Paul Andrew L.

Dalomias

Title: Pick Up The Tab

Topic: The Pre-eminence of the Climate Crisis
Statement: We, as a species, should prioritize addressing the Climate Crisis over other social issues

INTRODUCTION

I. Attention Step: One of the fondest memories I’ll ever have is of my sister crashing our
cousin’s performance at the annual clan reunion. She just heard her favourite song come up
and ran on-stage just jumping and stomping to her song while waving her balloon like a
madwoman. I’m gonna be honest with you it’s probably among the most exciting things to
ever happen in Jaro, Leyte within the past decade. It was that amazing. And yet, it seems as
though recently every subsequent recollection of that event seemed more and more
bittersweet to me. It seems that every time I remember her actions that day, a voice at the
back of my head can’t help but fill me with dread and anxiety over the future that she would
have to face, over the fact that that future would never allow her to display the same basic
lust for life that she displayed that day, and that, like many of your own little brothers and
sisters, she would be left alone to fend for herself in a world that stopped making sense so
many years ago.
II. Clarification Step: Good morning/afternoon everyone, and I’m here before you, delivering
this speech, today because I am frustrated, and I feel that many of you feel the same way.
We are frustrated at how our attempts at building a dialogue over the climate crisis are met
with ridicule and bullying by a posse of idiots that deal with opposition with the same kind
of toxic tribalism that they apply to sports fandoms. We are frustrated at how the issue of
climate change has become another cog in the partisan feud between left and right when
saving the world should be a universal concern. We are frustrated at how our concerns
about the environment, about the future that WE inherit, are continually met with
obfuscation and indifference as policy-makers dance around the topic citing poverty or
other priorities. No. NO. I refuse to let our future be gambled away by the ruling class to
fund their foolhardy pursuit of the fairy tale of infinite economic growth while we choke on
the fumes of their hubris. These men talk big game of dreams, of enterprise, of the
“American Dream”, but dreams mean nothing in the face of facts, and the facts show that
we are living in a mass extinction event. It’s time we starting that way.

BODY

I. The planet is at an ecological tipping point.

a. The Amazon Dieback
i. A dieback process, in which climate change speeds up the loss of trees and
changes the landscape, could start with just some of the Amazon's destruction
(Business Insider, 2019)
 ii. Losing 20% of Brazil's rainforest could result in such a feedback loop, which
would dry trees, leaving them unable to absorb as much carbon and much more
flammable and likely to spread fires. (Aragao et. al., 2018)
iii. This tipping point could lead the Amazon to devolve into a barren, savannah-like
landscape that not only fails to produce oxygen but could cause the release of
the 140 billion tons of carbon stored in the rainforest into the atmosphere. (The
Rainforest Trust, 2017)
iv. Rising global temperatures also threaten the future of remaining trees in aiding
the planet. A 2000 study found that rising temperatures could stop trees in the
Amazon from absorbing oxygen by as early as 2050 and that they could start to
emit carbon instead. (Cox et.al., 2000)
b. Global Temperature Rise
i. Latest Annual Average Anomaly (2018) : 0.8 °C (NASA, 2019)
ii. The global land and ocean surface temperature for May 2019 was 0.85°C
(1.53°F) above the 20th century average and the fourth highest May
temperature departure from average since global records began in 1880. Mays
2016 (+0.93°C / +1.67°F), 2015 (+0.89°C / +1.60°F), and 2017 (+0.87°C / +1.57°F)
were warmer. (NOAA, 2019)
iii. The global land-only temperature was the smallest (or least warm) since 2013;
however, overall it was the eighth highest in the 140-year record at 1.16°C
(2.09°F) above average. The Northern Hemisphere land-only temperature
departure from average was the smallest (or least warm) since 2011.
Meanwhile, the Southern Hemisphere land-only temperature departure from
average tied with 2017 as the highest in the 140-year record, at 1.25°C (2.25°F).
The global ocean-only surface temperature was 0.73°C (1.31°F) above the 20th
century average, tying with 2015 as the second highest May global ocean
surface temperature on record, behind 2016 (+0.80°C / +1.44°F). (NOAA, 2019)
iv.
 c. Carbon Emissions Budget
i. def.: an upper limit of total carbon dioxide emissions associated with remaining
below a specific global average temperature.
ii. Since the pre-industrial period to 2011, approximately 1890 Gigatonnes of CO2
(GtCO2) has already been emitted globally, and 2050 GtCO2 up to 2015. (Rogelj
et.al., 2016)
iii. Based on estimates made in the IPCC’s fifth assessment report (AR5), there
would be around 120 gigatonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) remaining from the beginning
of 2018 – or around three years of current emissions – for a 66% chance of
avoiding 1.5C warming. For a 50/50 chance of exceeding 1.5C, the remaining
budget was a modestly larger 268GtCO2 – or around seven years of current
emissions. (IPCC, 2013)
iv. The IPCC’s new SR15 significantly revises these numbers. It raises the budget for
a 66% of avoiding 1.5C to 420GtCO2 – or 10 years of current emissions.
Similarly, the budget for a 50/50 chance of exceeding 1.5C is increased to
580GtCO2 – 14 years of current emissions. (IPCC, 2018)
d. Climate Projections
i. At 4 degrees C warmer (projected around 2100 AD) (Parag Khanna, 2016)
1. Most landmasses south of the U.S.- Canadian Border have been subject
to heavy desertification
a. China, India, the U.S., All of Australia and Africa would have
become desert
2. Latin America, Southeast Asia, and most of South America are
uninhabitable due to erratic climate patterns.
3. Only inhabitable lands south of the equator are New Zealand, Patagonia
and West Antarctica
4. Russia emerges as world hegemon.
II. No Excuses
a. “Too poor”
i. Unlimited economic growth is a fairy tale, we live in a world where scarcity
exists and wage and wealth gaps are a sad result from such a status quo
1. Economic equity rests not in lessening the amount of poor people but
rather in lessening the drawbacks of poorness. Environmental
progressiveness helps in this regard as its emphasis on sustainability and
resource management helps the poor maximise the resources at their
disposal.
2. Ignoring the climate crisis would only yield negligible short-term
benefits and economic development. The world can only burn through
its resources before it runs out of them and at that point, the poor will
suffer the most yet again.
 3. Economic growth at the cost of sustainability is untenable. It doesn’t
matter if a nation’s GDP is through the roof if her citizens aren’t even
afforded the basic right to fresh air and clean water.
ii. “First-world countries are punishing third-world countries for relying on the
same methods that they did to get rich”
1. Fallacious and partisan what-aboutism, the climate crisis is not a poor
vs. rich problem, it’s a humanity problem that affects all of us
irregardless of our nation’s GDP
2. Just because the 1st world relied on these methods to get rich doesn’t
mean that it is hypocritical to criticize those that resort to them. It could
simply be that they recognize the graveness of the situation at hand and
that these methods had a huge part to play in getting us to the point
where we are right now. They could have simply recognized their past
actions as mistakes
3. Why are we grumbling at the fact that we aren’t able to commit the
same mistakes our forebears did? This is our opportunity to be better
than those that came before us so let us be better.
b. “Don’t know enough about the topic”
i. Considering that the lives of 7 billion people and their offspring rest on our
actions today, the impetus falls on each individual to learn as much as they can
about the Climate Crisis.
ii. The acceptance of ignorance in the face of readily-available facts on such an
important issue is precisely how fake news and misinformation spread.
1. Fake news and misinformation fuels the continued obfuscation and
filibusterism of our policy-makers in regards to this topic.
2. Anti-intellectualism has its roots in the acceptance of ignorance and the
choosing of one’s own truths
c. Other priorities
i. The tackling of other social problems is not mutually exclusive with the
addressing of the climate crisis but we have to understand where our priorities
should lie.
ii. The securing of our civil liberties ARE important but let us not forget to secure
them for future generations as well. How can we say that we’ve won against
bigotry when our children are unable to enjoy the basic, unalienable rights of
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
iii. There will be many, more opportunities to get what we need out of the
establishment but the planet only has a few years to get what it needs from us.
 CONCLUSION

I. Why Us?
a. This IS wrong.
i. We shouldn’t have reached this point. People have been warning about climate
change for centuries, from Ben Franklin to Greta Thurnberg. And yet here we
are, a few minutes from oblivion.
ii. I don’t want to live in these times. I didn’t want to be here in front of you all
talking about the end of the world. And none of you want to be here to listen to
our Armageddon. But here we are. This is the hand dealt to us, this is the time
we have been given, now all we have to do is decide what to do with it.
b. Do it for them.
i. Humanity’s greatest superpower has always been in her ability to endure and to
communicate. The fact that men and women are able to touch each other’s
lives despite living miles and centuries apart speaks to the power of stories in
our day-to-day lives. Now, for the first time in a long time, those stories are in
jeopardy, the collective legacies of men and women, big and small, risk being
undone because of our own hubris. No. Our ancestors gave us their stories to
protect. They planted seeds in a garden that they’d never get to see so that we
may reap the benefits. I refuse to rob future generations of this gift. Let the
histories of humanity continue to regale and inspire long after we are gone. Let
us save these stories so that they may serve as guide posts and warning signs to
a future we will never get to see.
ii. Our futures have been robbed from us by generations of dispassionate
enterprise. But it is not too late for the next one. No. Let the sounds of the
laughter of children continue to fill the Earth until long after we’re gone. Let us
make the world right for them so that we may be able to give it to them so they
may serve as heralds of a brighter future that we weren’t even able to dream of.

References:

Aragão, L. E., Anderson, L. O., Fonseca, M. G., Rosan, T. M., Vedovato, L. B., Wagner, F. H.,

… Saatchi, S. (2018). 21st Century drought-related fires counteract the decline of

Amazon deforestation carbon emissions. Nature Communications, 9(1).

doi:10.1038/s41467-017-02771-y

Baker, S. (2019, August 22). Fires in the Amazon could be part of a doomsday scenario that

sees the rainforest spewing carbon into the atmosphere and speeding up climate change
 even more. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-fires-may-help-

dieback-emit-carbon-hurry-climate-change-2019-8

Cox, P. M., Betts, R. A., Jones, C. D., Spall, S. A., & Totterdell, I. J. (2000). Acceleration of

global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate

model. Nature, 408(6809), 184-187. doi:10.1038/35041539

IPCC. (2014). Retrieved from Cambridge University Press website:

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

IPCC. (2018). Global Warming of 1.5 ºC (SR15). Retrieved from https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/

NASA Global Climate Change. (2019, September 23). Global Surface Temperature | NASA

Global Climate Change. Retrieved from https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-

temperature/

Parag Khanna. (2016, February 1). The World 4 Degrees Warmer. Retrieved from

https://www.paragkhanna.com/home/2016/3/9/the-world-4-degrees-

warmer?rq=the%20world%204%20degrees

The Rainforest Trust. (2017, September 1). Climate Change Series Part 1 - Rainforests Absorb,

Store Large Quantities of Carbon Dioxide. Retrieved from

https://www.rainforesttrust.org/climate-change-series-part-1-rainforests-absorb-store-

large-quantities-carbon-dioxide/

Rogelj, J., Schaeffer, M., Friedlingstein, P., Gillett, N. P., Van Vuuren, D. P., Riahi, K., …

Knutti, R. (2016). Differences between carbon budget estimates unravelled. Nature

Climate Change, 6(3), 245-252. doi:10.1038/nclimate2868

Sanchez-Lugo. (n.d.). Global Climate Report - Annual 2017. Retrieved from

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201713
Woodward, A. (2019, August 22). The 'lungs of the planet' are burning at a record rate. If too

much of the Amazon disappears, that 'dieback' could turn the land into a savanna.

Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-rainforest-experiencing-

record-breaking-deforestation-2019-7?r=US&IR=T