Wow. Human beings. Something else, man. Really. I mean how did we get to be so stupid and so smart at the same time? That’s something I truly do not understand. I have asked University professors this question. They didn’t know either.
The COP 26 Climate Change Conference just concluded in Glasgow. That’s in Scotland. I guess they figured for some reason they would have a better chance of coming up with something if they were in Scotland. Didn’t work. They didn’t come up with diddley squat. Compared to the dire consequences being predicted by the climate scientists, they came up with exactly not very much.
What they decided was that they were going to get together again next year and talk about what they’re going to decide. Probably to get together again the following year. Meanwhile, on planet Earth, the global average temperature continues to rise and the the window of opportunity for limiting it to 1.5 C continues to get smaller. Above that threshold, scientists predict, our biosphere will be in danger.
They couldn’t even decide to phase out coal. COAL! When coal is burned it releases a whole slew of airborne toxins and pollutants including carbon dioxide - a major cause of global warming and sulfur dioxide - a major cause of acid rain and mercury and lead and nitrogen oxides - all of which contribute to respiratory illnesses, heart disease and cancer. Read about coal power plants here and how we can build better ones.
We can’t agree to phase out coal because some countries like India and China, not to mention the United States, burn massive amounts of it to power their grid and keep their economies humming along so they can continue exploiting the planet to create wealth. Don’t have time to build a wind farm, might lose a competitive advantage over some other country exploiting the planet to create wealth.
And therein lies the crux of the problem, people are in love with money. We’re just crazy about it. We can’t see the approaching train or even the tunnel because of the money. When the politicians get together, like at COP 26, they’re not negotiating in good faith to save the earth from calamity, they’re representing monied interests. The guys that get them elected. The guys running the show.
So what specifically, if anything, did COP 26 accomplish during its two week long UN sponsored conference with diplomats from almost 200 countries? That included heads of state, Biden was there, so was Johnson from the UK, Modi from India. Putin was not, neither was Xi of China.
Weeeeel . . . let’s see, in their signed agreement they pledged to end deforestation by 2030. “These great teeming ecosystems - these cathedrals of nature - are the lungs of our planet,” crowed Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain. Well that’s good. Of course Britain has already cut down most of their forests, as has Scotland where the conference took place. And of course the agreement isn’t binding and there’s no enforcement.
Biden pledged $9 billion (it was $20 billion in his campaign) to the global effort saying, “Preserving forests and other ecosystems can and should play an important role in meeting our ambitious climate goals,”. Of course that amount will most likely face opposition from Republicans in Congress and get whittled down even more.
What else? Well they all agreed that they need to do more, much more, and fast, to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. They agreed to it. It’s urgent. Absolutely. And then didn’t do anything.
Oh yeah, they resolved to cut emissions. Even China got in on that one, they’re going to reduce their methane emissions. Bravo. How much and how soon? Nobody knows. And would it matter if we did? There is no way to hold countries accountable if they don’t meet their stated goals, no consequences at all except for more words at more conferences.
And what’s at stake here? This is what’s at stake: intense world changing weather events, extreme floods, enormous wildfires, huge hurricanes and unprecedented heat waves. Desertification. Loss of farming lands. Displacement of people. Species extinction. Flooding of low lying coastal areas and islands. Damage to the biosphere that supports life on this earth especially for the megafauna of which we are one species. How much damage can the biosphere take and still support the food chain that we depend on? There’s the question.
The climate scientists predict that global warming of more than 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) would be the tipping point and we’ve already warmed 1.1°C (2° Fahrenheit). Nobody knows for sure, though, it’s just computer models built from data gathered from weather stations all over the world.
But there’s a good chance we’re going to find out what the tipping point is; the point at which the weather becomes our enemy and conditions arise that we are not well suited to live in. The problem with finding out experientially is that is once the dire consequences have set in, they create their own momentum and it becomes even harder to stop them. If we reach 2° C it will take thousands of years for the oceans to cool back down. https://www.popsci.com/what-happens-if-earth-gets-2-degrees-warmer/
Meanwhile the giant tankers that carry oil halfway around the world from places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, burn 16 tons of high sulfur diesel fuel every hour. Sixteen of these mammoth ships release as much climate-changing sulphur oxides as all the cars in the world according to a 2009 article in the Daily Mail. Burn it twice then - or three times. It takes energy to extract the oil out of the ground, then ship it halfway around the world, then burn it in the streets of our cities. That’s not dumb, that’s insane.
Even for someone who doesn’t believe in the climate crisis, there’s no way you can expect to keep pumping billions of tons of CO2 (and other even more potent greenhouse gases) into the atmosphere year after year and not have consequences. It’s a closed system. If you look at our atmosphere from outer space it’s just a thin layer, equivalent to a piece of paper laid on a beach ball. The densest part of it extends only 10 miles from the surface.
My sense is that the world leaders are not going to tackle the climate change challenge, we’re going to have to do it ourselves. People power. Governments can help, they can funnel large sums of money into renewable energy projects, they can fund research into better batteries and such. But they don’t have the chutzpah to say ‘bring it on, let’s do this’. People do though.
Lots of people feel passionate about this issue. They ride their bicycle to work instead of driving, they choose their purchases with a mind to where it came from (was it carried across the Pacific Ocean in a container ship burning 16 tons of high sulphur diesel fuel every hour?), they adjust the ambient temperature of their domicile to save energy. Conservation in other words. No need for high tech solutions.
Insignificant, you quip? Multiply it a million times. Multiply it a billion times, now it is significant. Scale it up. If you’re disgusted with the inability of the governments to find solutions, be a solution yourself. Talk it up. Inform yourself. Drive less, live simpler.
I barely believe in American democracy anymore but there is another democracy. Each person casts a vote by how they live, by the decisions they make. That vote is counted. Will it make a difference? Yes. It’s the only thing that makes a difference. People power. The common sense and compassion of people, that’s what I’ll bet on.
Will it come in time - this imagined global community of climate warriors that you talk about, Rohn? It’ll have to. It will be required.
One thing that hasn’t been calculated in these climate crisis predictions is the resilience and adaptability of the human species. We can even be smart when we want to. That’s how we got this far. We were living on the African savannahs 80,000 years ago, knocking rocks together. Then we spread out all over the world and built cities. We built cities and cars to drive around in them and airplanes and all the rest of it. We invented the Industrial Revolution which has brought unprecedented levels of prosperity. It has brought us, at the same time, to the cliff’s edge of extinction. How ironic is that?
Imagine the world in 30 years. 2051. If all these dire predictions come to pass and push comes to shove, the kids (who will then be in charge) will have to bring all those clever Homo sapiens survival skills to bear and beat it back. All the survival skills of our tribe plus the computer skills they learned playing Roblox, playing Minecraft and Pokémon, inventing their avatar and conquering challenges. That’s what I think. They’ll figure it out somehow cause they’re not stupid.
And neither are their parents - us. We’re not stupid either but we’re obsessed with this weird gimmicky toy called ‘wealth’. We’re so obsessed with it that we don’t even know what it is anymore. We have creature comforts in this country but we’re on drugs for anxiety. We’ve forgotten how to live in balance with nature and instead treat it like some foreign country, like something in a museum that we go see.
No. We are part of nature and we really, really, really need to know that. Maybe then things would change.
music: Cafe De Anatolia - Summer Mix 2021 (by Rialians On Earth)
COP 26 - the climate conference