“The goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C is hanging by a thread,” said the official spokesperson for António Guterres, the UN secretary general. “The battle to keep 1.5C alive will be won or lost in the 2020s – under the watch of political and industry leaders today. They need to realise we are on the verge of the abyss. The science is clear and so are the world’s scientists: the stakes for all humanity could not be higher.”
it was under the watch of political and industry leaders for at least 36 years and its more or less business as usual since. I kinda get why hes still eager to repeat the false hope fantasy of 1.5C, but the “battle” for it was lost in the early 2000s. theres maybe a chance to keep it below 2C, but that would basically mean shutting off the entire global economy right now.
"…It doesn’t mean they will live in a utopian future – we know too much climate change is already baked into the system – "…“A world in which we pass 1.5C is not set in stone”
ah? which one is it then? I mean, we passed the 1.5C for the last 12 months…sounds pretty done to me.
e/ the whole point of the survey Christiana Figueres replies to with her piece, was that 80% of the climate scientists who answered the guardian, are certain that we will reach 2.5C no matter what. with her last statement, she actually contradicts her own “I understand climate scientists’ despair” and fails those very scientists which she pretends to understand. this isnt “optimism”, this is misleading wishful thinking and borderline denialism.
I haven’t been keeping up with this thread so apologies if this is a repost, but just heard of this last night. Rating movies based on their acknowledgement (or lack thereof) of climate change.
Many of the experts were clear on the limits. “It can only go so far. Deep, rapid cuts in carbon emissions from oil and gas, as well as other sectors such as transport, are needed, which are outside the control of the average individual,” said Dr Shobha Maharaj, a climate impacts scientist from Trinidad and Tobago.
“Individual action can only amount to a drop in the bucket – only systemic changes will be sufficient,” said Prof David Wrathall, at Oregon State University in the US. But Prof Hiroyuki Enomoto, at Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research, said that while individual actions have a small impact, they are important in increasing collective awareness of the problem.
ETA:
Another article with many of the same experts being questioned:
Ninety-seven female scientists responded, with 17, including women from Brazil, Chile, Germany, India and Kenya, saying they had chosen to have fewer children. All but 1% of the scientists surveyed were over 40 years old and two-thirds were over 50, reflecting the senior positions they had reached in their professions. A quarter of the respondents were women, the same proportion as the overall authorship of the IPCC reports.
The findings were in response to a question about major personal decisions taken in response to the climate crisis by scientists who know the most about it, and who expect global temperatures to soar past international targets in coming years. 7% of the male scientists who responded said they had had either no children or fewer than they would otherwise have had.
Oh, thanks for sharing. The good people of Rio Grande sure needs all the help qe can give 'em.
It’s really scary! The waters are slowly starting to recede. But even so, there are still many cities, including the capital, under water, without electricity, telephones, fuel or drinking water. I think to give you an idea of this tragedy, this environmental disaster can be compared to the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Imagine that destruction but across an entire state!
In the midst of all this suffering, it was beautiful to see ordinary people helping each other. Fishermen took their boats, vacationers brought their jetskis from the coast to rescue the homeless. Priests and pastors opened their temples to welcome those who lost everything. A chain of popular solidarity to mitigate the lack of action by public authorities. Even people in the poorest corners of the country are helping as much as they can.
Unfortunately, the followers of certain new-age politicians and charlatans are denying climate change and blaming an amorphous entity they call communism. Amazingly, a lot of people even blamed Madonna, who played here in Rio last week.
I would very much like to be wrong, but I think that unfortunately scenes like these will become more and more common.
ETA
Some conservative nuts said that Madonna’s concert was satanic and displeased a God who sent heavy rains. Maybe this God is very bad at Geography, as He sent the clouds to Rio Grande do Sul, not Rio de Janeiro. Other materialistic conservatives said that the money spent by the Madonna’s sponsors, could be donated to the people among other moralistic nonsense, as nobody ws expecting the tragedy and the concert was scheduled since last year…
"This is our 536 moment. It’s oddly comforting to know that people have gone through this before. A lot of them didn’t make it. If you or I don’t make it, that’s not our fault. It has nothing to do with how early you woke up or how much you hustled. You’re living through a dark era in history, dealing with forces far bigger than you. Every minute of peace, calm, or joy you wrench out of this time is something to celebrate.
There’s one big difference between now and 536. It’s not some volcano causing our misery. We’re responsible for this one. And the damage we’ve done to this planet will last much longer than a few decades.
When this world ends, I don’t know if a new one will grow in its place. Maybe. It’s going to look awfully different. If it’s going to survive, it can’t repeat the mistakes of all the previous worlds. Plus, it’s going to have a rough time. Climate scientists are predicting massive storms so strong they can hurl boulders, and those storms will start happening anywhere between now and the end of the century. We’re already seeing heat waves so devastating they kill… everything. No previous civilization has had to deal with that.
Humans will probably survive, and life will look a lot like it did before fossil fuels made us too big for our britches." Jessica.
jah, no shit. which of course doesnt mean to stop to use as little resources as possible on an individual scale.
yep, and that means cutting by 90%…from a ~100 million tons co2 emissions per fucking day down to at least 10 million tons. good luck with that in our full-blown capitalistic system which depends on that destructive workings to function.
