Diridon: The future is sidetracked, but still possible

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with numerous Nobel laureates and other internationally renowned climate scientists, reported in 2018 that global warming was occurring because of humans — and rapidly advancing.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared, in 2018 and more firmly in 2023, that climate change was advancing more rapidly than projected. By the early 2030s it may become irreversibly terminal for most life on earth. He then declared a code red on climate and asked the countries of the world to join the mandate — most have. The Stanford University School of Medicine’s world-renowned chief biologist Dr. Lucy Shapiro has declared the world has begun the sixth mass extinction, some of the effects of which may already be irreversible.

With that dire motivation, four years ago President Joe Biden began to reverse our country’s disastrous climate policy. The U.S. is the world’s largest carbon energy (petroleum and coal) exporter and creates nearly four times the amount of CO2 per person as China, the most serious carbon effluent producer. Biden’s four years have been like a new carbon-free, high-speed train of policies joining the UN’s advanced countries that are attempting to save the world for our children.

The Nov. 5 election is like an evil dispatcher sidetracking our fast train to climate salvation to allow an old, slow, pollution-spewing oil burner to pass and delay further climate corrections.

But we must not give up our fight for a decent future for our children.

The Trump Train, full of the greedy and those easily led, will encumber the main line of thought for now. Every indication is that they will overdo their self-serving policies and have only four years on the main line.

In the interim, we can fight the battle blue state by blue state and by our individual adoption of electric vehicles, solar panels and battery walls, only electric utilities, riding transit when possible and generally living sustainably. That lifestyle is more sustainable and also less expensive than buying $5-plus per gallon gasoline, which coincidentally, is more expensive on vacation weekends when we’re likely to travel because demand goes up. Hopefully the more egalitarian, climate-conscious philanthropy community will step up to maintain the science-based climate fight’s momentum until the Trump Train runs out of steam.

We can only hope that time remains in the climate battle, after the regressive Trump Train derails, to reduce the carbon effluent and revitalize our beautiful blue planet for future generations. We have no other ethical choice.

Rod Diridon, Sr. is former chair of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, chair emeritus of Silicon Valley League of Conservation Voters, chair emeritus of SV Ethics Roundtable and chair emeritus of the California High Speed Rail Authority.