TICK TOCK THE CLIMATE CLOCK PART NINETEEN

I was struck by this quote from an essay called “Learning to Live in an Apocalypse” from the MIT Technology Review’s April 2019 issue on climate change:

Nevertheless, the fact that our situation offers no good prospects does not absolve us of the obligation to find a way forward.  Our apocalypse is happening day by day, and our greatest challenge is learning to live with this truth while remaining committed to some as-yet-unimaginable form of future human flourishing—to live with radical hope.  Despite decades of failure, a disheartening track record, ongoing paralysis, a social order geared toward consumption and distraction, and the strong possibility that our great-grandchildren may be the last generation of humans ever to live on planet Earth, we must go on.  We have no choice.

Oh, but we do.  There are at least three other choices.  We can fight back ineffectively, if not cynically, like India and China are.  Or we can do nothing, like the U.S. is.  Or we can speed up the apocalypse, like Brazil is.  But no matter which choice we make, the outcome is the same:  we’re toast—no pun intended.

Consider this.  The Paris Climate Agreement is failing, as the image of the melting chunks of icebergs off Greenland above illustrate.  The agreement's objective is “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”  However, its emissions targets are non-binding and therefore unenforceable.  In addition, the 194 signatory nations aren’t meeting the targets, and even if they were, they’re probably not enough to keep a temperature increase below 2°C, much less 1.5°C.  This from Wiki:

A pair of studies in Nature have said that, as of 2017, none of the major industrialized nations were implementing the policies they had envisioned and have not met their pledged emission reduction targets, and even if they had, the sum of all member pledges (as of 2016) would not keep global temperature rise "well below 2 °C.” According to UNEP [United Nations Environment Program], the emission cut targets in November 2016 will result in temperature rise by 3 °C above pre-industrial levels, far above the 2 °C of the Paris climate agreement.

In addition, an MIT News article discussed recent MIT studies on the true impact that the Paris Agreement had on global temperature increase. They concluded that, although beneficial, there was strong evidence that the goal provided by the Paris Agreement could not be met in the future under the current circumstances.

That’s right.  Carbon emissions are increasing—not decreasing-- worldwide.  95% of the world’s scientists agree that we have to reduce carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 and by 100% by 2050, to avoid exceeding a temperature increase of 1.5°C.  If the failure of the Paris Climate Agreement is any indication, there is no way we’re going to meet that target.  Which means that the target is blown and the only question is by how much.  UNEP thinks it’s 3°C.   Why are we making bad choices?

India’s attempt to develop renewable energy sources is a good example of ineffective mitigation efforts and the scale and intractability of the crisis.  As the MIT Technology Review cautions (emphasis added):

India would need to add about 500 gigawatts of renewables capacity by 2030, nearly seven times the current total, just to meet the growth in demand without building new coal plants.  That’s simply not going to happen.

Sobering.  Fortunately, India accounts for only 7% of carbon emissions.  But its emissions from power plants alone are projected to increase by 80% through 2040, even with the renewables currently planned.  No matter what it does, India will add to global warming, not reduce it.  

China is a good example of cynical mitigation efforts.  China is responsible for almost 30% of carbon emissions.  We hear a lot about how China is investing in solar power and other renewables.  That's true, but according to satellite imagery, China is also on track to increase its coal power generation by 25%.  How is that possible?  Between 2014 and 2016, China decentralized approval of new coal plants, ceding control to provincial governments.  Suffice it to say, mitigation was taken hostage by the stronger imperatives to provide jobs, increase the standard of living, and maintain a high GDP growth rate.  Climate took it in the shorts.  https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45640706  

The U.S., of course, is the poster child for doing nothing at best, and poking the crisis in the eye with a sharp straw at worst.   If Trump is re-elected, the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement in November of next year.   And in the meantime, his “America first!” answer to plastic pollution in the oceans is to clean up the beaches, while he campaigns against climate change with “it’s all about me” plastic straws emblazoned with “Trump.”  

At the other extreme end of the choice spectrum is Brazil, which seems hell-bent on hastening the catastrophe.  You’ve read the statistics.  The Amazon rain forest produces 20% of the world’s oxygen and stores CO2, and it is currently on fire.  Brazil has had 73,000 fires this year, an 83% increase over 2018.  This is a catastrophic loss of carbon capture.  Between 1980 and 2010, the Amazon rain forest absorbed carbon equal to the fossil fuel emissions of nine of its bordering countries.  To make matters worse, these fires were deliberately set and encouraged by Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro.  His response to the world’s pleas to cease deforestation?  He accused NGOs of setting the fires to undermine his right-wing regime. 

With these kinds of governmental responses, it seems as if there is a snowball’s chance in hell of doing what really needs to be done:  To counteract the increases in carbon emissions from ineffective, cynical, non-existent, and counter-productive responses to climate change, the developed nations have to reduce more to make up for the increases.  But that would require a world-wide consensus and an enforceable agreement with effective sanctions.  That’s simply not going to happen.  Been there, done that with the failing Paris Climate Agreement—which isn’t even binding and has no consequences. We're not going to get anything stronger.

So I think the likely scenario is that things will get worse and we will run out of time, if we haven’t already.  As the situation worsens and the oncoming disaster becomes more visible, there will be no sharing of responsibility and no sharing of resources:  clean water, arable land, places where the temperature stays in the survivable zone and you’re well above sea level rise. And in an atmosphere of competition, apprehension, uncertainty, and fear, things will get ugly.  Once people realize there isn’t enough cool air, clean water, and arable land to go around, it will be the survival of the richest, baby. 

Hence Trump’s wall and the migrant detention facilities in the U.S.  The refusal of Europe to accept more refugees and its militarization of the Mediterranean.  India’s deportation of those who can’t prove residency—mainly Muslims.  The name of the climate crisis game is scarcity, and the way to play the game is to gird your loins, take care of your own kind, family first, and keep the others out.

I hate to say it, but I think we are seriously screwed and that many of the world leaders in charge (politicians, corporate heavyweights) know it’s too late to solve the climate crisis.  They know it’s going to be a disaster of epic proportions, as in a 6^th mass extinction, (some? most? all?) humans included.  How else to explain the recklessly insufficient investment in available carbon capture technologies, easy-peasy tree planting on a massive scale, ramped up renewables, hybridization of plants, and indoor farms?   None of these measures or technologies is scaling up, and none of them is getting the level of governmental support needed to make a difference.   Why is that?

I have an idea.  If you’re up for a real mind game, think about this.  If these leaders are correct, i.e., that there is no fix in time, then they are arguably reacting rationally to the crisis.  If a cost benefit analysis simply doesn’t support the massive expense of curbing emissions by an individual nation, because whatever that single nation does, it won’t make a difference in the absence of a total, coordinated, global response, then why do anything at all?  Live it up today and hoard for tomorrow!  If that’s the calculus, then these leaders are acting logically, even as those actions are immoral and suicidal.

And another part of that calculus is to keep your mouth shut.  These leaders are smart enough to also know that if they talk about its being too late, two things will happen.  First, there will be mass pandemonium.  Second, there will be a huge groundswell of demand for a solution.  But it will be too late.  Politics, technology, and religion will fail their faithful.  Social bonds will fray.  People will lose all confidence in their institutions and leaders.  There will be social instability and most likely wars for life-sustaining resources.

I know it’s a grim prediction, and I acknowledge being a pessimist, but if you look hard at what is and is not happening, I think it’s the most probable outcome.  And I think there are other “little” people like me who also understand the likelihood of this outcome on at least a gut, subliminal level.  That understanding is adding an unprecedented level of anxiety to daily life, which has a multiplier effect.  It exacerbates negative trends already present in developed countries:  extreme political and religious views, alcohol abuse, suicide, opioid addiction, low birth rates, and mass shootings.  And it exacerbates negative trends already present in developing countries:  poverty, corruption, gang violence, drug cartels, hunger, and emigration.  There is a whiff of desperation, despair, denial, and disbelief in the air.  We live in interesting times that sometimes feel to me like the End of Times.

I wish I could agree with the essayist from the MIT Technology Review that we have no choice but to go on, but I think we’ve already made the choice to go out.  

Notwithstanding all the gloom and doom, let me leave you with a little levity.  The photo above comes from a website called www.godtv.com.  I wonder who its sponsors are?  The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?  Sorry.  But at this point, blasphemy is the least of our problems.

Keep it real!

Marilyn