Beyond a climate of comfortable ignorance
https://theecologist.org/2020/jun/08/beyond-climate-comfortable-ignorance
If climate sensitivity plays in our favour (and sadly this looks to be increasingly unlikely), then a mitigation agenda aligned with “well below 2°C” is still within our grasp. As for “pursuing … 1.5°C” – this has almost certainly gone the way of the Dodo.
The only glimmer of resurrection is if we deliver real-zero informed by 2°C and ‘negative emission technologies’ (NETs) do become viable and sustainable at scale. In stark contrast and under the fluttering banner of ‘reality’, we are already relying on ‘NETs’ and other ruses even for many of our 3°C scenarios; so the prospects of 1.5°C are vanishingly slim, with 2°C also now rapidly striding towards extinction
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Recognising where we are today, whilst waking up to the Orwellian recycling of failure into narratives of success, risks extinguishing glimmers of hope and undermining any drive for action.
But as 1.5°C drifts into history and the prospect of 2°C rapidly fades, it is essential to understand that these temperatures are not simple thresholds. Staying below 2.1°C is better than 2.3°C, which itself is an improvement over 3°C.
Yes, the higher the temperature the more people will die and the greater will be the levels of societal disruption and ecological breakdown. But how all this finally plays out is subject to suites of interacting uncertainties, from scientific through to societal responses.
So acknowledging our pitiful and callous failures should not be used as an excuse for despair and acquiescence, but rather as a catalyst for a real mitigation agenda far removed from the spin and prestige of today’s nonsense.
The only absolute on climate change is that the future will be radically different. Either we continue with deception and dithering only to be battered by the consequent climate impacts, or we immediately begin a deep and profound transformation towards a progressive, sustainable and zero-carbon future.
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Ultimately both are different worlds from where we reside today. The former allows high-emitters a few years reprieve at the cost of long-term devastation for many, if not all.
Whilst the latter repurposes the labour, resources and productive capacity of society from serving primarily the high consumption lifestyles of the relative few, to delivering a sustainable epoch for the many.
We shouldn’t be here, but this is where our myopic choices have brought us. Whilst the increasingly shaky hands of the old guard continue to dispense blue pills, there are now firmer and younger hands offering a red pill alternative. It is not sweet – but it offers a viable home and a chance to develop a more life-affirming future.