I have referred to the Climate Change Conference in Poland several times. I want to clarify just who that group is and also share what I know about the other big players on the global climate change stage.

The Poland conference was a UN meeting for mostly governmental policy makers. The agenda is to have members of the Paris Climate Change Agreement work together on issues like monitoring climate change and sharing the costs of switching to cleaner energy sources. Because it is a diverse group from both developed and less-developed nations, it will remain highly political and focus on batting around ideas while making very little real change. Sadly, the big guys don’t really care about the little guys. However, it will remain a great time to hold protests and get noticed by the media. This year, the star protester was a 15-year old young lady from Sweden. The 2019 meeting will be held in NYC in September. I have given some thought to attending as a protestor but don’t know yet if I can really pull that off.

Academia

Another group of people to keep track of are the top-notch scientists around the world. They have been trained at and usually teach in the most prestigious universities. I learned that they are doing a great deal of hard scientific research that provides baseline data and possible solutions. Some of them will be future Nobel Prize winners. They hold various conferences around the world and write papers with intense titles.  Here is just one scientist profile that I found online:

Wallace S. Broecker

“Broecker was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1931. He holds a PhD (1958) in geology from Columbia University. He is now Newberry Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Earth Institute at Columbia University, as well as a research scientist with Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Often called the “Grandfather of Climate Science,” Broecker pioneered the study of the history of the earth’s oceans since the Pleistocene epoch by means of radiocarbon and other isotope-based dating systems. This work enabled him to reconstruct the biogeochemical carbon cycle, as well as the influence of climate change on polar ice and ocean sediments, among other important results. Moreover, Broecker is the discoverer of the global ocean conveyor belt, a deep-ocean circulation system driven by temperature and salinity, which connects all three of the world’s major oceans. The great ocean conveyor, as it is also known (it was Broecker who hit upon the conveyor belt image to describe this system), is a prime causal factor determining the earth’s climate. Its discovery has been hailed as one of the most significant in the history of oceanography. More recently, Broecker has been involved in work on carbon sequestration.

Broecker is the author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books, pamphlets, and technical reports, as well as the author or co-author of over 900 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He has won numerous awards, prizes, and other honors, including the National Medal of Science in 1997 and the Crafoord Prize in Geosciences in 2006.”

Broecker has written many books, including:

• Chemical Equilibria in the Earth (McGraw-Hill, 1971)
• Chemical Oceanography (Harcourt, 1974)

Some of these brilliant scientists are called climate-deniers. Sounds horrible, right? Who could possibly deny climate change? However, in one case that I read about, the scientist was not exactly denying climate change. She was pointing to the highly politicized culture of climate science and how it might taint research. Her story:

Judith A. Curry

“Curry was born in 1953. She holds a PhD (1982) in geophysical sciences from the University of Chicago. She has taught at the University of Wisconsin, Purdue University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). In 2017, under a torrent of criticism from her colleagues and negative stories in the media, she was forced to take early retirement from her position as Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, a position she had held for 15 years (during 11 of those years, she had been Chair of the School). Curry is currently Professor Emerita at Georgia Tech, as well as President of Climate Forecast Applications Network, or CFAN (see below), an organization she founded in 2006.

Curry is an atmospheric scientist and climatologist with broad research interests, including atmospheric modeling, the polar regions, atmosphere-ocean interactions, remote sensing, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for atmospheric research, and hurricanes, especially their relationship to tornadoes. Before retiring, she was actively researching the evidence for a link between global warming and hurricane frequency and severity.

Curry was drummed out of academia for expressing in public her reservations about some of the more extreme claims being made by mainstream climate scientists. For example, in 2011, she published (with a collaborator) an article stressing the uncertainties involved in climate science and urging caution on her colleagues.^[20] After having posted comments along these lines on other people’s blogs for several years, in 2010, she created her own climate-related blog, Climate Etc. (see below), to foster a more open and skeptical discussion of the whole gamut of issues involving climate change/global warming. She also gave testimony some half dozen times between 2006 and 2015 to Senate and House subcommittees, expressing in several of them her concerns about the politicization of the usual scientific process in the area of climate change. Writing on her blog in 2015 about her most-recent Congressional testimony, Curry summarized her position as follows:

Finding herself denounced as a “climate change denier” and under intense pressure to recant her views, in 2017 Curry instead took early retirement from her job at Georgia Tech and left academia, citing the “craziness” of the present politicization of climate science. She continues to be active in the field of climatology through her two blogs and her many public lectures.

Curry is the author or co-author of more than 180 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, as well as the co-author or editor of three books (see below). She has received many research grants, been invited to give numerous public lectures, and participated in many workshops, discussion panels, and committees, both in the US and abroad. In 2007, Curry was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).”

Business World, Entrepreneurs

I am among those who believe that the most expedient and effective solutions to our climate change problems will come from the business sector. I do not like the corporate control of the world (the primary contributors to climate change and also to economic inequality). However, some of the forward-looking corporations may contribute to new developments. Entrepreneurs will probably make the most difference as they develop creative and sensible solutions. These solutions will be new technologies that replace the polluting technologies. You could call these new technologies to save us from old technologies. It is an odd concept at first, but it does make sense. We will never go back to old ways of doing things, but we will develop even better new technologies. These entrepreneurs are different because they value nature and embrace the idea of stewardship. They will have the most impact on our future, in my opinion.

Examples here, here, and here.

The Rest of Us

Most of us are not doing all that much, yet we are the ones who hold all the economic power in the world. We are the consumers and we create the demand that drives our economy. If we change our demands and also exercise our political clout by voting in politicians who promote stewardship and new technologies, we can be the driving force behind saving our planet. Here is where climate change (carbon emission) happens, which are the areas where we need to change our demand:

Home use of  energy  24.9%

Industry and Manufacturing 18%

Transportation  14.3%

Agriculture 13.8%

Land use change 12.2% (deforestation)

Other:

• Other fuel combustion (8.6%) 
• Fugitive emissions (4%) 
• Waste (3.2%)

So, if you look at the list, the activities that cause global warming are created by our demand for household power, gasoline to drive our car and for stuff that comes over from Asia on giant cargo ships. Our beef-laden diet adds even more to the carbon emission load. And, every time a forest is razed for animal agriculture or housing development, we send the planet closer to catastrophe.

The global players in the future of our planet are governmental bodies, academia, private business and the consumers. We, the consumers of the world, are the largest group and have the most power. We have to change our habits and change our demands. I can tell you that cutting the first 50% of our carbon footprint is not all that hard and will have a huge impact.

If you are not doing anything to reduce your carbon footprint, then you are the problem.