Climate Change Is World War III

• Pages: 24-25

24 | THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, November/December 2021.

Copyright © 2021, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

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to sail with convoys and deploy anti-

submarine planes. Some aircraft were

now equipped with high-power Leigh

Lights and radar, both o British draw-

ing boards. Canadian engineers gured

out how to cover the “air gap” out of

range of land-based American bomb-

ers protecting convoys. And the British

were using the rst digital computers to

decipher U-boats’ radio transmissions.

ese technologies were a result of

crash programs that all came to bear

fruit at the same time — changing the

situation in a few weeks from the

threshold of defeat for Britain to

the securing of the island as the

base for the Normandy invasion

that helped put an end to Hitler.

CAN YOU imagine if

the same energy were

to go into the challenge

of climate change? In

fact, that already is happening

and could be nurtured further by

thinking through how the inno-

vations of 1943 — and the spirit

of international government-

business-academic cooperation

that engendered them — could

be matched in the next few years.

“e scale and speed of the

eorts demanded by this criti-

cal and formidable goal make

this perhaps the greatest chal-

lenge humankind has ever

faced.” at was not said by

Churchill facing the Nazi men-

ace. Rather, it was a statement made

last May by Fatih Birol, the head of

the International Energy Agency,

in releasing its report “Net Zero by

2050.”

In fact, the science is on the hori-

zon. According to MIT Technolog y Re-

view, there is a lab version of a lithium

battery that “can be charged to more

than 80% of its capacity in 15 min-

utes, lasts for hundreds of thousands of

miles, and works ne at freezing tem-

peratures.” e inventors also say a car

based on their tech can go 450 miles

between charges. If this battery pans

out it would put an end to almost all

Climate Change

Is World War III

THE BATTLE against climate

change will require humanity

to transform energy systems,

production processes, even

basic agricultural practices — and all

within the next few years. Is there a

prior example of wide-ranging inven-

tion on a similarly tight time frame?

Look back to March 1943, when

the lm Action in the North At-

lantic, starring Humphrey Bog-

art, was in nal production. As in

those wartime propaganda pics

made in cooperation with the

relevant front-line services, this

one was about the dangers faced

by the truly heroic civilian crews

of the merchant marine.

In the real world, the ship-

ping news was dire that March.

Nazi subs had sunk more than

450,000 tons of vessels from the

United States carrying cargoes to

British ports — one of the worst

months ever. Churchill conded

to Roosevelt that the shipping

losses worried him more than

German bombers. Fuel was get-

ting scarce in Britain and food

shortages loomed. If the UK had

to sue for peace, it would leave

the Nazis undisputed in Europe.

e Hollywood version cen-

ters on the engagement between

a U-boat and the S.S. Seawitch.

e merchant ship’s captain is wound-

ed, leaving First Ocer Bogart in

charge. At the climax, out-armed and

taking re, he surprises the pursuing

sub by ramming it under the veil of

a smokescreen — naval tactics dating

back to Athenian triremes.

By the time the movie was released

on May 21, in those few weeks the real

Battle of the Atlantic had largely been

decided — and in the Allies’ favor.

Not by ancient practices but by a half

dozen technological leaps. ese break-

throughs became available collectively

while the movie was in production.

I became aware of this coincidence

when I happened to see the lm on

Netix shortly before reading a grip-

ping account of the real sea change in

historian Paul Kennedy’s masterpiece

Engineers of Victory. Winning the Battle

of the Atlantic was a result of interna-

tional cooperation among what Ken-

nedy calls “the problem solvers” — in-

novators in industry and academic labs

and government. “is conict was,

more than any other battle for the seas,

a scientists’ war,” Kennedy concludes.

One innovation was the American-

built Liberty Ship, a cookie-cutter cargo

carrier. ese were constructed using

assembly line techniques and joinery

methods never before deployed in ship-

building. More than 27 million tons

worth were laid down during the war,

three hulls every two days.

British and Canadian naval vessels

accompanying the merchant convoys

now wielded a hugely more eective

version of the venerable depth charge,

called the Hedgehog. Radio direction

nders were installed on most of their

warships, enabling them to chase down

subs. A new kind of small aircraft car-

rier came out of U.S. yards, designed