Here is a chart on the rise of sea levels since 1993:

Here is a chart detailing the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1980:

I’ve been selling residential solar in zip code 33703, a community just east of St. Petersburg with many expensive homes that sit along the Tampa Bay waterfront.

Some of the well-heeled folks who live in that area are retired, others are still working as corporate executives, lawyers and successful business owners. Many of the long term residents of 33703 have observed more flooding in their zip code over the last 5 years, especially when Tampa Bay is at high tide.

There are some voters on the right who don’t believe that global warming is the result of rising CO2 levels, they’ll tell you that this is the “natural cycle of things”. In others words, correlation of the 2 charts above is not causation…

There are many factors that will reduce CO2 emissions over the next 30 years; widespread solar, more hybrid and plug in electrical vehicles, more offshore wind turbines, etc.

I hope that the wealthy executives who own beach homes will start to pour some investment into technologies that will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Or they all might move to the mountains as the entire Floridian peninsula becomes a huge underwater coral reef.

One simple solution is to desalinate water and grow forests in the desert areas adjacent to our oceans. Every time you grow a tree you naturally sequester a huge amount of carbon dioxide.

You can desalinate water using solar power, and there are many places where the desert meets the ocean (Mexico, Africa, etc.) With the right technology and capital investment you can make the desert bloom, look what they did in Israel:

http://www.oired.vt.edu/compass/desert-bloom-incredible-story-agriculture-israel/

More plants = more carbon dioxide captured and used to grow food and create economic opportunity.

Just as the horse and buggy has become an icon of the past so will diesel trucks spewing exhaust and electric generation plants burning coal. By 2022 we’ll see inexpensive electric cars on the market that get 500 miles per charge… and soon after that gas powered cars will go away as well.

Ben Alexander

May . 2017