Why older people should care about climate change action
Dr Gideon Polya | August 10, 2009
It is in older peoples’ best interests to insist on a target of 100% renewable energy by 2020. Here are three major ways inaction on climate change will adversely affect us if we don’t.
Older people are aware of the worsening problem of man-made global warming, otherwise known as anthropogenic global warming (AGW) due to greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution. However due to deficiencies in public ethics, societal risk management and public reportage from academics, politicians and journalists, most older people are probably unaware of the acute seriousness of the worsening climate emergency.
Thus paleoclimate and earth scientist Dr Andrew Glikson from the Australian National University, Canberra, recently advocated that the acute seriousness of the situation means that we should cut carbon emissions by "80% by 2020" rather than by the dangerously insufficient "80% by 2050" currently advocated by EU governents. The Washington-based Earth Policy Institute and some other climate analysts agree with this assessment.
Nobel Peace Laureate Al Gore has advocated 100% renewable energy for the United States by 2020 and many climate analysts, community climate action groups and communities (including some Pacific island nations) agree with this assessment. Further, while oxymoronic "clean coal technology" is as yet unproven, and is very likely to be too insufficient, too expensive and too late; the best renewable energy and geothermal energy technologies are already proven and are much cheaper than the "true cost" of coal-based power (i.e. taking the environmental impact and human health impacts into account).
The atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration is now over 390 parts per million (ppm), this corresponding to 450 ppm CO2-equivalent (CO2-e i.e. taking other greenhouse gases such as methane, CH4, and nitrous oxide, N2O, into account). This is well outside the range of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations that obtained in the last 800,000 years, the period in which Homo sapiens evolved from primate precursors. Top climate scientists, notably Dr James Hansen (Head, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York), Professor Barry Brook (Department of Climate Science, University of Adelaide) and Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany), argue for an urgent reduction of atmospheric CO2 from the current over 390 ppm to a safe and sustainable level of about 300 ppm.
Older people are mostly unaware of the danger we are in. Indeed Australian Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty has stated bluntly that "we are in real danger" and top US climate scientist Dr James Hansen has stated "We face a climate emergency".
Older people are peculiarly threatend by the worsening climate emergency in three key areas that can be summarized by the "three Ds" of Devaluation, Death and Descendants.
Devaluation
Older people who are no longer working depend upon GDP (gross domestic product) growth for appreciation in value of their assets (cash, shares, property), for appreciation in value of their superannuation (self-funded pension) schemes and for retention of the real value of pensions or government subsidies for which they may be eligible. However, as summarised above, carbon burning-based GDP growth is no longer sustainable and we must rapidly shift to non-carbon renewable energy or geothermal energy as quickly as possible.
Non-carbon renewables and geothermal essentially, within sensible limits, permit indefnite GDP growth. In contrast, according to Professor Kevin Anderson and Dr Alice Bows (Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, UK) the only way to constrain current carbon pollution to within safe limits is through massive and continuing recession. Unless renewable and geothermal energy systems are installed quickly, current pensioners and self-funded retrirees will miss out on the bonanza and instead see their real incomes and assets decline in value.
Death
As people age their brain signalling mechanisms alerting them to heat stress and dehydration become less effective. In short, the warning signals are more long-lasting in young people as compared to older people. Further, older people are frailer and more likely to have medical problems that younger people. Even if older people recognised this impairment of their alarm system, drinking lots of water in a heat wave, whilst fine for young people, might cause medical complications for some older people.
Thus it is estimated that 374 people died in the above 43 degrees Centigrade heat wave in Victoria, Australia in late January 2009 as compared to 173 deaths in the 7 February "Black Saturday" Victorian bushfires a week later. In the 2003 European heat wave, 15,000 died in France and up to 50,000 people may have perished throughout Europe as a whole. Older people have a very serious interest in stopping man-made global warming.
Descendants
We all would like to believe when we die that we have left the world a better place. However that pleasant thought is no longer tenable for any of us; whether we are massive carbon polluters, climate change deniers or climate change activists. We must all expect disapprobation from our children, grandchildren and other descendants for what we have done to the planet.
That inevitable disapprobation from our indignant descendants may be tempered if they know that we have done our level best to stop the worsening disaster. Accordingly, older people should urgently support the advice from top climate scientists, climate economists and informed climate activists that we must oppose both carbon pollution and politician inaction and vigorously support policies such as "100% renewable energy by 2020", "cut carbon emissions 80% by 2020", "return atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration from the current 390 ppm to 300 ppm" and "revenue neutral carbon taxes" rather than flawed, ineffective, dangerous and potentially terracidal carbon trading-based emissions trading schemes (ETSs).
Please inform everyone you can. While massive damage has already occurred, it is not yet too late to act to stop catastrophic harm to our planet.
Related Websites: Listed below are links to some key sites providing carefully researched and documented articles about the worsening climate emergency and what we must do about it.
- Yarra Valley Climate Action Group
- Cut carbon emissions 80% by 2020
- 300.org – return atmosphere CO2 to 300 ppm
- 100% renewable energy by 2020
- Experts: Carbon Tax needed and NOT cap-and-trade Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)
Dr Gideon Polya has published some 130 works in his scientific career spanning 5 decades; most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" and “Body Count: Global avoidable mortality since 1950”. Ssee also his contribution “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics”, the revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” and the recent BBC broadcast “Bengal Famine” involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others. When words fail one can say it in pictures.
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Daniel Filan
August 10, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Hear Hear
It’s about time someone brought this issue up. For too long the disturbing opinion of many older people has been "I don’t have to worry, the problems will happen long after my time". This attitude is dangerously defeatist, and could seriously undermine efforts to fight anthropogenic climate change. Thankyou, Dr. Polya, for bringing up this important perspective.