We hit 1C of warming about 2003, we are at 1.5C of warming as of now. The forecast is for CO2 levels to increase to 455ppm by 2030. The IPCC report forecasts levels of 500ppm by 2050. Most scientists think that’s optimistic.
The disconnect between what the heads of states are saying and the reality on the ground is so large that it makes everything they are saying meaningless. Just so much “blah, blah, blah”, band-aid solutions for sucking chest wound problems.
They don’t know what to do.
They know that disaster is almost upon them but are so morally bankrupt that they are unable to take the actions necessary to stave off its worst effects. Despite having massive armies at their disposal, they are unable to prevent more coal, oil, and natural gas from being burned across the world.
At COP26 it was revealed that the leadership of the existing world order is impotent and toothless, without a plan, and in denial about the consequences of their failure.
This should come as no surprise if you remember what happened in 2019.
At the COP25 meeting in Madrid, negotiations broke down and the two-week meeting ended without a crucial agreement on the global carbon market rules of the Paris Agreement. After extending the two-week summit for an additional two days, the world’s countries agreed to a text with vague pledges to enhance their Paris emissions reductions targets.
But the watered-down text reflects a failure to agree on the key outcomes that were needed at the summit: setting a rule book for the Paris Agreement and designing a global carbon market.
Then at the Davos 2020 conference, what the planets financial elites decided. Was that “a market-based solution” is the only thing that they thought could work.
“Slow and steady progress” using “market-based policies” that “are not disruptive of global economic and financial systems” are what they decided are the only solutions possible.
However, the failure to negotiate a global carbon market at the COP25 meeting makes these declarations seem nonsensical.
In the almost three years since then, nothing has changed for the global 1%.
They don’t want government interference in the “free market” and are confident that the problem will solve itself over the next 30 years.
Why 30 Years, why 2050?
Recently, several studies generated by the renewables energy sector have argued that the costs of renewable energy are becoming so cheap. That "even if we do nothing at the governmental level” it will supplant fossil fuels in 27 years.
Deus ex Machina, the invisible hand of the market is going to save us without any effort on our part.
Now the point of these studies is to advance the argument that renewables are going to replace fossil fuels “no matter what” because it makes economic sense. They are not arguing that governments “do nothing” to speed the transition along.
The Climate Action Resistance views these studies as validation for an anti-regulation, free market approach to dealing with what they argue is a “phony crisis”.
When you consider that this is what the 1% wants it’s probably not coincidental that most of the world’s nations are committing to Net Zero by 2050 plans. It’s an easy calculation to make. They don’t have to do anything to upset the world’s energy and finance systems and the market will magically solve the problem for them.
This desire to follow the political path of least resistance is what leads to insane juxtapositions like this, as reported by the NYT,
President Biden told a global climate summit on Monday that “we only have a brief window before us” to reduce the emissions from burning oil, gas and coal that pose an “existential threat” to humanity. But only days earlier, he was urging the world’s largest oil producers to pump more of the fossil fuels that are warming the planet.
The current world leadership doesn’t seem able to grasp the speed and force of the climate shifts that are currently happening.
This isn’t that surprising; all their adult lives the research seemed to say that noticeable effects of a warming climate probably wouldn’t start happening until around 2070. Most of them expected to be dead before the consequences of global warming became apparent.
Now, I don’t think that Biden, or Kerry, or most of the other world leaders are deliberately risking a climate apocalypse for some sort of personal gain.
Their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will be living in the world of the coming decades, even if they are not. They do not want to crash global civilization, they don’t want billions to starve, they don’t want to set the Horsemen lose on the world.
However, I do think that the current world elites are incapable of dealing with the crisis.
Both their approaches and policy choices indicate a fundamental lack of appreciation for how much the carbon bomb of the last two decades has accelerated planetary warming. They are pushing “solutions” that might have worked if we had done them 30 years ago but are laughably inadequate now.
They seem incapable of internalizing how bad things have gotten and how fast they are about to start getting much, much worse. The crisis still, after all this time, isn’t real to them.
Which means that we aren’t going to do what we should be doing this decade. We are going to waste this last opportunity to slow down the disaster and reduce the damage it’s going to inflict on the world.
We will have an extreme "Climate Crisis" over the next 5-6 years. 800 million to 1.5 billion will probably die.
We can still get through that, we have deep enough reserves and resources if we start acting quickly. If we wake up to what's happening.
Because what's coming behind that is a Methane Crisis.
That one WILL take us down. That one will take us into the future imagined in "The Road".
If there is any one thing you should be fighting for with every ounce of strength you have, it's this.
ALL METHANE USE MUST BE SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY.
It's not a bridge fuel, it's the end of global civilization by 2050. Just like Umair is saying.
