From horse pollution to climate change, innovation saves the day

A serious debate over the long-term impact of climate change in the United States is proving impossible because the extreme “woke” left and extreme “MAGA” right refuse to proceed on a rational and fact-driven basis. The left sees annihilation around the corner. The right dismisses climate change as little more than changes in weather patterns or indeed a hoax. 

To put this into perspective, both extremes should study a bit of history regarding environmental disasters. At the end of the 19th century, New York City suffered from a crippling pollution crisis. At the time, about 1.2 million people lived in the city and its five boroughs. So did some 200,000 horses.

Every day, horses deposited over 2.5 tons of excrement and thousands of gallons of urine onto city streets. Horses had short life expectancies. So dead animals littered the city. Thousands of New Yorkers were infected by diseases emanating from horse waste and corpses.

Much of Connecticut would be needed to grow the fodder to feed these and other New York animals. It appeared that all of Manhattan north of 89th Street would be required for dumping excrement. And the city’s leaders had no solutions to this cataclysmic environmental crisis.

Henry Ford and Walter Chrysler did. Over time, the so-called horseless carriage would end the horse pollution problem. But automobiles were imperfect solutions. Today, dependence on fossil fuels is a driving source of climate change.

A critical question is whether a technology (or technologies) will emerge to relieve this crisis as Ford’s and Chrysler’s did.

While dramatic signs of climate change are ubiquitous, who predicted this one? The Panama Canal, through which about two-fifths of all global shipping passes, has been largely shut due to water shortages. The lakes that provide the water to raise and lower the lochs simply have been exhausted by drought.

Since the canal was completed in 1914, national security concerns have focused on its closure by military means including mining or physical seizure. Unlike New York with its horse problem, there is no obvious solution for the canal. And climate change deniers will refuse to accept that this is the reason why the Panama Canal is at risk of long-term closure and restricted transit.

Here are three critical items missing in action if we are to treat climate change seriously.  

The first is an energy strategy that will help the transition from fossil fuels that are vital today to alternatives.  

The second is nuclear power — an obvious solution that is a political non-starter.  

And last, there are no plans for generating the electrical power needed for the hundreds of millions or billions of electric cars that will come into service over the coming decades, or for building the charging stations on which these vehicles depend.

The elements are interlinked. As every successful business or endeavor has a plan and strategy, a U.S. blueprint for this transition is crucial. Ceasing the use of all fossil fuels in the immediate future is a fool’s errand. Countries like China and India cannot comply. Nor can the U.S., given its dependence on coal, oil and natural gas. So why do we not have a realistic national strategy?

The impediments to nuclear power must be overcome. However, the image of a mushroom-shaped cloud, Chernobyl and Fukushima and the movie “China Syndrome” impose huge psychological barriers.  

Yet, nuclear power is safe and the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima were the results of faulty design and incompetence, both of which can be corrected. Nuclear power is the 21st-century equivalent of the remedy for horse pollution.

Finally, plans for electrical power generation are needed now. New sources for electrical production must be identified. And estimates for the charging stations needed for these vehicles as well as the availability and access to all the rare earths used in batteries must follow.

Emotion, misinformation and the seemingly irreversible political divisions in America over virtually every issue, important or not, may form impenetrable barriers to common sense and reason in dealing with climate change. 

Over time, climate change forms one of the greatest threats to mankind along with nuclear war and a global pandemic worse than COVID. It is no accident that storms are increasing in intensity along with floods, droughts, fires and weather extremes of heat and cold.  

Unfortunately, no dramatic parallel to the carcasses of dead animals contaminating the streets of New York exists to forewarn this clear and present danger.

Perhaps the closure of the Panama Canal will. But perhaps not.

Harlan Ullman Ph.D. is senior advisor at Washington, D.C.’s Atlantic Council and the prime author of the “shock and awe” military doctrine. His 12th book, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD:  How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large,” is available on Amazon.  He can be reached on Twitter @harlankullman.