O’Riordian Jon - The Hard Work of Hope: Climate Change in the Age of Trump

THE HARD WORK
OF HOPE

Climate Change in the
Age of Trump

Robert William Sandford
Jon ORiordan

Copyright 2017 by Robert William Sandford and Jon ORiordan

First Edition

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Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN 9781771602228 (hardcover)

ISBN 9781771602235 (electronic)

Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens

Distributed in Canada by Heritage Group Distribution and in the U.S. by Publishers Group West

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We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and of the province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this book are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the publishing company, its staff or its affiliates.

For Her Honour Judith Gichon, Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, for her commitment to youth and for her tireless efforts in bringing the crisis at the climate nexus to the attention of British Columbians and to a wider Canadian audience through her contacts with government and community leaders across the country.

For Deborah Harford, fearless champion of societal resilience in the face of Earth system change, the global water crisis and climate instability

CONTENTS

ONE

Global Water Security & Climate
Stability in the 21st Century

Changes in the composition of the Earths atmosphere are causing water to move more energetically through the global hydrological cycle, making the worlds water crises even more urgent to address. Until we lost the relative stability of the planetary water cycle, we had no idea how much we relied on that stability. Water is at the very centre of human existence, part of an intimately interwoven nexus that links the amount of water we need to sustain human life, to how much of it we take from nature to grow our food, to the amount we need for generating energy, to the increasing impact our burgeoning population is having on biodiversity worldwide.

What we are discovering is the extent to which the fundamental function of our political structures and global economy are predicated on relative hydrologic predictability, especially as it relates to precipitation patterns that define water security. As a result of the loss of relative hydrologic stability, it is not just food production, energy use and biodiversity-based Earth system function that are disrupted. Political and economic stability is also at risk in a number of regions in the world. We are only now beginning to understand how complex this issue has become. Hydro-climatic change has the potential to literally and fundamentally redraw the map of the world.

The global water crisis is more widespread than we think. First Nations and other remote communities even in Canada have suffered needless water shortages or contamination. Places here and abroad have been impacted disastrously by flooding of magnitudes never before witnessed. Droughts are occurring that are so deep and so prolonged that no one remembers such suffering ever happening before. It is questionable whether some of these places will ever be habitable again. Ours is a world of distress and danger we can help alleviate and prevent. That is why it is important to consider how a disruption in the global order right now could affect our capacity to advance and export our expertise in the management of water to where it is needed. That is why we should pay close attention to what is happening in the United States. So why be concerned? We should be concerned because we may be at a turning point in human history that will complicate our efforts to address the growing global crisis with respect to water security and climate stability.

The new American president has stated that the US will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. The immediate risk is that what is happening in the US will slow the global momentum on climate action. If this happens, President Trump may be condemning future generations of Americans and the rest of the world to hell on Earth. This profound threat to the future of humanity, however, has not been mentioned in mainstream coverage of the new political road the president began immediately to plow through the White House. Americas potential failure to meet its obligations with respect to the Paris Agreement ought to be of concern not just to those who worry about climate or about water resources but to anyone who cares about the world order or even about order itself. If there is to be hope, then an improved order must somehow emerge out of what will hopefully be a temporary setback.

THE DEEPLY DIVIDED PERSONALITY OF THE US REVEALED OVERNIGHT

If you were in the United States on the evening of November 8, 2016, you might have mistakenly imagined that somehow the personality of the United States changed overnight. It might have seemed to you that it was as if millions of people had suddenly abandoned the moral principles and standards to which they had previously adhered, revealing a darkness within society we knew existed but the need to live peaceably together demanded we repress. While this perception may be partly true, what really happened that night was that a different side of the American personality a side that has existed since the beginning suddenly assumed full political power. The potential consequences of this change in national political voice became immediately apparent.

In advance of the inauguration, rumours were purposely circulated that President Trump would not abandon US responsibility to the climate. Gossips even had it that Trumps daughter, Ivanka, a 36-year-old former reality TV star and fashion model, now a businesswoman and executive vice-president of the Trump Organization, would be charged with publicly championing the climate issue domestically. Some actually believed the rumours.

Realistically, however, any false hope that pundits might have generated, and whatever misinformation the media and others had communicated about whether or not Trump would go through with his threat to immediately walk away from the Paris Agreement, should have been tempered by Trumps nomination of Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon-Mobil, as secretary of state.