Too late to avoid climate disaster – is it too late to grow up?
March 4th, 2009 by Jim JustThe battle against dangerous climate change has been lost, and the world needs to prepare for things to get very, very bad.
That’s the gloomy message climate scientist Kevin Anderson conveyed at a high-level academic conference on global warming at Exeter University. Despite the political rhetoric, the scientific warnings, the media headlines and the corporate promises, carbon emissions have soared way out of control. So much extra pollution is being pumped out that most of the climate targets debated by politicians and campaigners are fanciful at best, and “dangerously misguided” at worst. It is now “improbable” that atmospheric CO2 levels can be restricted to less than 650 parts per million (ppm). At 650ppm, the world would face a catastrophic 4C average rise. And even that bleak future could only be achieved if draconian emission reductions are adopted “within a decade.”
Atmospheric CO2 levels are currently about 387 ppm, up from 280ppm at the time of the industrial revolution, and levels are rising by more than 2ppm each year. The generally accepted view is that the world should aim to cap CO2 levels at 450ppm, to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 2C. The latest science suggests that reducing atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm or below will be necessary to avoid catastrophic “tipping points.”
Global warming is proving worse than even the bleakest scenarios considered by the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Economist and IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri says he is stunned at the trillions of dollar thrown at the banking crisis while funding to arrest global warming is beggared.
Sharon Astyk observes we are nearing a point at which we will no longer be able to go on as we have been, and the projects we engage in will have to change fundamentally.
We may have to admit that the hope of growing the economy again or rescuing the banks is futile – and turn our efforts, hopefully, towards mitigating suffering. We may have to concede that the planet will pass the 2 degree tipping point (and I say this with great pain), and that the best we can hope for is to not add more damage. We may have to concede that our children will be dealing with a national infrastructure designed for cheap energy – and without much of the energy, and turn ourselves to the national and world project of adaptation.
Astyk invokes the memory of Theodore “Dr. Seuss” Giesel, whose work gently teaches that not all endings are happy endings:
This is a hard lesson for children, but one that it is good to embed early – to clarify the distinction between fiction and reality. It is one that is clearly hard for many adults to grasp – thus, the fact that we desperately *want* the economy to be restored makes us see signs of restoration where none are. The fact that we want to address climate change without personal hardship makes us convinced that this is possible, that we want there to be fossil fuels without constraining our consumption means we choose to believe it. But navigating the fact that happy endings of the “Happy 100 percent” sort are mostly fictive is perhaps the life project for both children and adults.
It’s time to grow up.