As
the UN Climate Conference winds down in Paris, advocates for cutting
the use of fossil fuels world-wide are still looking for action from the
earth’s major polluters.
Climate
scientists say we are already experiencing climate change — more
extreme weather, longer droughts, worse flooding, warmer average ocean
and surface temperatures.
With
this comes disappearing glaciers, melting ice caps, expanding deserts,
rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and the mass extinction of
animal species.
Scientists
warn us, we need to bring CO2 levels in our atmosphere back down to 350
parts per million. We are currently at 400 — and rising by 2-3 parts
per million annually. It makes an insulating blanket on our atmosphere
that forces the climate to warm. And because oceans absorb a large
amount of this CO2, they are becoming more acidic. That threatens
seafood stocks and, indeed, a collapse of marine ecosystems.
Will
the world’s leaders get serious in time to avert climate catastrophe?
Climate scientist James Hansen told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now last
week that “as long as fuels are dirt cheap, people will keep burning
them.”
The Citizens Climate Lobby is a
nation-wide organization that has a plan they say will fix the problem and they
have proposed legislation to address it.
Tony Ernst spoke with power
generation engineer Tip Brolin, a local member of Citizens Climate Lobby and
the Southampton Town Sustainability Committee at his home in Water Mill last
month.
Brolin, trained at Tufts
University and George Washington University.
As a Navy officer and later as
a civilian he worked in Washington DC on nuclear propulsion with Admiral Hyman Rickover.
Brolin worked in industry
designing both coal and nuclear power generation systems and he helped manage
the Department of Energy’s nuclear power and nuclear fusion programs.
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