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From Jonathan Porritt
This is a bit of a long one! So here’s my “Executive Summary” so you can decide whether to commit the time to the rest of it: mainstream climate scientists run the risk of becoming the new climate deniers. As in:
- The speed with which the climate is now changing is faster than (almost) all scientists thought possible.
- There is now zero prospect of holding the average temperature increase this century to below 1.5°C; even 2°C is beginning to slip out of reach. The vast majority of climate scientists know this, but rarely if ever give voice to this critically important reality.
- At the same time, the vast majority of people still haven’t a clue about what’s going on – and what this means for them and everything they hold dear.
- The current backlash against existing (already wholly inadequate) climate measures is also accelerating – and will cause considerable political damage in 2024. Those driving this backlash represent the same old climate denial that has been so damaging over so many years.
- The science-based institutions on which we depend to address this crisis have comprehensively failed us. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is incapable of telling the whole truth about accelerating climate change; the Conference of the Parties (under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) has been co-opted by the fossil fuel lobby to the point of total corruption.
- By not calling out these incontrovertible realities, mainstream scientists are at risk of becoming the new climate deniers.
Hannah Ritchie has become the go-to “stubborn optimist” amongst climate scientists. Having seen the reviews of her new book, “Not the End of the World”, I read it with a growing sense of dread. Her selective use of “myth-busting” statistics is worthy of Hans Rosling (her original guru) at his best. The repetitive, totally banal evocation of “hope’, as our best tool in the fight against climate change (“we have all the solutions we need – and they’re cheap and available”) grates mightily with someone who’s been pursuing that solutions agenda for the last 30 years – with a lot less banal bullshit.
And that’s the point. We’ve made progress during that time, but nothing like as much as should have been made. And that’s not because of the inadequacy of the technological solutions, but because of POLITICS and POWER.
Read the full post at Jonathan Porritt.
