October 3, 2015

Exactly two months ago President Obama announced a plan to limit the amount of carbon that power plants dump into the atmosphere, the single biggest pollutant contributing to climate change. Likewise, at the United Nations, President Putin announced plans to reduce by 2030 Russia’s greenhouse emissions to 70-75% of the 1990 level. Meanwhile, President Xi Jinping announced a “cap and trade” program to reduce China’s output of greenhouse gases.

While positive, these measures will not halt –much less reverse- global warming. Incidentally, global warming is a better descriptor than “climate change” as the latter might cause the uninformed to think that cooling is simultaneously occurring. In any case, the situation is so grave that the great die-out currently under way -the only one in the history of our planet caused primarily by human action- may soon threaten our food supply. For that reason we are compelled to accept that whatever measures are finally undertaken will necessarily have to match the scope and magnitude of the problem. And therein lies the crux of it. The so-called Industrial Revolution enriched some nations and elites within them so much that they now wield enough power to veto any measures they wish on the mistaken assumption that their wealth can and will perpetually insulate them and their descendants from the ravages of global warming.

Not Mentioned
President Obama mentioned drought as one of the manifestations of climate change, and he is of course correct. But in that context neither he nor his peers have publicly discussed, much less acted, on the clear threat that chronic shortages of water constitute to the security of the U.S. and the world. To be sure, this is only tangentially related to global warming because the depletion of the world’s great aquifers is not new, only ignored. Desperately needed long-term infrastructure projects have long been shunned in favor of foreign interventions, short-term bottom-line results, and bureaucratic struggles. Wars and refugees, which go in tandem, are frequently a consequence of drought. Witness Syria, which according to an article in the New York Times is a case in point.

President Putin has proposed pooling the efforts of countries with advanced scientific knowledge and the creation of a special forum under the auspices of the United Nations to consider issues related to climate change, an admirable approach. But a basic understanding of the formula of water does not require degrees in any discipline. It consists of just two elements, and only one –oxygen- constitutes a significant portion of our atmosphere. The other –hydrogen, found in great abundance in our oceans- is a non-polluting energy carrier whose only byproduct, when burned, is pure water.

At this point we shouldn’t be talking about ways to cap the amount of pollution that power plants will be permitted to dump into the atmosphere. Given the severity of the emergency –that is what it really is- and the fact that the entire concept of centralized generation of electricity is an obsolete relic dating back over 100 years to the invention of the incandescent light bulb, we should be discussing how to (not if) best finance installing solar panels or their equivalent on every existing and future roof of every building in cities with abundant sunlight expressly to mothball all power plants, including nuclear. A properly designed system powered solely by solar energy and gravity would generate a surplus of electricity to produce hydrogen by hydrolysis of seawater. The hydrogen could then be burned anywhere, even in deserts far from shore, to produce drought-proof pure water and additional electricity to support economic growth. That should make our deserts green to help recycle the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and eventually cool the world.

The outline of a plan to make this (and much more) a reality already exists.