This essay was sent to the Henderson County Democratic Party as a way to engage its members by providing a means for taking a personal action. As Public Domain material this essay may be adapted for use in any county or precinct in the country.

Edward Renner

Facts (science) and knowledge (education) are the foundations for human progress.

A Presidential Memorandum 

On January 7, 2026 Donald Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum directing all government agencies, and particularly the Secretary of State, to take immediate steps to withdraw the United States from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

“The UNFCCC treaty forms the bedrock for international cooperation to deal with the climate crisis, and it has been agreed to by every country in the world since its inception 34 years ago.  The US Senate ratified the treaty in October 1992” (The Guardian).

 Science has shown us that we are consuming our global resources faster than the earth can regenerate them. We know we are killing the very planet we need to sustain ourselves. The environmental collapse resulting from climate change can only be addressed by global cooperation and agreements. One rogue nation, the size of the US, has the capacity to undermine the processes required to ensure not only our own future health and safety, but also that of the rest of the world. The President of the US does not have the moral right nor the legitimate authority to do so. Every person and nation has an ethical responsibility and the legitimate obligation to revoke the enactment of this Memorandum.

Congress ratified the treaty and Congress must now reassert its authority by confirming the US continued participation in the UNFCCC.

Support This Congressional Action

·         Share this e-mail with a friend.

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·         Copy the letter below and e-mail the letter to our elected representatives (their addresses are listed below).

We do not live in a fact-free world. An executive action cannot erase established scientific information or override Congressional authority. Congress must reassert its authority by confirming the US continued participation in the UNFCCC. The President of the US does not have the moral right nor the legitimate authority with a Presidential Memorandum to remove the United States from this treaty ratified by Congress in 1992.

Here’s how you can contact each of your federal representatives from North Carolina: Each of the links below takes you to a secure web form where you can email a copy of the letter directly, or phone or mail a copy to:

 

📬 Senator Thom Tillis

·         Email Contact Form: Email Senator Tillis

·         Phone: (202) 224-6342

·         Mailing Address: 185 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510

📬 Senator Ted Budd

·         Email Contact Form: Email Senator Budd

·         Phone: (202) 224-3154

·         Mailing Address: 217 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510

📬 Representative Chuck Edwards

·         Email Contact Form: Email Congressman Edwards

·         Phone: (202) 225-6401

·         Mailing Address: 1505 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515

 

 

Carrying Capacity

A version of this essay was published in the Tampa Bay Times on Sunday, May 19, 2013, P1-2. This essay may be reproduced, reprinted and republished.

Saving Our Planet:

Why Climate Change Has Not Inspired Action

Edward Renner

 

While Climate change has entered the national conversation, it has not received popular support nor resulted in a cooperative international approach. New measurements show that the climate-changing gas carbon dioxide is at the highest atmospheric concentrations -- 400 parts per million – in at least three million years. And yet a recent Gallup poll shows that only a minority believe that global warming will “pose a serious threat to them or to their way of life during their lifetime.” 

One possibility is that the focus on climate change has let us, as individuals off the hook because there is not, really, anything that each of us can do personally that will make a difference. Yet, we know that something very significant is happening to the environment about which something must be done. 

With such a disconnect, and so little political will, action seems impossible. But there is a way. If we would shift our focus from climate change to the concept of Carrying Capacity, then are there many necessary things we can do ourselves, over which we have direct control, including holding our elected officials and global corporations accountable for specific changes in public policy.  

What is Carrying Capacity? 

Carrying capacity is a well-established biological concept: It is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment. 

As a practical metaphor, a row boat can hold a limited number of people. Add one too many and the boat will sink and everyone drowns. Likewise, the planet can support a limited number of people. Add too many and its capacity to support life will collapse. 

Of course the planet is far more complex than a rowboat. But only in two very simple ways: 

First, the impact on the planet of adding one more person to the population of the US is the same as adding 10 people to the population of Mexico. This is because the average American uses more resources and makes more waste than the average Mexican. Similar to the row boat, it is not the number of people that is important, but their combined weight. For the planet, this is the Effective Population; it is the number of people multiplied by their average impact which is the total burden of the human footprint on the planet. 

Second, nature is not a static situation like a row boat floating in still water. Nature is a dynamic system in which all the elements influence each other over time: When a growing population cuts down trees to clear land to grow food, the result is soil erosion decreasing the amount of food to feed the increasing number of people who are cutting down the trees. In a similar way, the row boat, when exposed to stormy weather rocks and dips in ways it did not when in still water. 

In the past, individual societies have collapsed when they exceeded the biological capacity of their local geographic area. When an area and thus society collapsed, other areas and societies emerged. Today, however, human activity is damaging the carrying capacity of the entire planet, and there is no other place to go. On August 22 we will have used as much resources and created as much waste as the planet can replace and absorb in a year. At that rate, it takes 1.4 planets to support our current life style. 

We are depleting the planet of its resources to support human life. That is the issue.

Clearly, there is a theoretical limit to how long the effective population can continue to increase all the while reducing the biological capacity of the planet necessary for living. Growth is finite. 

The Tipping Point 

When collapse occurs in nature, there is a “tipping point” in which the accelerating demands produce a rapid decline in capacity. The process is similar to the over-crowded row boat which, with the addition of a small amount of extra weight, starts to take on water, which, the moment that happens, causes the boat to take on even more water, and it quickly sinks. Once the tipping point is crossed, neither the boat nor nature can continue to support life. For thousands of years this has not been an issue for the planet. However, it is an issue for those of us alive today. We are the ones who will be responsible for bringing our planet to the tipping point. 

In nature, the rapid collapse occurs due to “Forcings.” These are incremental changes of one element that forces additional depletions in all of the other elements, which in turn trigger even greater reductions in each of the other elements. This leads to an accelerating Titanic-like downward spiral toward total collapse.

 

Jared Diamond in his book Collapse has chronicled how past societies which existed and thrived for hundreds of years – some more than a thousand – have collapsed over the period of one lifetime when a single forcing -- such an extended drought --- pushed the society beyond its tipping point. Today, climate change is Nature’s mechanism for causing forcings – drought, desertification, famine, water shortages, and dead seas, to name a few. The social, political and economic consequences of forcings are the ingredients for societal collapse: migration, social unrest, war lords, starvation, economic recession and growing inequalities in which a very few are rich and powerful while the vast majority are poor and weak. Civic order cannot withstand large numbers of desperate people.

The failure of national governments, dysfunctional internal political process and regional and ethnic conflicts are early warning signs of impending collapse. 

Avoiding the Tipping Point 

Fortunately, unlike the ways of nature, carrying capacity is something we can do something about. We have knowledge and control over all of the elements responsible for staying within the carrying capacity of the planet. We can measure the biological capacity of the planet to provide the resources we use and to absorb the waste we create. We already know how the growth of the effective population is exploding at the same time as our resources are shrinking. Although we do not know exactly where the tipping is, we do know that it is within the lifetime of the majority of people alive today. Given a six thousand year human history on the planet, that is all we need to know. The choice is ours. 

If, between now and 2015, just 3% of the effective population would reduce their total footprint by 25%, and by 2020 the percent doing so doubled to 6%, and by 2030 double again to 12.5%, and by 2040 to 25%, and by 2050 to 50%, then the total footprint of the effective population would be reduced, and the danger of crossing the tipping point would be averted. The collective effective footprint of the human population on the earth would start to decrease at around 8 Billion, even though the actual population is projected to reach 9 Billion by 2050.

An Interactive Graphic   To see the effect of different levels of participation or different percent reductions enter alternative numbers from 0 to 100 without the % sign in the highlighted chart. A negative number in the "% Reduction" column will illustrate the effect of continuing to increase the size of our footprint.

 

Half the population eventually reducing their impact by 25% over the next 37 years is not an unreasonable possibility. The largest population growth is in underdeveloped countries with relatively small per capita footprints. The largest footprints are in developed countries which have the capacity to make the necessary adjustments.  

The impact of total distances traveled and the efficiency of transportation, the amount and sources of energy used, and what we eat and how it is produced can each be divided into sub-categories, which can be further broken down into the hundreds of specific everyday actions over which we have personal control, such as using fewer plastic water bottles, driving one less mile or eating less meat. 

A small percentage of people making regular small contributions, and encouraging progressively more people to join with them, can have a large cumulative effect.  

However, while these individual efforts are all necessary, they alone are insufficient. Rather, they must be our daily reminder that public policy issues, such as effective mass transit to replace personal automotive commuting, the infrastructure of alternative energy sources and national policies independent of the short-term self-interest of big agriculture, big oil and multi-national corporations are essential. 

This challenge is of particular relevance to those of us living in the US, because we are putting in jeopardy our way of life, far more so than China who is our major competitor. We are the biggest offender in the world of per capita over use of natural resources. We have more to lose than any other nation if, collectively, the human race exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet.

We have become distracted from the necessity for institutional and political accountability by the emphasis on the abstract threat of climate change over which we have little direct personal control. Climate change is simply the most important of Nature’s mechanisms for causing forcings. In contrast, carrying capacity can be documented down to the number of gallons of gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel refined; the tons of fertilizer and pesticides used; the number of wind farms created; and, the BTUs of coal and oil that must be remain in the ground. These are all subject to public political control, and the policies required to regulate these events are known. 

What is absent is the social and political awareness to shift our focus away from the abstract event of climate change, and our necessary but insufficient personal responsibility for it, to the collective and essential government and corporate accountability for specific and measurable policies and practices of not using more resources and producing more waste than the planet can replace or absorb in a year. 

This, we know how to do.  

The political, economic and social discussions we need to have are not whether we need shift the burden from primarily a personal responsibility to one of greater government and corporate accountability, but rather the most feasible ways to do so. 

_______________________________

Edward Renner is a Professor in the Honors College of the University of South Florida. He may be reached at kerenner@usf.edu. An introduction to his University level course, Forums for a Future, is available in pdf format from USF at http://tiny.cc/7ij7fw, or free in iBook format from iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/invitation-to-forums-for-future/id533089665?mt=11.The environmental data is from the Global Footprint Network data base: http://www.footprintnetwork.org

Take It To the Limit (One Last Time)

Taking It to the Limit

(One Last Time)

Edward Renner

The current controversy over constructing a pipeline to bring Canadian tar sands oil to Texas for refining is political posturing which confuses the real choices before us and the rationale for them.

President Obama has temporary blocked the construction of the pipeline citing environmental concerns. All the Republican president candidates have pledged to construct the pipe line to provide American jobs.

Both are missing the point.

The story of grounding the Concorde jet in 2003 provides a broader perspective. For over 2,000 years humans could not break the speed barrier of 20 miles per hour for group travel. Then, in 1978, after less than a century of aeronautics, it increased to 1,614 miles per hour. After nearly three decades of service, the Concord was grounded because the cost, noise and infrastructure were socially, politically and economically too expensive to be sustainable. A human “Limit” had been breached. A deliberate choice was made for speeds slower than the sound barrier.

We have other legally imposed limits which we respect as reasonable and appropriate, such as highway speed limits and fenced-in danger areas.

In addition to human limits, there are natural limits as well. Trees require a minimum number of thermal units per year to survive. The number of thermal units decreases at higher levels of elevation and degrees of latitude north or south. Thus, we have a visible tree line near the top of a high mountain and at extreme latitudes.

The most important natural limit facing humanity today is the amount of CO₂ (greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere. For over 2000 years before industrialization the number of units remained constant. Since then, CO₂ emissions have shot upward similar to the speed of group travel.

Greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere producing global warming, which – like the tree line -- alters whether people, as well as trees, may continue to live. If we cross this natural limit, much of what is now prosperous land will be either barren or underwater.

The social and political response to limits is to regulate our behavior. 

At the United Nations Summit on global warming the nations of the world agreed that the emission of greenhouse gases must be reduced to a level where global warming does not exceed 2°C. Since the start of the industrial era we have increased global temperature by 1°C. We are half way to the limit. To stay under this natural limit we must not release any more than 565 additional gigatons of carbon between now and 2050. That number is our carbon budget, similar to a personal financial budget for living within our income.

In the first decade of the 21st century we emitted 321 gigatons of carbon. If we continue at that rate for 18 years we will cross a tipping point. Exceeding the 565 gigaton limit will set in motion over the next several decades an irreversible increase in global warming toward 2°C. Irreversible because once greenhouse gases are emitted, they dissipate very slowly.  

The urgency of a reduced carbon diet can be illustrated by comparing the rate of increase in the World’s population with the speed of travel. Crossing the red line – the limit of 2°C -- will reduce the capacity of the planet to support its population of 7 billion people to a smaller, sustainable limit. Within our lifetime a large percentage of the population will either die as a direct consequence of climate change or from fighting over insufficient supplies of food and water.

As the end point, CO₂ emissions will be dramatically reduced. Over several centuries the concentration of CO₂ will decline, nature will reach a new balance, and the survivors may begin again the grand experiment on applying the power of intelligent life for the preservation of the human condition.

The currently known carbon reserves -- such as the Canadian tar sands oil -- are five times larger than our carbon budget for the next 40 years. We do not need to discover new carbon reserves, do deep water drilling, mine “cleaner” coal or build the pipeline.

The missing point is: Most of the coal and oil that we already know about has to stay in the ground for us to live within our carbon budget.

The pipeline jobs are the equivalent of building a casket for yourself, your family and your neighbors to use within our lifetime. We will all benefit from investing all of our venture capital in alternative energy sources, providing even more viable new jobs for living Americans, and for their children.

__________________________________________________________________

Professor Renner teaches in the Honors College at the University of South Florida. He blogs at: http://forumsforafuture.blogspot.com/

UN Climate Summit: Part 1

Why the Climate Change Summits Have Failed

K. Edward Renner, PhD

Greenhouse gas emissions are the principal cause of climate change.

For the past 1000 years the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere has remained relatively constant at 280 ppm, but starting with the industrial revolution it has been increasing at an accelerating rate to 390 ppm, well above the upper safety limit of 350 ppm.

In December 2009 and 2010 the UN held Climate Change Summits to attempt to set world policy standards for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The United States and China were the principle players as the two top green-house-gas-producing countries. Both Summits ended without a comprehensive agreement.

It is important to understand the reasons for these failures if the Summit this December in Durban in South Africa is to avoid a similar fate.

The United States has proposed that all countries should agree to absolute levels of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. China has proposed that limits be set in terms of a proportion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These are both self-serving proposals that neither can realistically expect the other to agree with.

Why do these proposals both represent bad faith negotiations?

The US is rapidly losing its industrial base. From 1990 to the present the US lost 3 % of its share of the world Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and it is projected to lose even more by 2020. Because CO₂ emissions closely track GDP, the projected decrease in the US share of world GDP will proportionally reduce its amount of CO₂ emissions.

The position is self-serving because the US goal would largely be achieved without any change in current practices, and from new technologies already or in place or planned. On the other hand, this standard would severely impact China’s fast growing economy. As a world standard, it is an empty offer.

Source: International Energy Agency and Wall Street Journal

In contrast, from 1990 to the present China’s percentage share of the world’s GDP grew from 4% to its present level and is projected to increase to 18% by 2020. China’s position to set limits on the “intensity” of CO₂ emissions as a percentage of GDP does not reduce emissions, but rather the rate at which emissions grow.

China’s proposal is also self-serving because without any change from “business as usual,” China’s projected intensity will naturally decline as a result of its increasingly larger share of the world’s GDP. (A constant excess of 10 units of CO₂ is a smaller ratio of 18 units than it is of 11 units of GDP.)  The remaining intensity reduction is already built into China’s development plan for fixing its own unhealthy quality of air. On the other hand, China’s proposal would seriously impact a US economy that has already achieved a lower level of intensity than China’s projected goal. As a world standard, it too, was an empty offer.

The position of both countries has not changed over the past year. To compound the difficulty, the world economic crisis makes it even more difficult for either country to agree to any policy that will make its economic recovery more difficult.

The challenge will be two-fold, first to find an alternative standard that is equally fair, and second to acknowledge that any immediate pain will be far less than what we will have to bear in the future if an agreement cannot be found.

In both the US and Europe we are already seeing that spending now and delaying payment until the future cannot continue indefinitely. The same holds true for greenhouse gas emissions. But the political capacity to act on that lesson is difficult, even though the necessity is obvious.

The challenge is to define an alternative world standard that is equally fair to both countries.

Professor Renner teaches in the Honors College at the University of South Florida. This material is based on his podcast series at: www.kerenner.com

UN Climate Summit: Part 2

An Alternative Standard for the Climate Change Summit

That Is Equally Fair

K. Edward Renner, PhD

The goal of the UN Climate Summits is to reach an agreement on a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change. The previous summits have failed because the US and China, as the two major players, have each made proposals that would be largely achieved through “business as usual” for themselves, but which would severely impact the other.

As such, neither can realistically expect the other to agree.

Both focused on only two factors -- the absolute levels of GDP and CO₂ emissions – which are only a small part of the relevant knowledge necessary for finding a solution. The resolution of the impasse requires creating an alternative standard that is equally fair by taking into account three additional concepts from the environment sciences: “Ecological Footprint,” “bio-capacity” and “overshoot.”

Source: National Footprint Accounts Data from Global Footprint Network

The Ecological Footprint is a measure of humanity’s demand on nature. It measures how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its wastes. Bio-capacity is measured by calculating the amount of biologically productive land and sea area available to provide the resources a population consumes and to absorb its wastes. Overshoot is when a country has a larger Ecological Footprint than their bio-capacity. Both the United States and China are in “overshoot” situations, but in very different ways.

Historically, the US has been the leading producer of greenhouse gases. But, as a result of their recent industrial growth, China has now surpassed the US. However, because of their large population, their per-person Footprint is still nearly five times smaller than the United States. It is for these reasons that a per capita index, as well as the absolute amounts, must figure into any alternative world standard. High levels of consumption by a small number of people in the US, and large economic growth spread over a large population in China, are two very different circumstances responsible for similar absolute levels of emissions.

The deficits created by these two types of overshoot have been made up by seriously depleting the resources of Least Developed countries, such as Columbia and the Congo, to dangerously low levels. Thus, as bio-capacity creditors, these nations must be included as principal players in the global economy. It is essential to restore and then to maintain their bio-capacity for any of us to have a sustainable life on the planet.

The simple arithmetic is that neither China nor the US can continue to destroy the bio-capacity of the earth without crashing the planet.

Source: National Footprint Accounts Data from Global Footprint Network

In practical terms this means both the US and China must start to reduce and then eliminate their own overshoot, and to invest real resources in the creditor nations to help them restore and maintain their bio-capacity. However, the way the US (and other Developed countries) and China (and the other Developing countries) are able to do this is very different due to the two very different types of overshoot.

Developed countries, such as the United States must “pay backwards.” Because the US has a declining share of the world’s GDP and a huge long-standing ecological debit, the US only has the capacity to pay back its debit by redirecting some of its excessive consumption toward reducing its overshoot and toward helping to restore the bio-capacity of the Least Developed countries.

Whereas, the Developing countries, such as China, only have the capacity to “paying forward” by redirecting some of their future growth toward reducing their overshoot and toward helping to restore the bio-capacity of the Least Developed countries.

Internally, for both countries, it means making heavy investment in alternative energy and creating a green-based rather than a growth-based consumption economy. Externally, it means sharing technology with the Least Developed nations and adjusting their policies to support sustainable living – such as for the US to stop making it more profitable to grow plants for ethanol than for food.

To be fair, the amount of “paying backwards” by the US should match the amount of “paying forward” by China. This is a mathematical equivalence that can be calculated.

But, fairness alone is not a sufficient condition. In addition to being feasible, the solution must also be politically acceptable with in each nation. Therein is the cause of the stalemate and the challenge to be overcome.

Professor Renner teaches in the Honors College at the University of South Florida. This material is based on his podcast at: www.kerenner.com

UN Climate Summit: Part 3

The High Stakes Negotiations of Climate Change

K. Edward Renner, PhD

The goal of the UN Climate Summits is to reach an agreement on a standard for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change. The previous summits have failed because the US and China, as the two major players, have each made proposals that were largely self-serving, but which would severely impact the other.

The failure is not being unable to define a "fair" standard. The environmental sciences have already given us all of the information we need.

The Developed Nations, such as the US, must reduce consumption to significantly smaller amount. The Developing Nations, such as China, cannot continue their rapid economic industrial growth at the cost of destroying the bio-capacity of the planet. As essential partners, the Least Developed Nations -- the lungs of the earth – need to be compensated for the restoration of the damage already done to their bio-capacity.

Toward this end, the UN has established a Green Climate Fund to enable the Least Developed Nations to participate in the global economy as essential partners by restore their bio-capacity. The high emission countries, however, have not yet provided any of the required funding.

Clearly, fairness alone is not sufficient. Any solution must also be politically acceptable. This is the difficult problem.

National governments hold political power by protecting their sovereign national interests against the claims of other nations. For this reason, both the United States and China have made largely self-serving proposals.

For the United States, setting a fair emission standard would require reducing its consumption and transferring those resources to, for example, the United Nations Green Climate Fund. Consumer goods -- such as gasoline -- would become much more expensive. People with low levels of income would require higher pay and better social services in order to survive. This, in turn, would require a significant redistribution of wealth and income.

For China, this would require compromising their drive to become the primary economic power in the world, and ending rural poverty, by transferring these resources to the United Nations Green Climate Fund.

Neither the United States nor China has the political will or capacity to make these choices, even though the failure to make them will result in even more severe outcomes. There is an “ideal” and an “extreme” solution.

The “ideal” solution is for greater public awareness so that, in the United States, elected officials would lose their political power if they did not make such an agreement, rather than lose power for dong so. The exact opposite is our current reality. Given the current worldwide economic crisis political arguments are being made to delay or rescind environmental regulations because they imped our economic recovery. The paradox is that to not do so might cost us our lives, or at best leave our children with a much lower quality of life than we currently have.

The “extreme” solution is to view the collapse of the planet as equivalent to the Armageddon of atomic warfare. All that needs to be agreed upon at Durban is the simple standard “that the quality of life is a production cost.” In practical terms this means there can be no deferred environmental costs to either consumption or growth.

The implementation would be for the United States to start to unilaterally impose import duties on consumer goods equal to their deferred environmental costs if China itself did not redirect an equivalent proportion of its GDP to the UN Green Climate Fund.

The reciprocal implementation would be for China to unilaterally impose a proportional cut off of financial support for our cumulative debt if the United States did not itself reduce its large footprint by redirecting an equivalent proportion of its national excess to the UN Green Development Fund.

The two major polluters can force each other to do what neither would be able to do on their own. This is an economic version of the Cold War as a necessary prelude to avoiding environmental collapse as the new unthinkable.

The extreme solution is not a pretty picture, but it may be what is required in order to create a wake-up call to achieve the public awareness necessary to support the ideal solution. Simply put, we must pay for what we have when we get it -- which is what a green economy is all about.

Clearly, solving the “acceptable,” not the “fair” part of the solution is the difficult, perhaps impossible, task. However the first step is to talk about the issues in plain truthful language. These are the issues we face, either as rational problem-solving now or as a harsh reality later.

If democracy is to work, straight talk is required by responsible people, including above all else elected government officials. Surely, we can risk the public trust if we believe in our own civic process; we have nothing more to lose, and everything to gain.

Professor Renner teaches in the Honors College at the University of South Florida. This maerial is based on his podcast at: www.kerenner.com