Dr. John P. Holdren
is Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Prior to joining the Obama administration, Dr. Holdren was Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, as well as a professor in Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Director of the independent, nonprofit Woods Hole Research Center. Previously, he was on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he co-founded in 1973 and co-led until 1996 the interdisciplinary graduate degree program in energy and resources. During the Clinton administration, Dr. Holdren served as a member of PCAST through both terms; in that capacity, he chaired studies requested by President Clinton on preventing theft of nuclear materials, disposition of surplus weapon plutonium, the prospects of fusion energy, US energy R&D strategy, and international cooperation on energy-technology innovation.
Dr. Holdren holds advanced degrees in aerospace engineering and theoretical plasma physics from MIT and Stanford. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, as well as a foreign member of the Royal Society of London and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He served as a member of the MacArthur Foundation's Board of Trustees from 1991 to 2005, as Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control from 1994 to 2005, and as Co-Chair of the independent, bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy from 2002 to 2009. His awards include a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, the John Heinz Prize in Public Policy, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and the Volvo Environment Prize. In December 1995 he gave the acceptance lecture for the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organization of scientists and public figures in which he held leadership positions from 1982 to 1997.
Q: You have advocated the use of the term “climate disruption” to describe the anthropogenic changes occurring on our planet. What is climate disruption? And why should we use this term in our scientific and policy discourse?
A: The anthropogenic influence on Earth's climate is most commonly referred to in the media as “global warming.” I find that term unsatisfactory because it is too readily interpreted as meaning something that is uniform around the world, is mainly about temperature, is gradual, and is not necessarily harmful. To the contrary, what is actually happening to the climate is highly nonuniform geographically; it involves not just temperature but winds and ocean currents, humidity, patterns of precipitation, and the power of the strongest storms, among other changes; and it is rapid compared to the capacity of ecosystems and economies to adjust. In addition, while it may bring benefits to some people in some places for some period of time, for most people in most places it is already much more harmful than helpful and, as it continues, will be bad for just about everybody.
In the scientific community, the most widely used term is “climate change.” That term is accurate, but in my view it has 2 drawbacks. First, it includes both natural and human-caused change and, thus, can contribute to public confusion about the main cause of what is now happening. (While there are natural influences on the climate, these are being dwarfed currently by anthropogenic influences—most importantly, the build-up of greenhouse gases from fossil-fuel burning and land-use change.) Second, like “global warming,” the term “climate change” fails to convey the sense that what is going on is, on the whole, detrimental.
The fact is that the ongoing changes in Earth's climate are already causing harm to human life, health, property, economies, and ecosystems. This harm is occurring through more intense and extended heat waves, droughts, and wildfire seasons; more of the most powerful storms and heaviest downpours, with flooding to match; worse smog; rising sea level; thawing permafrost; and major impacts on the distribution and abundance of nonhuman species—those we need, those we love, and those we hate.
The term “global climate disruption,” then, far more effectively conveys the complexity of what is happening to the climate as a result of human influences, along with the appropriately negative connotation.
Q: How and why did you become interested in climate disruption?
A: I had been aware of and interested in the challenges of meeting civilization's energy needs since I was in high school, in the late 1950s. A decade later, I was working on a PhD in plasma physics, with application to harnessing nuclear fusion as a practical energy source, and on the side I was studying the global energy problems to which I hoped that fusion might someday contribute a solution. In the course of those studies, I became convinced that the large-scale environmental impacts of energy supply and use were likely to be a more important constraint on society's energy use than “running out” of fossil or nuclear fuels. And by 1970 I had come to the conclusion that the potential impacts of energy supply and use on global climate would eventually come to be seen as the most fundamental and difficult to manage of all of the environmental impacts of energy.
At that time, we already knew that the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide were increasing, based on the highly accurate observations being made at Mauna Loa Observatory by Charles David Keeling, starting in 1958. And a number of other studies—including a 1965 report to President Lyndon Johnson by his Science Advisory Committee—had pointed out that this trend could lead to substantial and harmful changes in Earth's climate. In a book published in 1971, I wrote:
Elaborate calculations indicate that continuing present trends in fossil fuel consumption could lead to an increase of 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit in the average surface temperature of the globe by the year 2000. These calculations have not taken into account the effects of such an average increase on the atmospheric circulation patterns that really govern regional and continental climates. It is important to understand that these effects could be much more dramatic than a mere 1.4-degree temperature change would seem to imply.1(pp96-97)
As it turned out, the increase in global average surface temperature between 1971 and 2000 was about 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit.
Q: What impact does climate disruption have on health?
A: Climate disruption affects human health in many ways. For example, increasingly frequent and intense episodes of extreme heat lead directly to an increase in heat-related illnesses and deaths. Indeed, under conditions of heat and humidity that are occurring with increasing frequency in the hotter parts of the world as climate disruption proceeds, merely working outdoors can be fatal to otherwise healthy people. Climate disruption is also worsening smog in the world's cities, lengthening allergy seasons, and expanding the geographic range of tropical diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. Wildfires, which have been increasing in intensity and area burned, add to the health burdens from air pollution, and increased flooding linked to climate change can lead to increases in waterborne disease. (All this is not to mention the direct threats to life and limb from hurricanes and typhoons, floods, and wildfires, all growing under climate disruption.)
Q: How can we confront the problem of climate disruption?
A: Action to address the climate-disruption challenge must include both emissions reductions (“mitigation”), to limit the pace and ultimate magnitude of the disruption going forward, and a comprehensive approach to adaptation, preparedness, and resilience (“adaptation” for short) to minimize the damages from the degree of disruption that occurs despite the best efforts at mitigation. And, very clearly, US climate strategy must include an effective effort to bring other countries along, on both mitigation and adaptation. These are precisely the ingredients of the Climate Action Plan (CAP) that President Obama announced in June 2013.
2
The part of the CAP that addresses domestic reductions in emissions includes EPA's Clean Power Plan for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide from the electric power sector; strategies and targets for reducing emissions of methane and hydrofluorocarbons; building on US leadership in clean-energy technologies such as wind and solar; cutting energy waste through efficiency standards in the vehicle and buildings sectors; and building a more efficient and reliable infrastructure for the transmission, storage, and distribution of clean energy.
The CAP's focus on preparing the United States for the impacts of whatever degree of climate disruption materializes has included presidential direction to federal departments and agencies to integrate climate adaptation into every aspect of their missions; the establishment of internal and external task forces on building preparedness and resilience; the mobilization of climate data and tools to assist state and local governments, businesses, and individuals in undertaking adaptation measures suited to their circumstances and the specifics of ongoing and expected impacts in their regions; and developing new strategies and standards for managing flood, drought, and wildfire risks.
The international components of the CAP have included bilateral engagement with the biggest emitting countries (such as China, India, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia) on the development of emission-reduction targets and cooperation on clean-energy research and development; pursuing multilateral initiatives through, for example, the OECD, the G-20, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); and mobilizing financial assistance for clean energy and adaptation for countries lacking adequate resources of their own for these purposes.
Particularly important in the international domain, of course, was the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in Paris, where 195 countries agreed to pursue reductions in their emissions of greenhouse gases and to ratchet up the ambition of their emission-reduction targets over time. Also agreed in Paris, crucially, was mobilization of adequate financial and technical support for low-carbon economic development and climate-change adaptation for countries in need.
Q: Looking beyond the Climate Action Plan, the Clean Power Plan, and the Paris conference—what's next?
A: What the US Environmental Protection Agency—with the help of millions of public commenters from states, associations, and individual citizens—has achieved with the final Clean Power Plan is extremely important. When fully implemented, the CPP will reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from US electric-power plants by 30-32% from 2005 levels by 2030.
3
This will make a key contribution to achieving this country's official commitment to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions by 17% by 2020, and 26-28% by 2025, compared to 2005 levels.
4
Next, states will devise State Implementation Plans for achieving the necessary CO2-emissions reductions in a way that best fits their own state-specific circumstances. The Administration expects that regional collaborations and market-based trading will figure prominently in many of these plans. To support these actions, and as requested by many states, the EPA is developing a model rule that states may choose to reference to harmonize trading systems. I'm looking forward to seeing how the state plans leverage American innovation, knowledge, and leadership to help achieve the emissions reductions that are needed.
Q: What is the single most important thing our readers can do to address climate disruption and prepare for its impact on health security?
A: Probably the “single most important thing” individuals can do is make known to their elected representatives—and to candidates for local, state, and federal office—the importance you attach to implementing sensible, cost-effective policies for mitigating and adapting to climate change. Absent the political will to carry out the Climate Action Plan and implement the Paris agreement, the actions that individuals can take to reduce their own emissions and increase their own preparedness for the impacts of climate disruption will simply not be adequate to meet the challenge. But certainly there are many “second most important things” that individuals can do, ranging from buying fuel-efficient cars, to walking and biking in place of driving, to switching to energy-efficient lighting and appliances in their homes and businesses, to learning about and taking steps to ameliorate whatever risks from extreme weather, flooding, wildfires, and sea-level rise are germane where you live.
