The judgment of history is too late
The repeatedly ignored warnings of scientists over past decades have now become reality. Humanity, through its actions, or lack of action, has unequivocally overheated the planet. Nowhere on Earth is escaping rising temperatures, worse floods, hotter wildfires or more searing droughts.
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The key aspect of the IPCC report is that the 42-page summary is agreed, line by line, by every government on the planet, with the scientists vetoing any politically convenient but unscientific proposal.
As a result, governments that continue to fail to take action have nowhere left to hide – the crystal-clear report has bust all of their alibis. “Too many ‘net-zero’ climate plans have been used to greenwash pollution and business as usual,” says Teresa Anderson at ActionAid International.
Isn’t it enough to wring our hands? Surely we don’t have to change how we do things too?
The IPCC’s report means all the evidence that will ever be needed is now in place. “The continued dithering to address climate change is no longer about the lack of scientific evidence, but directly tied to a lack of political will,” says Kristina Dahl of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
That means political leaders are now in the dock and the vital UN Cop26 summit in Glasgow in November may be the last hearing at which they can avoid the judgment of history.
They won’t care though. They care about now, not the future and not history.
I’m still furious at the lacklustre reporting of this report. Take the BBC for instance, since I’m starting to really have it in for those buggers. They knew this report was coming. They had plenty of time to prepare.
But all they’ve done is read out the press release and get some random people on to say it sounds bad.
This is the BBC! Get a panel on with some of the authors of the report and environmentalists and a few oil barons and airline tycoons. Commission some amazing graphics and get a charismatic scientist to talk us all through it, if you must. But do something that won’t be instantly forgotten in the morning.
In fact, do you know what the main story on the BBC news flagship breakfast show was today? One of the presenters is going to be on Strictly Come Dancing.
They really need to be saying things like “No, seriously, you need to give up your car. Stop using it. Use public transport. Walk if you can. Give me the keys now and I’ll melt them down. We just can’t use private cars any more. I’m serious. Yes, you. You over there. We mean you. Seriously. You”
But instead. let’s all talk about some gurning fustilarian who is going to be prancing about to distract us while the world becomes a cinder and everything dies.
Great use of my license fee there, BBC.
I know. I watched the half hour BBC news thing that PBS shows here yesterday evening and it was mostly about the report and it was serious but it never did mention the elephant in the room – it was all just “everyone agrees it’s time to get serious, and if everyone gets serious we can hold it to 1.5 and we’ll be all right.” Not one word about all those planes and cruise ships and container ships and billions upon billions of cars, just absurdly non-specific hopes.
I think the politicization of the issue, which was intended to prevent meaningful, profit-reducing action being taken, has also helped to prevent discussion of the issue. If it’s going to cause a row, best not bring it up, even if the ones denying it are blockheads. There’s also the fact that these warnings have been going on for decades. We’ve gotten used to them, just like people living beside a rail line stop noticing the trains. The problem is we’re living on the tracks. We are the asteroid and the dinosaurs at the same time.
How do we get people to stop people from doing things we shouldn’t, before things get to the point where we’re forced to stop doing them because we simply can’t any more? Anti-masking and anti-vaxing activism offers the tiniest taste of the resistance there will be to any attempts to legislate, regulate or ban carbon-emitting activities. If there is carbon to burn, people will burn it, and some will burn it out of spite. Google “rolling coal.” Like anti-maskers and anti-vaxers, any dawning awareness on their part will only come when things get bad for them, personally, and by then it will be far too late.
We’re in a multi-generational, global, tragedy of the commons. The death of seven billion cuts, for which everyone, and nobody, is responsible. It’s turning into something that just happened, not something we did. Not that everyone has had an equal impact on planetary health, but we’re all going to be suffering the consequences, and taking large swathes of the biosphere along with us.
latsot #1
Except that “everyone” does not agree that “it’s time to get serious”. “Getting serious” (as in actually doing what’s necessary to limit global warming to 2 °C – or 3 °C for that matter) is still about as fringe a position as you’re ever going to find. I have previously compared it to being in a car heading towards a cliff that’s about 300 ft away. There’s some uncertainty about the road grip, the exact distance to the cliff etc. If we’re as lucky as can be we might be able to stop with just the front wheels dangling over the edge of the abyss provided that we start grinding to a halt at this very moment. If we’re just a little bit unlucky it’s already too late and has been for quite a while (as I have previously written, the 2010s – the decade of Trump – were described by some as the last decade in which humanity still had a realistic chance of preventing catastrophe). But really none of that matters because the idea of stopping within 300 ft doesn’t even enter into our public conversation. The only debate that’s allowed anywhere near the Overton Window is whether we should aim to stand still after 1000 ft or 1500 ft if ever.
Your Name’s not Bruce?:
I agree with everything you say. But one of my main issues is that it’s not the BBC’s job to strategise… quite the reverse, I’d think. It’s their job to report things as they are. And at the moment, they are failing spectacularly at doing that. Well, they’ve been doing that for years. They are by no means the only culprit, but I put the greatest share of the blame for the Wakefield vaccine outrage on the press and especially on the BBC. They were interviewing Wakefield alongside proper doctors and scientists for years after it had become entirely clear that Wakefield was a fraud and there were not two sides. There is no way on Earth that this hasn’t contributed to COVID vaccine denial – and therefore many deaths and much misery – all around the world.
Arguably, the BBC is safe to report the truth, free from any financial or political interference. But of course they are not, our government has been threatening the BBC into compliance for years. We have no idea what effect those threats have had.
I don’t think we do. I don’t think we can. I don’t think democracy will allow it, and there don’t seem to be any stop global warming dictators. Any elected legislators and executives who attempt it will be removed before the ink is dry.
A container ship is gliding by right now, heading out of port. It’s weirdly pretty, because it’s red and the low post-sunrise sun enhances the red color. Hello, Doom.
There are those who insist the car can fly. In the initial moments at least, falling can look a bit like flight.
I’m afraid you’re right. A “stop global warming” dictator would have to be ruthless and cruel, but would be nothing compared to what is going to happen if we continue as we are. As Derek Jensen has, said we either bring down civilization ourselves, or it will be done for us. “Crash landing” ourselves offers us a slight measure of control that will be denied us if we do nothing and let events take their course. We’re too clever by half, and not smart enough by three quarters.
We’ve been seduced to self-destruction. We’re all complicit, buying the goods on the ship, fatally incurious about how they came to be in shops, and in our hands, but happy to get them cheaply. We are a species with imperfect impulse control.
A couple of years ago I attended a conference for the oil and gas industry. We’re not directly involved in that industry, but they make use of our companies services for specialist environmental monitoring.
The conference was heavily picketed and was protected by a significant police presence for the three days it was on. Protestors had even gone to the trouble of placing remote triggered sleep disruption devices on and around the hotel prior to the cordon going up. Kudos for commitment I guess.
Apart from the fact that some of the protesters had taken a four hour return flight to attend the protest, what I found fascinating was that probably 60% of the papers were focused on climate change, the industry’s role in that, and what if anything the industry could do to help reduce emissions. It was pretty obvious that a small number of the audience were outright climate deniers. It was also pretty obvious that most industry participants were very well aware of the true state of climate change (they were well aware that things were on an appalling track) and wanted very much to find some way out.
One senior executive explained over lunch that his young kids were starting to ask why he was destroying the earth. His view was that it was completely on The rich and developed nations to address the problem. As he put it, about 1 billion people use most of the worlds resources. About 2 billion people are just starting to get a taste of the life the rich nations have. The rest (5 billion) rely on twigs and dung for fuel and walk pretty much wherever they want to go. He said it is unrealistic and would unconscionable to expect those already leading a subsistence life to give anything up – they needed more, not less. For the rich nations to try and keep what they have and use, while demanding that those recent aspirants give up and return to subsistence living would lead to conflict and war. We – the rich nations – can afford to give up energy and resources. We can afford to develop and adopt new technology and change our lifestyle. We collectively don’t want to, and our politicians are too gutless to force us to.
It was frank and pretty brutal. Also hard to argue with. While we can see attitudes beginning to change, I reckon we’ve left it 50 years too late to allow the social conversation. I can’t see our Governments taking emergency action until the crash has already happened.
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