Aug 14 2021
Well, it’s official. Man-made climate-change is real, and it’s worse than previously predicted.
The UN report that’s just come out is definitive and undeniable, and based on new research, and types of research, that we did not have at our disposal until now. The report has been endorsed not only by the world’s top climate scientists, but by the governments of 195 countries. Here’s what it says, in layman’s terms:
We’ve reached the point now where global warming is inevitable. We’ve already locked it in for the next 30 years. If we were able to stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere right now, this year, it would still run its course until 2050.
Over the next 30 years the median temperature of the world will rise 1.5 degrees Celsius. The extreme heat, drought, wildfires and other effects we’ve been experiencing lately is the beginning of this. It’ll get hotter, many habitats will be lost, a lot of sea life and coral reefs will die, and sea levels will rise as the polar icecaps melt. Draughts will become existential threats for much of the world.
Can we stop it? If we stop burning fossil fuels entirely right now, global warming would still continue unabated for the next 30 years, but then it would stabilize at the predicted 1.5 C increase. Probably. If we change the way we grow food, and stop mowing down forests to plant crops and breed cattle, then re-plant those forests, air quality would recover relatively quickly, but global warming still won’t be stopped.
Will we stop it? Of course not. The decisions that could save the world would need to be made, at least here in the US, by corporate CEOs. Those guys care about one thing: that their shareholders make a profit at the end of each quarter, so they don’t get voted out of their positions and have to settle for being less rich. We’ve seen, time and again, just how much CEOs care about the future beyond next quarter, let alone 30 years from now when they’re long dead. Don’t wait for them to save the world.
World governments have also been reluctant to make significant changes, setting themselves goals like cutting their CO2 production in half by 2050. That isn’t going to cut it.
Mankind will survive, I think. We’re a resilient species. We will adapt. But it won’t be fun, and life won’t be anything like it is now. I hold out hope that science will ultimately save us. We could live underground like Morlocks, and grow our meat in vats after all the animals are extinct. Or a revolutionary new power source could be discovered, and replace coal and oil overnight. You just never know how technology is going to go.