Tide changes on warming climate

The tide has changed on global warming. Two initiatives announced in the last two weeks suggest the pivotal moment has arrived.

First, President Donald Trump announced in his State of the Union address on Feb. 4 that the United States will join a worldwide effort to reduce human impacts on the climate. The campaign will involve planting, restoring and conserving a trillion trees by 2030.

Then last week petroleum giant BP announced that it plans to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 and switch its investments to products that don’t emit carbon dioxide.

Neither of the initiatives will make a major dent in the world’s climate change problem, but they are promising steps in the right direction. And they come at a time when the world is becoming increasingly aware that the problem exists and is caused by humans, therefore it is up to humans to fix it.

The world currently has about three trillion trees and those trees absorb and transform a substantial part of the carbon dioxide generated by human activities. The trillion trees won’t solve the problem by any means but a one-third increase in carbon dioxide conversion will put a significant dent in it.

Many people were surprised by Trump’s announcement on the trillion trees initiative, but the President knows a good bandwagon when he sees one. He was sold on the idea by his friend Marc Benioff, the billionaire computer entrepreneur and champion of environmental causes.

One expert in the field said it can take a hundred years for a tree to mature, but that is generally the case only in cold climates like Alaska and happens with slow-growing trees. In warmer areas certain leafy trees with strong carbon converting capability can reach maturity in as little as 10 years. And they start working on the carbon problem pretty much as soon as they first sprout leaves. The impact starts small and grows over time.

The other big announcement in the climate change area came from BP, the big oil and gas company that is leaving Alaska next fall after 50 years in the state. Bernard Looney, BP’s new chief executive, announced that the company will move away from oil and gas production and slash its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. ‘Net zero’ means that actual emissions are offset by other operations that absorb carbon dioxide.

Looney said BP will gradually shift its investments into energy projects that do not emit carbon dioxide and others that offset production emissions by carbon capture. He said the company will also install methane measuring equipment at its production sites and cut down on leakage. Methane and carbon dioxide are two of the main gases that cause the climate to warm.

The company will still produce oil and gas but will keep the lid on new production initiatives and work to offset emissions from the hydrocarbon fuels it continues to produce. BP’s announcement was unprecedented but other companies like Exxon and ConocoPhillips are known to be studying the problem and working on their own approaches to it.

It’s unknown whether the trillion trees initiative will result in plantings in Alaska, but birch and other trees that grow well here could fit in with the scheme. And Alaskans are quite likely to get involved through their own plantings.

It seems unlikely that Alaska’s oil production is likely to be impacted anytime soon, but it’s large supply of natural gas could be needed for electrical generation.

Eventually solar and hydroelectric generation might offset gas as a power source. But if, as seems likely, the world moves away from gasoline engines and adopts electric vehicles, gas could be an interim power source until enough of the non-polluting sources are developed.

Alaska is being heavily impacted by the warming climate and the resulting rising oceans, so we have a lot at stake in what happens over the next 30 to 50 years in the energy field.

Big changes are in the works and our state will be in the center of things in many ways.