Melanie Chan/Staff

One of the biggest challenges for sustainable international economic development is the need to control greenhouse gas emissions. Before we can make meaningful progress toward stabilizing the planet’s climate, we need to have an international roadmap for economic growth, job creation and poverty alleviation that still bends the curve on emissions.

Solutions for saving the planet need to be ones that contribute to economic growth! Certainly, for developed economies, we need to have a plan for sustainable growth that includes emerging energy-efficiency technologies, novel green generation technologies and new infrastructures. For the developing world, however, the path to development goes through an increase in per capita consumption of energy. A fundamental sticking point to agreeing to an international agreement on carbon emissions has been the concern in developing economies that such an agreement will stymie GDP growth.

I deeply believe, however, that it is possible to chart a course for economic advancement in both developed and developing economies while still curbing greenhouse emissions. On the demand side, overall energy consumption can be grouped into three categories: buildings, transportation and industry. For example, energy-efficiency technologies have the potential to reduce energy consumption in buildings in an economically viable fashion by as much as 50 percent in the next five years, with the consequent drops in greenhouse gas emissions. In countries in the midst of building booms, new advances in materials and green cement will lead to even higher savings.

On the supply side, new technologies such as smart grids, solar thermal, nuclear and hydrogen fuels hold rich possibilities. The specific trajectory to economic growth, however, will vary from economy to economy, and the overall trajectory will need to be set strategically through a rigorous and vibrant roadmapping process.

This carbon emission quandary, with stalled international negotiations and ineffective policies, is analogous to a problem faced by the semiconductor industry.

Although the semiconductor industry had been doubling every 12 to 18 months for close to three decades, by the late 1980s, the complexity of the semiconductor supply chain began to dampen innovation and cost billions. Semiconductor industry groups, academics and manufacturers met to discuss best practices and fundamental decisions underpinning their industry and created the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors in 1992. The plan continues to be updated annually and exists like a living document.

If the current boom in the Information Age and the ubiquity of devices such as smartphones, which rely on cheaper and faster semiconductors by the Silicon roadmap, is any indicator, the plan is working well.

To pursue the analogy between the Silicon roadmap and a carbon roadmap, with colleagues at UC Berkeley such as professors Spanos, Zysman, Ramesh and Doyle, we have launched the Center for Research in Energy Systems Transformation. CREST is under the rubric of the campuswide Berkeley Energy and Climate Initiative.

CREST is working to create roadmaps that are owned by implementers and are cooperatively developed for the purpose of guiding the world’s energy system toward high efficiency while producing fewer greenhouse gases.

The CREST carbon roadmap has two arms. The first is to develop long-term plans for specific carbon-reducing technologies. As a test case, Berkeley engineers are investigating how sensors and networks deployed in smart, green buildings can be designed for easy adoption on different scales. CREST makes use of Berkeley’s deep vein of multidisciplinary, smart building-technology research.

Second, CREST seeks to develop locally adapted tools and technologies that are sensitive to place, politics and culture. That’s why the second part of the CREST carbon roadmap is to identify obstacles to cross-national technology development and implementation. Colleagues such as professors Brewer, Miguel, Gadgil, Wolfram and others power the Blum Center for Developing Economies’ new partnership with USAID in a project called the Development Innovations Laboratory, which includes the development of sustainable energy technology roadmaps in economies such as India, Indonesia, Kenya, etc.

I was recently asked to serve on a new United Nations Scientific Advisory Board, which will provide guidance to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on international sustainable development issues, staffed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization with its mandate for science and technology.

I look forward to expanding on bringing the work that we are doing at centers such as CREST and Blum to the international conversation about sustainable development.

I am confident we can create a carbon-roadmap-style plan that outlines how equitable prosperity can be reached across the planet and shows that economic growth, job creation and greenhouse gas reduction are not mutually exclusive.

Shankar Sastry is dean of the College of Engineering and the faculty director at the Blum Center for Developing Economies.

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The panel, which is commissioned by the United Nations, is considered the leading scientific authority on issues of climate change. The report is the fifth issued by the IPCC, and it expressed a 95 percent level of certainty regarding anthropogenic climate change, representing an increase of 5 percent from the organization’s previous report, issued in 2007.

The report, which will be released in full in 2014, is composed of three working-group reports and a synthesis report. Working Group I, the only part of the report to be released thus far, addresses causes of climate change. Working Groups II and III assess the socioeconomic and environmental effects of climate change and options for mitigating climate change, respectively. The report includes contributions from more than 830 authors.

According to William Collins, a UC Berkeley professor of climate sciences and one of the lead authors of Working Group I, the report’s three takeaway messages are that the climate is changing, mankind is causing the change and, if our society does not change its behavior, these patterns of climate change will amplify.

Collins said stopping emission of greenhouse gases, from fossil fuels in particular, is a top priority in mitigating climate change and acknowledged that recent breakthroughs in creating sustainable energy could allow that goal to be accomplished.

“The community has been absorbing and coming to terms with this information more slowly than climate scientists would advise that they do so,” said Collins. “But I am a technical optimist in the sense that we know what we need to do and have invented much of the technology that we need to do it.”

UC Berkeley Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor of Energy Daniel Kammen emphasized the importance of the report, calling it in an email statement “another nail in an already sealed coffin on climate change deniers.” He added that it is technically and economically possible for the world to meet an 80 percent decarbonization target.

While much of the report confirms information that was released in previous studies, John Harte of UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group agreed with its significance.

“We’ve seen a huge effort in the past month to put up a smoke screen of misinformation to try to divert the country from taking the next step,” he said. “What the IPCC report does is act as a counterweight to this effort. Without it, I think the forces at work trying to deny the science would completely win.”

Contact Chloee Weiner at cweiner@dailycal.org.

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Twelve of the warmest years on record have come in the last 15 years, and while 97 percent of climate scientists agree that this trend is a direct result of human activities, progress on comprehensive national climate legislation has long been stalled. In a speech at Georgetown University in June, Barack Obama unveiled his administration’s long-awaited climate plan, which has been lauded as a step in the right direction, and criticized for its support of nuclear and natural gas, among other shortcomings. One sentence toward the end of the president’s speech, however, stood out to thousands of student activists across the nation: “Invest. Divest. Remind folks there’s no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth.” While many Americans did not recognize the sentence as a reference to an expansive climate justice movement growing in the United States and abroad, students at more than 300 campuses took Obama’s words as an acknowledgment of the now two-year-old campaign to pressure their institutions to drop stocks from the fossil fuel industry.

The campaign originated at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania in 2010 when students visited communities in Appalachia decimated by mountaintop removal coal mining. Infuriated by systemic inaction at the federal and state level, students decided to target their board of trustees, arguing that it is morally wrong to invest money in companies that destroy mountains and pollute the air, water and land. Since 2011, thousands of students, religious leaders and elected city officials across the country have taken up the same logic, leveraging divestiture as a tactic to target the reputation of the fossil fuel industry, whose business model relies on mining and burning five times more carbon than scientists agree is safe to burn to avert runaway climate change.

In ridding a portfolio of fossil fuel stocks, institutional investors have an opportunity to make a moral statement as well as an economically wise decision that is in line with their fiduciary responsibilities. Many institutions and municipalities that have already voted to divest have done so because it is also prudent to avoid unnecessary risks associated with the existing international market for carbon. According to recent UC Berkeley graduate Katie Hoffman, “The economic research coming out of this movement makes it clear that there exists a carbon bubble, and if governments take any steps to regulate carbon in the ways necessary to avert certain climate catastrophe, more than half of the industry’s assets are at risk of becoming stranded.” Beyond focus on divestment, some students are also proposing that institutions reallocate divested funds into areas of the economy that are productive in climate-change adaptation and mitigation, thereby contributing to tangible climate and energy solutions.

Perhaps this logic spurred the recent commitment from the city of Berkeley to divest its asset holdings from the fossil fuel industry. Inspired by the work of UC students across the state, particularly the Fossil Free Cal campaign at UC Berkeley, the city became one of the first to move forward on climate by making fossil fuel divestment official city policy. It is likely that the Fossil Free UC campaign will have to remain vigilant to sway the regents toward full divestment, given the complicated nature of the UC investment portfolio structure, but students leading the effort are prepared to do just that. This Wednesday, student leaders from across the UC system will address the Regents for the third time to propose a five-year plan to put the University of California system on a similar path to the city of Berkeley.

College campuses have long served as wellsprings for widespread social and political change, and the city of Berkeley’s decision to divest alongside other municipalities like Seattle and Cambridge, Mass., illustrates that the movement is transcending its collegiate origins. More importantly, it is sparking the kind of national conversation needed to force climate change and the future of energy onto the U.S. political agenda. While Obama’s speech and climate action plan may have little bearing on the trajectory of federal climate policy during his term, the movement to address the climate crisis will continue to play out on and off campuses at the state and local level as the case for fossil fuel divestment continues to gain political and economic legitimacy.

Ophir Bruck is a fourth-year student at UC Berkeley and a fossil free summer fellow with 350.org.Contact the opinion desk at opinion@dailycal.org.

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Graham Haught/Staff

Our planet’s terrestrial and marine ecosystems, together with their climatic envelopes and geological substrates, and the processes and products resulting from their functioning represent humanity’s life-support systems. Their roles include the capture of carbon dioxide and release of oxygen, supplying food, provisioning of drinkable water, controlling soil erosion,  suppressing pest, recycling wastes and providing inspiration through watching and learning from nature. And these services are, in a very real sense, the result of about 3.5 billion years of relentless organic evolution, overwhelming the occurrence of five major pulses of biological extinction that occurred over the last 600 million years. Remarkably, never in the history of life has the planet “seen” more biological diversity. Ironically, within today’s pinnacle of biodiversity, since the industrial revolution but most notably in the last few decades, humanity has become a major force of environmental change, and the major threat to the life forms and life-support systems upon which everyone depends.

Recently, an international group of scientists who study the interaction of humanity with the rest of the biosphere released a consensus document in which they explicate our understanding of the current and projected magnitude of key human impacts on the planet and conclude that the evidence that humanity is seriously damaging its life-support systems is overwhelming. They point out that humanity is causing: the strongest and fastest climatic disruption since humans became a species; a massive deterioration of terrestrial and marine ecosystems; record and increasing levels of toxic pollution; massive biological extinctions, currently orders of magnitude times higher than in the distant past.

They also point to the unprecedented growth of the human population, doubling since 1970 to over 7 billion people (projected to reach 9.5 billion in 2050) with very unequal patterns of resource consumption (excessive and wasteful in some countries and social sectors). What is distinctive about this new synthesis is the elaboration that, in addition to the individual impacts listed, these factors interact in complex ways often reinforcing each other.

The scientists argue that while these anthropogenic impacts have profound consequences when analyzed separately, it is their combined assault that puts the life-support systems of humanity on the verge of reaching a tipping point — an abrupt and (for all practical purposes) permanent shift in biodiversity, ecological structure and ecosystem functioning that would imperil all societies. We now know that when multiple global pressures combine, ecosystem changes occur more unexpectedly, faster and more intensely than what would be predicted from considering each pressure separately.

Tipping points have been documented at a variety of temporal and spatial scales. This is the case, for example, of the shift of many forested areas of Latin America to savannah-like ecosystems following the combined and thus disproportionate effects of massive deforestation, burning, introduction of cattle and hunting of wildlife that followed the arrival of the conquistadores. These savannahs persist, even though they have been long abandoned for human use. Indeed, some local people, unaware of this history of human impact, regard the savannahs as “the natural ecosystem” of those localities. The fact that life “recuperated” afterward, although some of those tipping points in the distant past have been of profound and global impact, is of no consolation from the perspective of today’s global and interdependent civilization. Consider the case of the massive extinction of 250 million years ago, when global changes brought about the demise of the majority of species. Granted that post-extinction, the flora and fauna was able to “recuperate,” it took tens of millions of years for many of the different types of organisms to reach comparable levels of diversity and for life-support systems to reach a new relatively stable ecological state.

There is no way civilization could wait even 10 years for nature’s services to be restored. The consensus conclusion that the interactive effects of the five impacts greatly accelerates the chances of crossing critical thresholds leading to irreversible change within a few decades is therefore critical, as such synergistic effects would surely lead to social strife.

The scientists conclude that as a result of this destructive nexus, humanity’s quality of life will suffer substantial degradation by the year 2050 if action is not undertaken to change the path civilization is following. Given these circumstances, it is essential that, beyond scientists, society at large — the general public and government at all level — become aware of this understanding and use it to develop a reasoned recognition of the urgency of the human predicament. It is essential that policymakers commit the necessary resources and drive human action toward implementing solutions. As the consensus indicates, scientific knowledge and technological capacity are not the limiting factors now; rather, it is more a matter of human attitude and societal definition of priorities. What is needed is systematic education and communication, explaining that human well-being absolutely depends on environmental life-support systems and emphasizing the pressing need to change the ways those systems are being abused. But all is not bleak. The consensus argues that, if we start taking appropriate actions now, our trajectory can be altered — and our children will be safer and proud of us.

*The statement is available to download and sign at http://mahb.stanford.edu/endorse-the-message-to-world-leaders/

Rodolfo Dirzo is the Bing Professor in Environmental Science at Stanford.

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The scientific consensus, entitled “Maintaining Humanity’s Life Support Systems in the 21st Century,” estimates that human quality of life will degrade substantially by the year 2050 if negative environmental trends such as climate change continue on their current trajectory. Geared toward policymakers, the consensus explains environmental threats in simple language that is scientifically accurate but understandable to the public.

“These are very big problems, but they’re solvable,” said Anthony Barnosky, a UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology and lead author of the consensus.

Thirty-nine fellow UC Berkeley scientists have also joined Barnosky in endorsing this statement. The enterprise aims to urge policymakers to take a more active role in creating environmental change.

“We have the technology,” Barnosky said. “What’s lacking is the societal understanding of the seriousness of the issues and the political will and special interest groups.”

The consensus raises five primary environmental concerns: climate disruption, extinction, transformation of ecosystems, pollution and population growth.

Rodolfo Dirzo, a co-author of the statement and a professor of biology at Stanford University, hopes that the presentation of this information will act as an impetus for action and force decision-makers to tackle environmental hazards.

According to Dirzo, while other similar efforts tend to focus mainly on climate change, the consensus is unique because it examines how different factors in environmental change affect one another. For example, the report details the connection between biological extinction and the loss of ecosystems.

The statement also introduces the notion of “tipping points” that can be reached when a complex system such as the Earth’s climate approaches a threshold. After the “tipping point” is passed, it becomes increasingly difficult to stop change.

“A familiar example of a tipping point is how a ship capsizes,” said David Ackerly, a UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology and signatory of the report. “It can recover from a small perturbation, but once it is pushed over too far, it suddenly flips.”

Tipping points, especially as related to climate change, address one of the major concerns of the statement — the fact that it is difficult to say when environmental situations will become irreversible.

Among the recommendations in the statement are decreasing greenhouse emissions by using carbon-neutral energy technologies in place of fossil fuels, slowing high extinction rates by assigning economic valuations to natural waterways and minimizing the transformation of natural ecosystems by increasing efficiency in existing food-production areas.

“The overall message is, we have to start dealing with these environmental problems in a very holistic way, and we need to realize it’s understanding how they interact,” Barnosky said.

Contact Angelica Villegas at avillegas@dailycal.org.

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Charlotte Passot/Staff

Wouldn’t it be great if you could go to the beach in the winter? What if it meant you could never eat almonds again? Or potatoes? Or cherries? Sure, it’s nice that it’s sunny and warm in the winter now, but global climate change is negatively affecting agriculture around the world, which means it will most likely negatively affect you.

Most people are aware by now that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (think cars and industrial production) and methane (think oil, coal and landfills) are causing the globe to heat up and change in destructive ways. But how do these greenhouse gases affect the foods we eat?

For starters, warmer climates mean more pests and insects are invading crops throughout the year.  Before, most pests only harmed crops during the summer months.  But now, because of warmer temperatures, pests are able to survive in the winter. This has a number of negative consequences. One is that farmers are losing crops and money. This affects us as consumers because it means price increases in our food ­— in other words, producers have to make money somehow, so fewer crops means higher prices. It also means that farmers are using more pesticides on their crops because there are more pests they need to get rid of. Pesticides, which can stay on food even once they have reached the grocery store, may cause people to become sick.

Do you like cherries? Well, get ready to kiss their juicy deliciousness goodbye. You see, cherries need time to chill in order to grow. And to chill, they of course need cold weather. Since temperatures have grown warmer, there has been less chill time for cherries. This means that cherries have not been growing as well. If this continues, it could severely deplete the cherry
supply. And no cherries to grow means no cherries for us to eat. But these plump little spheres of succulent goodness are only the tip of the (melting) iceberg.

In California alone, the amount of almonds, walnuts, grapes and avocados are predicted to decrease significantly because of climate change. And not only that, scientists say that the crop yield for almost every single crop grown in California’s Central Valley will plummet nearly 30 percent in the near future. For almonds, that would be like taking 377 Olympic-sized swimming pools full of almonds off the market.

Even in cases in which higher levels of carbon dioxide could benefit a crop’s growth in theory, it could actually hurt its growth in reality. This is because crops, which need different nutrients to grow, can only grow as much as their most limited nutrients will let them. So even if there is more carbon dioxide, if there aren’t enough of the other nutrients, the crop’s growth may be hindered.

Now raise your hand if you can survive without water. Well, it turns out crops can’t either. With the increase in droughts, many crops are not getting the water they need to grow. And, you guessed it, this means more crop failure, less food and higher prices for us consumers.

I’d like to say this story has a simple solution. I’d like to tell you that if you buy fair trade bananas or consume meat fewer times per week or don’t eat blueberries in January — then voila! ­— we can stop hugging those trees and be on our merry way. But the truth is, while supporting local farmers, cutting down meat consumption and buying seasonal foods may be helpful, the problems causing climate change have roots that go much deeper than the crops themselves. And to dig up those roots, we’re going to need shovels a lot bigger than your average garden hoe. The kinds of shovels I’m talking about are getting involved in your local climate change organization, educating yourself on agricultural policies, voting for change and emailing your congressional representative to let them know you care about our food.

All of this is not to discourage you from making more sustainable food choices in your daily life because change can come at all levels. So if you decide to cut back on meat or turn the other way when you pass those vine-ripe tomatoes from Mexico in the grocery store, that’s a start.

I know it can be easy to feel plowed over by the magnitude of these issues, but take this as encouragement that we can do something — we just have to work a little harder than we thought. So whether you decide to take baby steps or pick up your over-sized shovel and start digging, at the very least, I hope I have planted some seeds.

Cody Dunitz is a senior at UC Berkeley.

Contact the opinion desk at opinion@dailycal.org.

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1. Rape Remarks

During this last election season, a lot of ideas about rape and abortion were thrown around by politicians, the most egregious of which were proclaimed by Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri and Treasurer Richard Mourdock of Indiana.

Sucharitha Yelimeli/Staff

Akin, who ran for U.S. Senate, claimed that if a woman is a victim of “a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Mourdock, who also ran for Senate in his state, was not so much concerned with the science of it all. He felt that pregnancies from rape reflect “something that God intended to happen.”

I’m not sure that God really has all that much to do with the issue here; few would argue that rape is a product of divine influence. But what is clear is that Christian politicians — which both Mourdock and Akin are — struggle to reconcile their religious convictions about abortion with a moral political stance, whether that be through appealing to science or “God’s will.”

Truthfully, the assertions and motivations of these two men, both of whom lost their races, are not the essential problem. Although the contents of both of these comments horrify me at a personal level, I am more than anything frightened by the fact that the arguments came from male politicians. There is a fundamental disconnect in a male-dominated discourse and government determining laws that affect only women.

I am, quite frankly, sick of hearing men discuss such a life-changing trauma that they will never be able to fully understand. A man will never be able to comprehend the physical and mental toll carrying a child takes on a woman and the impossibly complicated repercussions when that child was the result of rape. Let the debate carry on, but let’s hear the female voices.

—Hannah Brady

2. Forty-seven percent

The irony of the 2012 presidential campaign’s biggest blunder is that it wasn’t a mistake at all. It was just Mitt being Mitt.

In the midst of an Etch-A-Sketch-style national campaign in which Mitt Romney gravitated to the center, the nation was reminded on Sept. 17 just who Romney really is. In a secret video of a private fundraiser published by the left-leaning magazine Mother Jones, Romney speculated that “there are 47 percent [of Americans] who are with [President Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them … These are people who pay no income tax.” He continued, saying his job “is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

The idea that there is a filthy lower class — a class composed of selfish, lazy, shiftless takers with few goals above a meager living — permeates the Romney-esque elite of this country. And the candidate expressed that sentiment perfectly. Like others of his breed, Mitt Romney concluded that a large portion of Americans are slacking freeloaders, addicted to the Democratic Party for its “gifts” to the plebeian class and deserving of nothing less than a Republican free market crusade.

It’s sad that this year’s election, as much as it was hyped, was largely decided from the start. Against a man who arrived on the political scene in 2008 as a demigod of hope and idealism (as flawed as that rhetoric may be), the GOP put forth just another cynic with enough capital gains to swim in.

Romney wanted a civil war — a battle between the ambitious and the lethargic, the capitalist and the penniless. But there’s no war to fight. If the results of the 2012 election prove anything, they show the American people are united in their resolve as one people — economic status aside.

—Connor Grubaugh

3. Romney’s Women

Sucharitha Yelimeli/Staff

Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” remark at the town-hall presidential debate quickly became an Internet sensation. But too much commentary focused on Romney’s odd word choice rather than the fact that the phrase revealed even more hypocrisy than awkwardness.

At the Oct. 16 debate, after the candidates were asked about inequality in the workplace, specifically with regard to women, Romney flaunted that, when he was Massachusetts governor, his office “took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.” By stating this, Romney promoted affirmative action, inadvertently endorsing a policy rejected by the core of the Republican Party.  His words actually went even further than most proponents of affirmative action, who often dictate that ethnic- and gender-based criteria be used only when two candidates are equally qualified. Making a “concerted effort” to go out and find people based on gender falls under the most extreme forms of affirmative action.

The remark joins an endless list of Romney gaffes, one that will no doubt lengthen until he is laid to rest. Even from beyond the grave, he will probably continue to offend at least 47 percent of the population. (Although more overtly offensive, his 47 percent comment revealed a cocky personality trait most already assumed existed).

Americans should refocus on the context of the “binders full of women” comment and reveal the affirmative action-lover the world has come to know in Mitt. The rejection of affirmative action remains a foundation of  his party, and yet most attention went to a few semicomedic words within a larger, more meaningful gaffe. If people had been more forgiving over Romney’s bizarre word choice, they could have realized the more substantive — albeit less fun — critique of his comment.

—Noah Ickowitz

4. Measure S

Sucharitha Yelimeli/Staff

On election night, I tweeted my hopeful prediction that “Measure S will win by 10+ points. Students will split, permanent Berkeley residents will break strongly for S.” Of course, it turns out I was way off: The measure lost narrowly, weighed down by overwhelming student opposition.

Berkeley voters missed an opportunity to support struggling businesses, encourage the local homeless population to seek help and improve the city’s quality of life. We also cemented the city’s position as the destination of choice for a subculture of young drifters from around the country who say they opt to live on the streets as a form of rebellion. I worry about the effects this will have — on the vitality of our public spaces and on the welfare of these young people, whose destructive lifestyles we are continuing to enable.

Despite its failure, I think that the Measure S campaign was in some ways good for Berkeley. It drew attention to the severity of Berkeley’s homelessness problem. And, as Measure S supporter Roland Peterson has pointed out, the campaign challenged the wisdom of an “anything goes” posture toward behavior in public spaces.

On another note, the failure of Measure S is an interesting comment on city politics more broadly. I had long been convinced that Berkeley’s place in the popular imagination as a stronghold of radical leftism was a mythical holdover from the 1960s with little relevance in 2012. Today’s Berkeley, I thought, had political predilections like those of San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Palo Alto and other progressive cities that have restricted sitting on commercial sidewalks during business hours.

The city’s politics have, of course, moderated since the 1960s. In the mayoral election, the pragmatic Tom Bates vanquished his more progressive opponents in a landslide. But the failure of Measure S is a reminder that the public’s conception of Berkeley as a bastion of liberal dissent may have more truth to it than I thought.

—Jason Willick

5. Global Warming

This past presidential election, there was no green on the American flag. For the first time since the 1988 vice presidential debate,

Sucharitha Yelimeli/Staff

climate change was passed over in the presidential debates.

While no debate question specifically addressed the issue, activists assert that there was opportunity for discussion. When asked by moderator Bob Schieffer in the third and final presidential debate about the “greatest future threat to the national security of this country,” Barack Obama and Mitt Romney responded with what some would say are more “immediate” concerns about terrorist networks, a nuclear Iran and the Middle East.

Climate change is a national security threat, and it is immediate. As officially recognized by the Pentagon in 2010, the threats of global warming — including at-risk coastline populations and new channels that require naval defense — require alleviation by means of a solution or maintenance at the very least.

Both Obama and Romney had their sights set on becoming leaders of the nation; both prioritized their political interests over the welfare of the planet. But in doing so, they ignored the trumpeting elephant in the room and passed over a pressing multi-faceted issue as if it could wait. But the threats of climate change are imminent and transcend national security, with important  implications for energy policy, the economy and foreign policy.

Climate change is a phenomenon that knows neither citizenship nor wealth, only that one is a denizen of Earth. But even in the wake of 331 consecutive months of temperatures higher than the 20th- century average, increasing violence of weather, melting ice caps and rising seas, politics came first, hailing colors of red, white and blue — not green.

—Casie Lee

Contact the Daily Cal Opinion staff at opinion@dailycal.org.

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Contact the opinion desk at opinion@dailycal.org.

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Elizabeth Muller is co-founder of Berkeley Earth with her father, professor Richard Muller. Researchers analyzed climate data from as far back as 1753 to provide a more comprehensive study on global warming than has ever been completed before.

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Well, here we are, finally: 2012, the year that supposedly ends in apocalypse. It’s the end of the world. Although the Mayans may have started it, the environmentalists are certainly keeping the hype alive.

Well, at least they were, for a while. Nowadays, worrying about global warming just doesn’t seem to be cool anymore.

Climate change used to be all we could talk about, as recently as only a few years ago. In May 2008, Prince Charles stated that, “We have 18 months to stop climate change disaster.” Activists warned that, if appropriate measures were not taken quickly, the world itself was going to end. Floods would cover coastal cities nationwide as the sea levels rose; expanding deserts would lead to mass starvation — we were all going to die. Lots of people worldwide wholeheartedly believed in the cause, and there was lots of scientific proof to back it up. Companies may as well have pledged allegiance to Satan if they didn’t try to “go green” in some way, and if you didn’t at least try to recycle once in a while, you were a monster.

Not many other people I met supported the Green Movement as intensely as I did. I’d spend hours debating with my grandfather about whether global warming was caused by humans and, if so, whether we were doing enough to stop it. An avid Discovery Channel viewer, my seventh-grade self knew everything the average citizen could have possibly known about global warming.

I was also vigilant: If someone left a light on in a room, that person would never hear the end of it. I would tell my 6-year-old sister that by leaving the TV on, she was personally responsible for the deaths of seven penguins.

I believed I had to try to single-handedly save the world from global warming. I was going to dedicate my entire life to the environmentalist cause. Though I still deeply care about the environment, and the threats are still very real, for me, as soon as the question of “Do you believe in global warming?” was replaced by “How are we going to fix the economy?,” my interests shifted from environmental engineering to economics.

Human beings can change their minds very quickly with regards to the things that once meant something to them. For short periods of time, we seem so capable of being passionate about an issue, and then — as soon as other people stop talking about it — it’s as if everything goes back to normal; out of sight, out of mind. But is that homeostasis really such a bad thing?

Recently, I stumbled across a quote from atmospheric scientist Monika Kopacz that said although climate change is “subject to opinion,” the problem is “only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ — and readers’ — attention.”

Sensational exaggeration? Everything I was willing to fight for was sensational exaggeration?

As the hype continues to die down, I can’t help but notice that all the “end of the world” stuff that I myself had been preaching does actually sound pretty crazy.

Conspiracy or not, Gordon J. Fulks, who holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago, explains that “We certainly don’t know everything there is to know about climate, but we do know that Orwellian pronouncements about a catastrophe are dangerous propaganda disguised as science.”

No matter how smart and free-thinking we feel we are, I wouldn’t say I’m so sure. Advertisements help us choose what we want, news stories sculpt how we view the world around us, issues politicians debate are the ones that we care about. We’re constantly told what to think, even by everyone around us. When issues are important enough to us, our opinions are set in stone. We can find evidence to back it up, too; anyone who tries to argue against us is utterly wrong. Occasionally, we don’t simply see opposing arguments as incorrect — they go as far as being selfish, closed-minded or even evil. And that’s really scary.

There are two sides to every story. Maybe that homeostasis, that balance we naturally seem to return to, is actually a good thing. You shouldn’t be so sure of something that you’re unable to see any other options. Extremism in anything, from religion to politics to saving the world, is dangerous.

Life is all about questions — when you look for answers, you only seem to ever get more questions. It’s about not knowing and hoping to someday find out. Yet we always seem to jump to conclusions far too quickly. Before we find ourselves willing to give our lives for a cause that we fully, completely, undoubtedly believe in, we should take a step back to see the bigger picture and make sure we really know what we’re talking about.

We should really try to be careful, especially with things that mean a lot to us, things we believe in. Our absolute inability to tolerate the possibility of being wrong is, in my eyes, much more terrifying than the Mayan calendar’s apocalyptic warning — our willingness to do anything to be right may eventually bring us to something much more ruinous than anything we could have ever previously imagined.

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