Abstract
On September 21, 2014, an estimated 400,000 people marched in New York City to demand that government leaders assembling in that city for a “climate summit” finally move from rhetoric to action. It was the largest of more than 2,600 protest events worldwide. The marches were the culmination of decades of growing climate activism that got its start soon after Dr. James Hansen put climate change on the political map. On a fittingly sweltering day in June 1988, Hansen—then the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies—testified before the U.S. Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee that global warming was not a natural phenomenon, but rather was caused by human activities that triggered a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
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Notes
- 1.
People’s Climate March, “Wrap-Up,” http://peoplesclimate.org/wrap-up/; Hansen testimony from Philip Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate,” New York Times, June 24, 1988.
- 2.
“History of Climate Chance Science,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science; World Meteorological Organization, “Declaration of the World Climate Conference” (Geneva: February 1979).
- 3.
Hansen quote from Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate.”
- 4.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Human Influence on Climate Clear, IPCC Report Says,” press release (Geneva: September 27, 2013).
- 5.
Robert Engelman, “Beyond Sustainababble,” in Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible? (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2013).
- 6.
Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935) (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1994 reprint).
- 7.
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014).
- 8.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Towards Green Growth (Paris: 2011), 9.
- 9.
Walter V. Reid et al., Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, Synthesis Report (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2005); fish stocks from United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication (Nairobi: 2011), 20; Robert J. Diaz and Rutger Rosenberg, “Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems,” Science 321, no. 5891 (August 15, 2008): 926–29; “What Causes Ocean ‘Dead Zones’?” Scientific American, September 25, 2012; pollinators from Gary Gardner and Thomas Prugh, “Seeding the Sustainable Economy,” in Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2008 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008), 3; World Health Organization, “7 Million Premature Deaths Annually Linked to Air Pollution,” press release (Geneva: March 25, 2014).
- 10.
J. R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000), 11.
- 11.
Ibid., 13.
- 12.
Mid-1700s from Gary T. Gardner, Inspiring Progress (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006); Science Intelligence and InfoPros, “How Many Science Journals?” January 23, 2012, http://scienceintelligence.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/how-many-science-journals/; Rose Eveleth, “Academics Write Papers Arguing Over How Many People Read (And Cite) Their Papers,” Smithsonian, March 25, 2014; Richard Van Noorden, “Global Scientific Output Doubles Every Nine Years,” Nature Newsblog, May 7, 2014, http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/05/global-scientific-output-doubles-every-nine-years.html.
- 13.
Gardner, Inspiring Progress.
- 14.
See John M. Gowdy, “Governance, Sustainability, and Evolution,” in Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2014: Governing for Sustainability (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2014), 31–40; McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, xxiv.
- 15.
McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, 15.
- 16.
Ibid., 14, 31; data for 2000 and 2013 from BP, BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2014 (London: 2014).
- 17.
Gardner, Inspiring Progress.
- 18.
Compiled from U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries (Reston, VA: various editions), and from International Iron and Steel Institute, A Handbook of World Steel Statistics (Brussels: 1978), 1.
- 19.
Quotation, 1970–2010 trend, and China from UNEP, Global Chemicals Outlook – Towards Sound Management of Chemicals (Nairobi: 2013), xv, 11; number of compounds synthesized and in use from McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, 28; doubling from European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic), The European Chemical Industry: Facts & Figures 2013 (Brussels: January 2014).
- 20.
UNEP, Global Chemicals Outlook, xv, 10.
- 21.
McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, 25–26; 2000 data from Matt Styslinger, “Fertilizer Consumption Declines Sharply,” Vital Signs Online (Worldwatch Institute), 21 October 2010; 2013 estimate from Patrick Heffer and Michel Prud’homme, Fertilizer Outlook 2013–2017, prepared for the 81st International Fertilizer Industry Association Conference, Chicago, IL, May 20–22, 2013, 4.
- 22.
Production in 1900 from “The Automobile Industry, 1900–1909,” The History of Technology Website, Bryant University, Smithfield, RI, http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364/materials/cars/cars%20_10.htm; Michael Renner, “Auto Production Sets New Record, Fleet Surpasses 1 Billion Mark,” Vital Signs Online (Worldwatch Institute), June 4, 2014; fleet in 1900 from “History of Motor Car/Automobile Production 1900–2003,” www.carhistory4u.com/the-last-100-years/car-production; 1910 from McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, 60; 1960 from Michael Renner, Rethinking the Role of the Automobile, Worldwatch Paper 84 (Washington, DC: June 1988); 2013 from Colin Couchman, IHS Automotive, London, e-mail to author, May 27, 2014.
- 23.
Changes in emissions calculated from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “1970–2013 Average annual emissions, all criteria pollutants in MS Excel,” February 2014, www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/trends/trends06/national_tier1_caps.xlsx; Table 1–1 adapted from McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, 54.
- 24.
World Steel Association, World Steel in Figures 2014 (Brussels: 2014), 7, 9; 2000 calculated from International Iron and Steel Institute, Steel Statistical Yearbook 2002 (Brussels: 2002), 12.
- 25.
Doubling of production from UNEP, Keeping Track of Our Changing Environment. From Rio to Rio + 20 (1992–2012) (Nairobi: October 2011); total extraction trend from Sustainable Europe Research Institute, GLOBAL 2000, and Friends of the Earth Europe, Overconsumption? Our Use of the World’s Natural Resources (Vienna: September 2009), 9–10; Table 1–2 from UNEP, Keeping Track of Our Changing Environment; passenger car statistics calculated from data provided by Couchman, IHS Automotive.
- 26.
Table 1–3 adapted from Chris Bright, “Anticipating Environmental ‘Surprise’,” in Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2000 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000), Tables 2–1 and 2–2.
- 27.
Nick Breeze, “Global Warming – You Must Be Joking! How Melting Arctic Ice Is Driving Harsh Winters,” The Ecologist, November 21, 2014.
- 28.
McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, 62; Magda Lovei, Phasing Out Lead from Gasoline. Worldwide Experiences and Policy Implications, World Bank Technical Paper No. 397, Pollution Management Series (Washington, DC: 1998); 2011 achievements from Peter Lehner, “Global Phase-out of Lead in Gasoline Succeeds: Major Victory for Kids’ Health,” Switchboard blog (Natural Resources Defense Council), October 27, 2011.
- 29.
“Smog,” Science Daily, www.sciencedaily.com/articles/s/smog.htm; “Smog,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smog.
- 30.
Molly O. Sheehan, “CFC Use Declining,” in Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2002 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), 54–55; Alana Herro, “Ozone Layer Stabilizing But Not Recovered,” in Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2007–2008 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), 45–46; UNEP, “Ozone Layer on Track to Recovery: Success Story Should Encourage Action on Climate,” press release (Nairobi: September 10, 2014).
- 31.
Heinrich Böll Stiftung and Friends of the Earth Europe, Meat Atlas: Facts and Figures About the Animals We Eat (Berlin and Brussels: 2014), 26; “Another Strike Against GMOs – The Creation of Superbugs and Superweeds,” GMO Inside blog, March 31, 2014; Tom Laskawy, “First Came Superweeds; Now Come the Superbugs!,” Grist, March 25, 2010.
- 32.
Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006), 253. Also see Homer-Dixon’s discussion in Chapter 9 of his book for an extended discussion of cycles of growth, collapse, regeneration, and renewed growth in the context of forest systems. Similar characteristics can be observed in human societies.
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Renner, M. (2015). The Seeds of Modern Threats. In: State of the World 2015. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-611-0_1
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