Sacks on our Heads
Americans (and Germans probably pictured above) are amazingly sanguine about the Climate Crisis as compared to people in other responsible countries. While we are the greatest emitter per person and the second greatest per person in total behind China, we are number twelve in terms of concern. (The chart below excludes China, Russia and Iran, all high emitters.)
July 21 and 22 were back to back the hottest two days ever recorded, yet it wasn't even a lead story on the key US online news sources (NY Times, Wash Post, LA Times). So much is happening in terms of weird bad dangerous weather that people (and MSM editors) have become blasé. Climate change related bad news has become just another ho hum every-thing-is-getting-worse news item. Many Americans have simply given up worrying about it - if they ever did. Also one's political views play a role especially in the US. If politically on the right especially if having contracted MAGAitis, people are in moderate to full denial regarding human responsibility for climate change . But even those who are concerned are experiencing 'distress fatigue' along with what could be termed 'distraction syndrome'. And underlying it all is a sense of powerlessness.
For right wingers in the US climate related disasters - mega-fires, 1,000 year floods, more Cat 5 hurricanes and tornadoes, long term droughts are just some other poor fucker's bad luck – like traffic accidents or being picked off in a mass shooting. Yet ever more distressing data keeps pouring in re: CO2 levels increases, ocean acidfication, coral reef loss, glacial melt rates, cessation of the warming currents affecting Europe, increases in extinctions and so on. Apparently for nearly half (45%) of the US population it is just part of the regular (mostly bad) news cycle. As per the chart above degrees of denial range from disengagement, to doubts about science, to full-on dismissiveness. That 45% figure coincides with support for the now dangerously reactionary, anti-science fully Trumpized GOP.
Globally politicians in leadership positions (prime ministers, presidents and such) must first do what they can to keep their always teetering economies afloat or they might be bumped out. So they all only pay lip service to the climate change issue grave as it is and only take baby steps in terms of real change. But they always send delegates to the annual United Nations Climate Change Conferences, more commonly known as COP(_). COPs come up with much promising and posturing but nothing really changes the grim upward climb of greenhouse gases. There is always lots of upbeat talk about more sustainable of this and that promising technologies with blissful aspirations, but precious few solid commitments. So things just keep getting worse as we blow past targeted barriers and move ever closer to some deadly tipping point.
The US and China are both making some limited measurable progress. In the US C02 is down by 11% from 2005. And China now produces inexpensive solar panels and EVs. But much more needs to be done here to even reach the our goal of 50% reduction by 2030; made more difficult now that the Supreme Court has limited the authority of all federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency.
There is abundant research and information available from concerned researchers and activists globally. For instance the Collapse Chronicles is a newsletter that comes out every day. This is from the July 27 edition. In it was a from a paper by William H.Rees. It is an excellent concise summation of what we face and how deeply embedded this problem is and how shallow are our simplistic diagnosis and proposed remedies.
The human enterprise is in overshoot; we exceed the long-term carrying capacity of Earth and are degrading the biophysical basis of our own existence. Despite decades of cumulative evidence, the world community has failed dismally in efforts to address this problem. I argue that cultural evolution and global change have outpaced bio-evolution; despite millennia of evolutionary history, the human brain and associated cognitive processes are functionally obsolete to deal with the human eco-crisis. H. sapiens tends to respond to problems in simplistic, reductionist, mechanical ways. Simplistic diagnoses lead to simplistic remedies. Politically acceptable technical ‘solutions’ to global warming assume fossil fuels are the problem, require major capital investment and are promoted on the basis of profit potential, thousands of well-paying jobs and bland assurances that climate change can readily be rectified. If successful, this would merely extend overshoot. Complexity demands a systemic approach; to address overshoot requires unprecedented international cooperation in the design of coordinated policies to ensure a socially-just economic contraction, mostly in high-income countries, and significant population reductions everywhere. The ultimate goal should be a human population in the vicinity of two billion thriving more equitably in ‘steady-state’ within the biophysical means of nature.
Below is a chart showing our collective global failure to date.
And then there is food. Kind of important, right? This from the David Wallace-Wells in NY Times (7/28/24):
..NASA calls it “the challenge of our generation” - how to save the food system from what he calls a “quadruple squeeze.” First, the problem of productivity and hunger. Second, the risk to ecosystems, under threat from fertilizer runoff deforestation and other pollution. Third, the challenge of nutritional deficiency, as those foods we are growing more of are generally getting worse for us over time. And finally climate, which is driving a “fundamental change across most breadbaskets on the planet,” he says. “It’s pretty complicated,” he admits. “And the scary part is that we have to solve them all.”
A final word
Before this climate catastrophe unwinds any further, first and foremost we have to prevent the head-up-their-asses quasi-fascist political opportunists like the Trump 'n Vance tag team and their wholly owned subsidiary, the GOP, from commandeering the Presidency and putting their idiotic retrogressive and Handmaiden's Tale 2025 vision in place. If that can be prevented, the entire US political establishment must be redirected away from business as usual.
The US Democratic party with its moribund 20th century warfare Keynesism and geopolitical pissing contests with other thermonuclear armed adversaries must be stopped. Their weak tea lip service to this world-historical crisis and their slow walking fossil fuel tolerant approach must be wound down. We need to get serious, otherwise our gooses are cooked - literally .
