A new year, a new decade, has us wondering what the next will bring. This video excerpt from Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan, comments on our tiny place in the universe, and our history. Think of all the blood that has been spilled — for a speck of a dot. (a paraphrase)  Humans aren’t really all that significant or important, but we are slowly changing an entire planet’s climate and rendering it unsupportive of life as we know it.  We are sort of like suicidal parasites.

The future is now being formed in the minds of people who see that we need to live another way in the coming decades, starting soon, or people won’t live at all. I hope that in this new decade, these ideas start to be taken seriously.  People should not be in battle with nature, but realize it’s where we get everything necessary for life from,  and take much better care of it.  We don’t have a spare planet.

The following is excerpted from James Hansen’s “Storms of My Grandchildren,” the climate scientist’s new book about what is needed to stop global warming.  [This is a book I got recently and from reading it so far, one I definitely recommend. You can order it from Amazon by clicking on it in the right-hand column.]  Hansen never thought Copenhagen was the right approach or that it would amount to much, so he’s always had a “let’s move on and do something” approach to global warming, which is what his book is about.

“We have finally arrived at the main story: what we need to do to solve the climate problem, and how we can save a future for our grandchildren.

The problem demands a solution with a clear framework and a strong backbone. Yes, I know that halting and reversing the growth of carbon dioxide in the air requires an “all hands on deck” approach– there is no “silver bullet” solution for world energy requirements.

People need to make basic changes in the way the live. Countries need to cooperate. Matters as seemingly intractable as population must be addressed. And the required changes must be economically efficient. Such a pathway exists and is achievable.

Let’s define what a workable backbone and framework should look like. The essential backbone is a rising price on carbon applied at the source (the mine, wellhead, or port of entry), such that it would affect all activities that use fossil fuels, directly or indirectly.

Our goal is a global phaseout of fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions. We have shown, quantitatively, that the only practical way to achieve an acceptable carbon dioxide level is to disallow the use of coal and unconventional fossil fuels (such as tar sands and oil shale) unless the resulting carbon is captured and stored. We realize that remaining, readily available pools of oil and gas will be used during the transition to a post-fossil-fuel world. But [...]