planetarni paliativa
To prevent climate catastrophe, abandon the idea we can limit overheating to 1.5C | The Independenthttps://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/opinion/climate-change-latest-ipcc-report-b2025023.htmlWe have to let go of the idea that we can limit global heating to 1.5C. To avert the crisis that climate change will bring, we have to abandon our dreams of a smooth transition. Some say we need to keep the 1.5C hope “alive”. But we are not leveling with people on how entirely improbable 1.5C now is. We are not telling the truth. Our true power lies in admitting we have failed.
I don’t believe there would be a smooth transition to “OK then, let’s just retrench to 2C”. Because 2C is so much worse: it puts our very ability to feed ourselves at risk, even in the UK. Until we admit that it is now near-impossible to limit ourselves to 1.5C, we will continue to pretend we have this covered.
If we were to face the awful reality that 1.5C is gone, more people might well be jolted into truly stepping up. Without that shared shock it is impossible to have the deep reflection and narrative breakthrough that comes with admitting failure.
In 2018, I gave a talk at Churchill College, Cambridge, entitled, “This Civilisation Is Finished”. I said at the time: “I have fear for you. I fear that some of you are unlikely to grow old. There’s nothing really worse for human beings than not being able to take care of the next generation.” The talk went viral partly because, I believe, of this startling admission of shared failure.
By admitting we have failed bigger still, that the dream of 1.5C is gone,
we can harvest and unleash greater power than we have dared to imagine. The power of our grief, our horror. The power of righteous rage. The much-needed power, which Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg have started to bring into our climate politics in the last few years, of truth.
I refer you back to that great line from Star Wars. Ben Kenobi knew his time had come when he met Darth Vader. He also knew that accepting death was the only way to succeed, later.