JimC wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2023 8:43 pm
I too see at least a certain amount of hope in developing technologies to combat global warming in a variety of ways, and even a glimmer of hope from the fact that a significant proportion of capitalist organisations see investment in renewables as financially attractive.
However, I'm by no means certain that will be enough by itself, and I think we need some far-reaching political changes to really tackle the issue properly.
That's where I'm at. Talking about the facts of climate change and global heating is one thing, and it's important to know the extent of the crisis, but the torrent of 'bad news' stories doesn't seem to be promoting the corollary that the facts cumulatively represent an existential threat to complex adaptive systems like ecologies and human bodies - nor do they seem to galvanising people into making the rapid changes needed.
Signatories to Paris agreed to cut CO2 emissions by 50% by 2030, to cut them again by 50% by 2040, and by another 50% by 2050, while transitioning the energy economy from fossil to renewable sources - those cuts are negotiated and conservative, and were signed up to well before the 2021 and 2022 IPCC reports. Ahead of COP26 the EU announced it intended to cut emissions by 55% by 2030, but compared to 1990 levels not current levels, and in the meantime the EU emitted more GHG in 2022 than at any time in history. We saw 90,000 people on the streets of the UK capital last weekend, co-ordinated by over 200 environmental and campaigning groups whose combined membership represents millions of people, all calling for rapid action on cliamte change. And the main story across the media was about the disruption to the lives of Londoners, with several high-ranking government ministers popping up on every outlet to say that they intend to bring in even stricter laws to prevent protests and the inconvenience and disruption it causes to ordinary people's lives. The irony is lost on most - and that's also a fact.
My view is that the system, the status quo, the business as usual model, capitalism, or whatever you want to call it, has evolved to a place where it is now incapable of making the rapid changes needed, changes that can actually put us in a place where we can actually get the benefit of new science and novel technology as we create resilient and just societies that can sustain themselves as they develop. And for that I'm cast as a Luddite and a reflexive hand-wringing, penitent - which is not only a mischaracterisation of my views, but in the latter case a misapplication of terms t'boot.
So yeah, please keep posting stories about us being the canaries in the coal mine etc macdoc; I actually find them motivating. But each one only emphasises that an awareness of the facts doesn't change anything, that it doesn't change the primary fact that business as usual has added more CO2 to the atmosphere in 2022 than any time before, and/or that business as usual and governments across the board are heavily weighting their bets in favour of inaction.
