Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
What credence should be given to the most recent summary report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? To do that, you need to separate the science from the politics that pervades the IPCC processes.
Do I think we save the world with one last COP? Perhaps yes, if we do it together.
The way we frame climate change has significant implications for what feasibility constraints, trade-offs, assumptions, and opportunities we pay attention to, and ultimately what targets we set and the policies we design to achieve them.
In summary, emissions still have not peaked and are unlikely to be significantly lower in 2030 than 2020; warming of 1.5°C is likely this decade; and the emissions trend and reduction commitments are currently nowhere near keeping warming to 2°C.
Perhaps sooner than most think, there should come a point when public demand in the United States for corrective action to free us from fossil fuels is sufficiently intense that, if Congress and a unified NGO community are prepared, then at that point decisive, major legislative action could finally be possible.
With two world summits on the global environment at the end of last year – COP27 and COP15 – there should have been the prospect of an immediate impact on the looming disaster of climate breakdown.
COP27 may have committed to a loss and damage fund to compensate countries most harmed by a climate emergency they did not create, but it has also committed to a pathway of devastation.
A new and more real hope will come after climate-informed citizens as whole acknowledge that almost nobody really likes our odds of making 1.5, frankly admit the painful consequences of this failure, and ask the population to explore new bold political possibilities.
Could the perseverance and courage of people like Paracha, Abd el-Fattah, and the activists for climate justice and human rights — both those who attended the conference at Sharm el Sheik and countless others around the world — make it possible someday to drop the “Yet” and say simply, “We Have Not Been Defeated”?
Released smartly in time for the COP27 climate change conference, the film “The Oil Machine”, presents a stark picture of the imperative to cut our use of fossil fuels, in particular crude oil, but moreover of our utter dependency on the “black gold” for practically all aspects of modern civilization.
To go back to the beginning, while such a thing is still possible, if nuclear weapons, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, fossil fuels, and apocalyptic fear helped get us to this breaking point, we need something truly different now.
either attention to climate change will leave all else in the dust or climate change itself will leave us all in the dust, and how truly sad that would be!
