Here's my column this week, about the astonishing moment in which we find ourselves: facing the greatest predicament humankind has ever confronted, and doing sweet FA about it. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/15/dying-earth-cop29-azerbaijan-species
Comments
(apologies — I saw "FA" and was triggered. Old 'X' habits die hard)
As usual, agree with the sentiment behind the col. Sharing it with The Greta Effect page on Facebook.
It's a global community of like-minded souls, many of them refreshingly young.
And 100% committed.
Reminds me of Ernst Mayr – who suggested that maybe there aren’t many advanced civilizations in the universe because intelligence is a sort of lethal mutation – we can’t cope with the consequences of our inventiveness.
Well that upped the effects of my coffee! If you could boil the entire issues of the world down into one sentence..
It's the politicians, oligarchs, and skewed social priorities that are getting in the way.
As Profs Anette Mikes & Steve New said re research “….lift our eyes from our cluttered but comforting academic desktops to a threatening horizon that should be the dominant frame of our daily activity as researchers and teachers.”
https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/oxford-answers/our-ministry-future-reshaping-capitalism-help-solve-climate-crisis
I have never seen COP as a serious attempt to address the situation.
https://amp.scmp.com/news/world/article/3243419/uae-cop28-chief-says-fossil-fuels-must-be-part-climate-deal-urges-delegates-adopt-different-mindset
Not likely, and all downhill it seems.
Real question is : what is the alternative?
We need to start at the very bottom; with communities.
It may seem long-winded, but imho the tipping point will arrive quickly if we all do it in our own communities.
What we actually need - and I've been pushing this for a few years now - is to work at every level we can, as hard as we can, as consistently as we can.
COP 29 dominated by the oil and gas industries lobbying for more extraction. Obscene isn’t the word
Venus atmosphere is 95% CO2, too hot
Mars atmosphere is 95% CO2, too cold
What a predicament 😀😀😀
Look up the facts, tool
There's a reason they've built bunkers. They know the pitchforks & torches are coming.
It's the only way anything will change. Of course it'll be too late by then.
Scientists only know how to argue and promote their papers and books, lobbyists & politicians are cravenly self-interested sellouts, not kidding, let the kids fight for their futures at COP
Doing our bit by getting Solar Panels and house battery...but we did hope we'd get a Peugeot E Rifter WAV EV for Tash.....but we're told by HMG (Sunak's) that we have to wait another 2 years
Believe in me.
As much as I believe in you.
🫶🌟🙏
Yet we seems to be going the opposite way with climate denial beeing a viable political strategy
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Another democratic future is possible: http://www.demnext.org
Time will tell I guess.
We must find our American Z (Zelenskyy) and unite.
2. Because our national politics is 4-5 year cyclical and climate & environmental change are much longer term, international transitions. It’s just not their department. That’s the system we collectively chose to build. It’s for organisations like the UN…if they worked. See 1.
#JustTransitionNow
https://fossilfueltreaty.org
The rest of the life we share this planet with does not.
No god would ever forgive that kind of ignorance.
It's clearly imperfect and room for reform as Figueres etc say today, but I'm yet to hear a better way to do international cooperation on climate...