Too Much of a Good Thing.
Sarah Finnie
Climate Communication. Special Projects. Founding Director, The 51 Percent Project. Senior Fellow @Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability, Impact Measurement & Allocation Program (IMAP).
As I write, we are at 405.07 PPM CO2 in the air. Note that 400 PPM is considered the upper threshold by scientists; we blew past it in 2015.
Remember the “I Love Lucy” episode where Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz a pose as delightfully inept employees at a candy company? Attired in crisp kitchen uniforms, the two women stand by a conveyor belt that delivers chocolate cubes to be wrapped. Their job is to wrap the candy in paper.
At first, the conveyor belt delivers the candy at a reasonable speed. “This is easy!” says Lucy to Ethel. But we all know what’s coming: the conveyor belt speeds up. And up, until the candies are arriving pell mell. In one of black-and-white television’s most hilarious scenes ever, our hapless heroines manage the surge by stuffing their mouths with the chocolates, and down their shirtwaists, but there’s no possibility of being able to chew and swallow fast enough to keep up with the volume. “SPEED IT UP!” screams the supervisor. And we all know what happens. The scene ends.
Think of it this way: the conveyor belt represents the rate of change in our environment since the 1950s. At first, atmospheric imbalances were invisible to most people. But human beings are innovative, creative, and opportunistic: as we found wonderful new ways to use fuel and electricity — for transportation, for air-conditioning, for food, for entertainment — the danger increased. Exponentially. And we all know what happens next.
“I Love Lucy” made its debut in 1951 and was smash hit throughout its 6 seasons, until 1957. Coincidentally, this is when the world’s man-made emissions began to take off. This episode called “Job Switching,” first aired on CBS-TV on September 15, 1952 — exactly 66 years ago.
At first, atmospheric imbalances were invisible to most people. But a scientist named Charles David Keeling noticed. Keeling began making daily measurements of the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) at the Mauna Loa observatory atop a Hawaii volcano. His prescient work created the famous, eponymous Keeling Curve. The project continues under his son Ralph’s direction. You and I can follow @Keeling_curve on Twitter for daily updates on the parts per million (PPM) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or check the site at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
As I write, we are at 405.07 PPM CO2 in the air. Note that 400 PPM is considered the upper threshold by scientists; we blew past it in 2015.
Thanks for the laugh, Lucy. I love you too: for giving us a rip-snorting laugh, and for showing how too much — of chocolates, of carbon pollution — can crash a system.
