundance of both solar and wind power potential? If Denmark and Australia can, why not the USA?

Gergis mentions that current greenhouse gas levels are over 400 parts per million. This is as high a concentration as there has been in over two million years (page 32). One climate change model, based on predictions of no let-up in fossil fuel use, predicts greenhouse gas levels to rise to 1150-2500 parts per million by 2100. Should that happen, Gergis predicts that our nurturing Mother Earth will have been transformed “into a hothouse hell without humans” (page 98).

In a short story, Russian writer Ivan Turgenev figuratively described a country landscape, as looking like “sun-smelted earth”. By 2100, vast stretches of our globe might literally have been turned into “sun-smelted earth”.

Measures can be taken to avert this catastrophe, including phasing out fossil fuel use by 2050, by ending the wholesale clearing of forests, by preserving at least one third of the earth’s ecosystems, which are so vital to cleansing the atmosphere.

Perhaps all these actions can occur, if peoples’ compassion drives these efforts. Gergis herself is motivated by her compassion for people, especially those in developing countries who are basically at the mercy of the more advanced countries and the consequences of their fossil fuel decisions, which have led to rising sea levels and flooding, to droughts and water scarcity, to hotter heat waves and more frequent wildfires at many locations around the globe. The subtitle of Joelle Gergis’s book could just as well be “A Compassionate Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope.”

Finally, and speaking of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Joelle Gergis quotes from a book titled Regeneration. This book was written by a Native American woman from New Mexico. Her name is Debra Haaland. She is the United States Secretary of the Interior. Haaland offers one way of easing our climate crisis. It is by adopting a Native American perspective, one “that erases the separation between people and nature, a disconnection that has caused the climate crisis” (page 257).

Becoming more compassionate and becoming more attentive to nature, just might be the impetus we need to stave off a bleak future for humanity. If any single book can change peoples’ minds, it is the heart-felt, and scientifically accurate, account by Joelle Gergis in Humanity’s Moment.