Living in Climate Truth, Sections I-V. Margaret Klein Salamon, The Climate Psychologist. Aug. 27, 2013.
Our society is living within a massive lie. The lie says, “Everything is fine and we should proceed with business as usual. We are not destroying our climate and, with it, our stability and our civilization. We are not committing passive suicide.”
The lie says we are fine—that climate change isn’t real, or is uncertain, or is far away, or won’t be bad enough to threaten humanity. The lie says that small changes will solve the problem. That recycling, bicycling, or closing the Keystone Pipeline will solve the problem. The lie allows people to put climate change in the back of their minds. To view it as someone else’s issue—the domain of scientists or activists. The lie allows us to focus on other things. To proceed with business as usual. To be calm and complacent while our planet burns.
World Climate Change Conference Confirms Near Term Human Extinction. Mike Sliwa. Dec. 20, 2015.
Recently at COP21 (Paris Climate Conference) the leaders of the world sealed the deal on human history. I wasn’t under any illusion that any agreement would “save” humankind. I also realize that climate change isn’t just about those of us who live in the dominant industrial culture. What happened in Paris at the climate conference only confirms the insanity of a culture built upon infinite growth on a finite planet. It confirmed our predicament. Our current living arrangement is killing us and everything in its path and there’s little to nothing we can do about it.
The Politics and Science of Our Demise. Guy McPherson, Nature Bats Last. Aug. 1 2016.
In total, Carana ends up with 10.02 C above baseline by mid-2026, or about 23.5 C. That’d be the highest global-average temperature on this planet during the last 2,000,000,000 years. Taking a conservative approach at every step, I conclude “only” an 8.21-degree rise in temperature by mid-2026. As a result, I conclude global-average temperature at that time will be about 21.7 C (13.5 C + 8.21 C). This is barely below 22 C, the temperature at which Earth has most commonly found itself during the last 2,000,000,000 years. There is no reason to expect Earth to start cooling until the heat engine of civilization is turned off and dozens of self-reinforcing feedback loops are inexplicably reversed.
For context, the Great Dying wiped out nearly all complex life on Earth. It involved a global-average rise in temperature from about 12 C to about 23 C during a span of several tens of thousands of years. To conclude that humans will survive a similar rise in temperature within only a couple hundred years, with the vast majority of the heating occurring within a decade, is exceedingly — and probably insanely — optimistic. Considering Homo sapiens is strongly dependent upon myriad other species for our own survival, it’s difficult to imagine our favorite species will have the habitat requisite for survival as we barrel into 2026, only a decade from now.
But perhaps we will survive. Perhaps the heat engine known as civilization will be repaired by soon-to-be-developed “tools that cool” created — of course — via the heat engine known as civilization. Perhaps we can bomb the deserts and roam the ocean in nuclear submarines while eating Soylent Green. And then, a few million years later, assuming the planet cools, perhaps we will pop out the other side of a substantial bottleneck in sufficient numbers to do it all over again
Looming Danger of Abrupt Climate Change. Robert Hunziker, counterpunch. Dec. 26, 2013.
The National Research Council of the National Academies (NRCNA) has pre-published an extensive 200-pg study: “Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change, Anticipating Surprises.”
The goal of the report is to prepare society to anticipate the ‘otherwise unanticipated’ before it occurs, including abrupt changes to the ocean, atmosphere, ecosystems and high latitude regions. The NRCNA timescale for “abrupt climate change” is defined as years-to-decades.
“The history of climate on the planet— as read in archives such as tree rings, ocean sediments, and ice cores— is punctuated with large changes that occurred rapidly, over the course of decades to as little as a few years,”
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Once again, in the ocean, as well as on the land, excessive carbon dioxide (CO2) is the problem.
Reiteratively, there is no worldwide plan on how to move forward to avoid an extinction event.
As a consequence, except for a few scientists, the world community will be shocked by the carnage because nobody anticipates it really happening. Otherwise, the governments of the world would be furiously working on solutions, but they are not.
Scientists have been publishing ominous reports for years in vain because they have not been taken seriously enough to prompt corrective action, as for example, a wholesale switching from fossil fuels to renewables, like wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, wave, and hydro.
Democratic Party Platform 7/1/16 Draft Would Lock In Catastrophic Climate Change. Michael Hoexter, Ph.D, New Economic Perspectives. Jul. 8, 2016.
The Brexit vote is being taken by some commentators as a sign that the basic competence of leadership groups throughout Western countries is in question. Unfortunately not enough media attention has been paid, public concern raised, and action taken about the most massive and long-standing failure of the political leadership classes, a failure to protect by governments that threatens humanity itself. Governments and government leaders have failed to lead on climate change, even as most recently in Paris, they have sworn to hold Earth’s surface temperature below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels and target 1.5 degrees as the “optimal” goal. This failure of leadership both in governments and also in the nongovernmental organizations that nominally address environment and climate is almost absolute and is terrifying to behold.
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What is required now of government leaders is a full-scale, society-wide mobilization of economic, social and political resources to rapidly (within a decade) change the energy basis of civilizations, all of this led and supervised by governments. A government-organized and –financed multi-year mobilization has always been the option that was necessary at some point to transform our societies away from our increasingly deadly dependence on fossil fuels. Yet in the fog of neoliberal economic and political reasoning, government leaders and non-governmental organizations have not been able to conceive of, let alone undertake the transition away from a fossil-fueled to a largely or completely renewable energy powered society.
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With the emergence of what is to be a full-scale climate emergency, the embrace of half-measures whether out of ignorance, out of fealty to misbegotten neoliberal ideology/neoclassical economics or out of fear of rabid climate deniers, is itself a form of climate and science denial. This fashionable form of “green” climate denial that can be spoken in liberal salons and party meetings, wrings its hands about “Republican Congressional gridlock” and climate denial and holds up the meager climate-related achievements of the current and previous Presidential Administrations as holy writ. Talk is limited to various measures that do not suggest a leading role for government office-holders and government in pointing the way to the post-fossil fuel future. Nothing that inconveniences the consumer or corporations is discussed at any length out of fear or a thoughtless repetition of tired received wisdom.
A US Climate Platform: Anchoring Climate Policy in Reality (1/3). Michael Hoexter, New Economic Perspectives. Sep. 17, 2015.
COP21 and Beyond: Outlines of an Actually-Effective International Climate Policy Architecture. Michael Hoexter, New Economic Perspectives. Dec. 4, 2015.
Outline of an Actually-Effective International Climate Policy Framework
1. Declare a Climate Emergency
2. Guard & Enhance Human & Political Rights During the Long Emergency
3. Target 1.5 °C Warming or Less
4. Net-Zero Worldwide GHG Emissions by 2035
5. Commit to (Aggressive) Mechanisms First
6. Primary Mechanism: National Climate Mobilizations Led by National Governments
7. Secondary Mechanism: Ascending Carbon Tax & Tariff Regime
8. Tertiary Mechanism: Coordinated Treaty on Emergency Global Cooling
9. Remove Fossil Fuel Economic Interests from UNFCCC
10. Reinforce National Sovereignty via the UN Against Treaties that Undermine Climate Regulation
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