The Sun Still Rises: Reframing the Climate Narrative 

“mother mother mother mother” by Natalie Snyder, Staff Artist

Climate change is an existential threat to our way of life. The warming planet will dramatically affect our lives, from increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events to mass climate migration. Because of the seriousness of this threat, our climate narrative must make climate change’s threat immediate and motivate action. We must be specific and urgent when discussing climate change. The planet is not dying. We don’t need to lower CO2 emissions to keep Earth in orbit around the Sun—we need to do so for the survival of our civilization.

There are a number of popular climate narratives, such as “Our planet is dying.” Mother Earth is personified, and our unsustainable actions are imagined as fatal blows to Her. To save Earth from impending death, we must stop our actions that damage Her. Another narrative implores us to save the planet for future generations—a moral argument that we today are responsible for the world will inherit tomorrow.

Both of these narratives fail at inspiring immediate action. Asking people to think about future generations born several decades from now is not effective, especially given how difficult thinking about the future is. Imagining that Earth is dying is equally ineffective because it gives an opening for climate deniers to justify climate inaction. When climate activists say the planet is dying, they’re usually referring to life on Earth—not the planet itself. However, deniers use the imagery of a ‘dying planet’ to discredit climate change by referencing historical fluctuations in global temperature. Donald Trump infamously used such logic when he claimed “It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch.” The danger with this rebuttal is that it misses the unprecedented nature of our current climate crisis. 

In the 1800s, humans began to burn fossil fuels to power industrialization. Fossil fuels are the ancient remains of animals and plants that hold CO2, and when burned release that CO2 into the atmosphere. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, meaning that it traps heat in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not inherently bad—it’s what allows life on Earth to exist. The issue, however, is that our continued burning of fossil fuels has raised CO2 levels sky-high. The figure below demonstrates the significant spike in CO2 emissions compared to historical fluctuations over the past 800,000 years. 

The danger of this is two-fold. First, there hasn’t been this much CO2 in three million years. Carbon dioxide traps heat, so the more there is in the atmosphere, the warmer Earth is. Second, we are currently 1.2 °C above pre-industrial average temperature, a number scientists expect to continue rising. In the past, it’s taken Earth hundreds of thousands of years to vary by a few degrees—to have increased it by 1.2°C in 200 years is incredibly troubling.

Global warming has and will continue to affect our lives in a myriad of ways. Antarctic ice is currently melting six-times faster than in the 1990s, and Russia just sailed through the Arctic during February for the first time ever. Glaciers are rapidly melting, leading to a rise in sea level that could threaten coastal cities and island nations. All this melting ice increases global warming, as darker glacier water absorbs more solar radiation and radiates more heat.

The effects on land are just as dangerous. Warmer temperatures will lead to greater evaporation and stronger storms in some parts of the world, and severe droughts in others. More intense extreme weather events are expensive—the United States alone paid $240 billion per year in environmental damages over a 10-year period, and there has been a 400% increase since the 1980s in extreme weather events, with damages over a billion dollars. While economic costs of climate change are staggering, the human cost is even more sobering. Through both extreme weather events and long-term environmental degradation, a billion or more people could be displaced by 2050.

Our climate narrative needs to reflect the urgency of our situation. First, climate change isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and we need to invest in climate adaptation. Second, climate change could get considerably worse if we continue to pollute our atmosphere. Third, this problem is an incredibly complex and global issue that requires cooperation and mutual sacrifice. To chart a sustainable course through the 21st century, we need to mobilize our resources and work collaboratively. 

As the UN Environment Program says, “Reducing carbon emissions is no longer enough to halt the impacts of climate change.” Both the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and long-term environmental changes are already putting communities at risk, and they will continue to be at risk for decades. Investing in protections against these changes will be paramount, as the longer adaptation efforts are postponed, the more costly the effects are—in both economic and human terms. The recent winter storm that compromised the Texas power grid is an example of this—energy companies knew in 2011 that their equipment should be “weatherized,” and in their negligence to do so cost Texas $50 billion and 80 lives. Proactive climate mitigation actions such as weatherizing key infrastructure must be taken to prevent future tragedies.

Just because global warming will continue without our help doesn’t mean we should shrug our shoulders and fire up the coal factories. Even if we were to stop all greenhouse emissions tomorrow, we would still expect the global temperature to climb to 2.3°C above pre-industrial levels by 2050, which is higher than the target set in the Paris Climate Agreement. If we continue our polluting trends, we could reach 3°C or higher by mid-century.

Not only is climate change incredibly consequential, but it’s also incredibly complex. Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet to solve this problem. For one, our entire world is built on fossil fuels. Oil fuels more than cars—every piece of plastic, every commercial airplane, every warship and fighter jet, and every truck shipping produce run on oil. The “American lifestyle”—personal cars, suburbs, supermarkets, etc.—are made possible by a high-energy consumption world. In 2018, fossil fuels were 81% of the world energy supply—and renewable energy only met 2% of the supply. This is because, as of now, fossil fuels are the most reliable source of energy to meet global demand.

Rising living standards and developing economies around the world have greatly increased energy demand, and also created tensions between industrialized and developing countries in climate conversations. For example, China—the biggest polluter and largest consumer of coal—argues that they’re simply going through the same, energy-intensive developing phase that industrialized nations like the United States and United Kingdom went through a century ago. Furthermore, people around the world expect their living standards to rise, increasing energy demand. Unless we find a way to lower energy demand or meet it via other energy supplies, our CO2 emissions will only rise.

However, nationalistic competition is a significant barrier to climate action. If one country decides to significantly invest in green energy, another country that doesn’t go green could offer products on the international market at a lower price, since fossil fuels are often cheaper than green energy. Another complication is that many countries in heavily affected regions, such as island states and many nations in the Global South, will need financial assistance from wealthy nations to help build climate mitigation infrastructure.

Tackling such a complex and inter-connected problem requires cooperation on an international scale. Climate change is not an American or Chinese problem—it’s a humanity issue. The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement was a step in the right direction, but six years after its signing, most countries aren’t hitting their goals. We’ll need more aggressive action and true international collaboration to help humanity survive the effects of our greenhouse emissions.

Climate change is not a singular event that will occur in the future—it’s a long process that began when we first released CO2 via burning fossil fuels. In fact, our climate may have reached a point of no return. Even if we stopped emitting all greenhouse gases today, climate warming feedback loops could continue to warm the Earth for decades. This is the challenge of our century, and we are at a critical juncture where we can either hasten global warming or collaboratively mitigate damages and adapt to the changing environment. Our discussions on climate change must reflect the urgency and complexity of this moment, as well as motivate immediate action.

Julian McCall ‘23 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at j.c.mccall@wustl.edu.