The Atmosphere Doesn’t Care About Your Feelings

Source: The Atmosphere Doesn’t Care About Your Feelings

by Amy Westervelt

I said this in an interview recently as a joke, but honestly I think we need to embrace this fact a bit more. On top of oil executives constantly telling us to “be reasonable,” I see so many people celebrating political wins that don’t deliver any actual emissions reductions…and don’t get me wrong, I totally get why–so much blood, sweat and tears goes into those wins, and you gotta walk before you run, and also everyone needs to feel like they’re winning sometimes or at least taking the first step towards winning. I really truly get all of that. The unfortunate reality is that the atmosphere does not. The atmosphere responds to molecules, and we either send it too many of the wrong molecules or we don’t. The result of how those molecules change the atmosphere is that it becomes increasingly less livable or it doesn’t. We’re either putting less of the bad stuff up there or we’re not. It’s pretty black and white, the atmosphere. Not big on compromise.

So when I see things like the comment Meg O’Neill, former Exxon VP turned chief executive of Woodside Energy made at CERA Week, the annual global energy conference that was held in Houston last week, it seems absolutely ridiculous. “It has become emotional,” she said, of debates about climate policy. “And when things are emotional, it becomes more difficult to have a pragmatic conversation.”

Totally, Meg! Pragmatic like, just keep doing the same thing and hope the atmosphere magically behaves differently in a couple decades? Or like pretending that taking CO2 from smokestacks and injecting it under ground to get more oil out will somehow result in fewer carbon emissions? Or pragmatic like just under-reporting methane emissions 38-fold because what matters is whatever number you decide to put on a spreadsheet, not the actual molecules in the air?