Carl Nettleton Writer, speaker, facilitator, and analyst with expertise in oceans, water, climate, and U.S./Mexico border issues. This excerpt is from Huffpost Green.
pollution and clean energy concept.
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Depending on fossil fuel energy is “The Rock” all of us must leave. The challenge is to transition to clean energy and at the same time maintain economic security for those who already have it and expand economic security to those who don’t.
If we don’t leave “The Rock” voluntarily, another rock will come crashing down on us. The climate crisis could literally change the face of the planet and economic security as we know it, stripping away our expectations of normality in ways we might not think possible. Here’s how:
- The productivity of developed agricultural lands might be reduced, even in the U.S., driving the cost of food upward due to shortages and creating famines in parts of the world hardest hit.
- Imported foods might no longer be as plentiful and available because of changes in precipitation patterns, extended droughts, and loss of agricultural lands. As a result, the fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, poultry, meat, and other foods we expect to always be available, no matter what the season, often transported by air, might not be in the supermarket.
- Changes to the acidity of the ocean might alter the marine ecosystem in substantial ways, further harming over-harvested species, reducing a global source of protein, and making rare some of our favorite seafood dishes.
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Leaving “The Rock” doesn’t have to be a story of doom and gloom; it should be a story of creating better places, both locally and globally. A clean energy world could be a more secure one both economically and environmentally. According to a March 2016 report by the non-partisan business group Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), more than 2.5 million jobs in the U.S. are already attributable to clean energy.
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environmental critique 