Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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Climate activism in the US become more vocal
“Gradualism is fundamentally incompatible with protecting civilization and the natural world. It’s pathetic that the Democrats are continuing to pursue this approach,” Margaret Klein Salamon, founder and director of The Climate Mobilization
But again there is no system change demand
The world has so many existing fossil fuel projects that it cannot afford to build any more polluting infrastructure without busting international climate change goals. The International Energy Agency said almost all of the world’s carbon budget up to 2040 – the amount that can be emitted without causing dangerous warming – would be eaten up by today’s power stations, vehicles and industrial facilities.
Fatih Birol, the executive director of the Paris-based group, told the Guardian: “We have no room to build anything that emits CO2 emissions.” The economist said to limit temperature rises to 2C, let alone the 1.5C as scientists recommend, either all new energy projects would have to be low carbon, which was unlikely, or existing infrastructure would need to be cleaned up.
The IEA expects CO2 emissions to rise from 32.53 gigatonnes in 2017 to 36 gigatonnes by 2040.
Spain has launched an ambitious plan to switch its electricity system entirely to renewable sources by 2050 and completely decarbonise its economy soon after.
By mid-century greenhouse gas emissions would be slashed by 90% from 1990 levels under Spain’s draft climate change and energy transition law.
To do this, the country’s social democratic government is committing to installing at least 3,000MW of wind and solar power capacity every year in the next 10 years ahead.
New licences for fossil fuel drills, hydrocarbon exploitation and fracking wells, will be banned, and a fifth of the state budget will be reserved for measures that can mitigate climate change.
But experts say achieving a zero-emissions economy by 2025 isn’t in any scenario. It would need a revolution in transport, home insulation, energy efficiency, agriculture and more.
Who are these so-called “experts” who are entertaining the impossible aim of “a zero-emissions economy”?
That would mean that no electricity at all would be generated by burning any fossil fuel or any wood, and that no cars, trains, ships or planes would be powered by burning any. And that’s only zero emissions of CO2, but there are also the other greenhouse gases as methane, water vapour, ozone and nitrous oxide. Common sense suggests that it would be impossible to produce the wealth needed to feed, clothe, house, etc the world’s population without emitting ANY green house gas.
It is not necessary to go that far to deal with the problem anyway (even in socialism), only to cut emissions fairly substantially. In fact, is it even desirable? A “zero-emissions economy” that is.
Perhaps it is the terminology that adds to the confusion
Carbon Neutral
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_neutrality
“Regarding terminology in UK and Ireland, in December 2011 the Advertising Standards Authority … ruled that no manufactured product can be marketed as “zero carbon”, because carbon was inevitably emitted during its manufacture. This decision was made in relation to a solar panel system whose embodied carbon was repaid during 1.2 years of use and it appears to mean that no buildings or manufactured products can legitimately be described as zero carbon in its jurisdiction.”<sup id=”cite_ref-12″ class=”reference”></sup>
And then there is Carbon Footprint
I think the technology is already available now to produce enough electrical energy from not burning fossil fuels.
It would probably take about 40 years to put in place which would admittedly involve consuming more fossil fuels to do it.
As to cars and stuff that would require the material scientists to catch up on better and better batteries and there appears to be a new generation of vanadium batteries coming on stream.
For planes etc
It is possible to produce organic carbon based fuel by stripping out CO2 from the atmosphere and using solar derived electricity.
And then it would just a case of steady state recycling.
That has a kind of 4 billion year working principle to go on.
It is that captured CO2 that we are using now.
I have been told that ships used to operate on wind power for sometime?
One of the biggest runaway greenhouse gas effects is feared to be release methane form warming northern Arctic tundra regions.
Once that gets started properly it will be game-over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions
I think the whole situation is a case of the so called ‘perfect storm’.
There used to several hoped for feedback processes that might slow the negative effects down.
Like the sea as a heat and CO2 sink etc.
As well as increased levels high white cloud formation reflecting light back.
But it looks like that is not going to happen.
There are some proposed Climate engineering or climate intervention methods eg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering
Clearly controversial ?
There was a team a Bristol University who were doing basic feasibility studies by flying balloons up and pumping aerosols out.
Although could work most of that out by using basic physics.
They were attacked for it even though they themselves thought climate engineering was a desperate and reprehensible approach.
The iron fertilisation was another one that would be cheap and easy.
Huge expanses of the ocean are deserts for photosynthetic phyto plankton because the surface water lacks just small quantities of stuff like iron.
There are also plenty nutrients deeper down but there is no circulation as the warmer water is at the top and is lighter.
The richer parts of the various world oceans are where you get upward flows of sea water which brings the good stuff to the surface for various reasons.
You could be right, Alan, since it’s such a crackpot concept the term “zero carbon economy” is probably bad editing or subediting by the BBC reporter or maybe he simply quoted it from the Extinction Rebellion people being reported on.
Not all greenhouse gas emissions are harmful of course. Just the opposite:
Without greenhouse gases, the average temperature of Earth’s surface would be about −18 °C, rather than the present average of 15 °C.
So, let’s not overdo it or we’ll end up with the “nuclear winter” people used to be scared of in the 1980s.
This:
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One of the biggest runaway greenhouse gas effects is feared to be release methane form warming northern Arctic tundra regions.
Once that gets started properly it will be game-over.”
Is why I started this thread. Time is running out and fast…..
Another failure reported.
On current commitments the world is on course for a 3.2C rise in average global temperatures, more than double the lower Paris threshold of 1.5C,
Among the G20 nations 15 reported a rise in emissions last year.
82% of energy in these countries still being provided by coal, oil and gas, a factor which has relied on a doubling of subsidies over the past 10 years to compete with increasingly cheap wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.
The G20 nations increased subsidies for fossil fuels from $75bn (£58bn) to $147bn (£114bn) between 2007 and 2016, although they pledged to phase them out more than 10 years ago.
The worst offenders – Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – would take the world beyond 4C.
“There is a huge fight by the fossil fuel industry against cheap renewables. The old economy is well organised and they have put huge lobbying pressure on governments to spend tax money to subsidise the old world,” Jan Buerck, one of the authors of the report, explained. These political pressures are likely to intensify as governments are called upon to extend emissions cuts to the transport and agriculture sectors.
The report said G20 emissions needed to start declining in the next two years and halve by 2030 if the world were to avoid more than 1.5C of warming, though not one country in the group had set a credible target to do this.
Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, said: “Global emissions need to peak in 2020.”
So what are the chances of that, if any of us were betting men?
Another extinction claim.
No doubt the news that heatwaves effect male insects has come across your radar and been expecting a comment by myself. The study by researchers at the University of East Anglia, published today in Nature Communications, shows “clear evidence” that heat-wave stress reduces “sperm number and viability” in insects.
However more alarming is this report
An environmental economist from the University of California in Los Angeles released a study showing that “temperature shocks” linked to climate change were reducing birth rates, despite increased sexual activity in summer months. Derived from 80 years of birth and weather data out of the United States, the study confirmed a higher number of babies being born in August and September (nine months after the depths of winter), while fewer babies were conceived in summer due to higher temperatures.
The researchers warned that the higher frequency and severity of heat waves — which is expected as climate change carries on — will hasten this decline in fertility.
“Climate change projections show dramatic increases in hot weather,” Barreca told DW. “This increase in hot weather will harm our reproductive health in the future.”
A 2017 review of studies into rapidly declining sperm counts in men went as far as to warn of human extinction if the trend of a recorded 50 to 60 percent drop in sperm count in males from North America, Europe and Australia from 1973 to 2011 continues.
But take hope for conclusive evidence linking declining fertility to any specific environmental problem is lacking.
https://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-reduces-male-fertility-could-help-drive-extinction/a-46276058
Sussex wrote:
I love coming in here! I think to myself I’ve had a bad day, then I come here and read Alan’s posts on climate change, dog food and the looming crash and I feel better!
In view of the unremitting diet of pessimism that Alan serves every day, I propose that the title of this thread be changed to the Daily Gloom. But I suppose that we should be grateful that it doesn’t need to be changed to the Daily Panic or the Daily Doom.
Don’t expect good news from me. Capitalism doesn’t produce such news. But there are those who understand that there is an urgency but are still blind to the causes and the cures. If we don’t raise our voice, nobody will hear, if we don’t seek out an audience, nobody will listen. We are failing to communicate our message.
“…At a press conference held by climate activists Extinction Rebellion last week, two of us journalists pressed the organisers on whether their aims were realistic. They have called, for example, for UK carbon emissions to be reduced to net zero by 2025. Wouldn’t it be better, we asked, to pursue some intermediate aims?
A young woman called Lizia Woolf stepped forward. She hadn’t spoken before, but the passion, grief and fury of her response was utterly compelling. “What is it that you are asking me as a 20-year-old to face and to accept about my future and my life? … This is an emergency. We are facing extinction. When you ask questions like that, what is it you want me to feel?” We had no answer…[But we do, make socialism an immediacy, not a distant aspiration]
…Economic elites, which benefit from social dysfunction, block the necessary solutions. The oligarchic control of wealth, politics, media and public discourse explains the comprehensive institutional failure now pushing us towards disaster…..Because we cannot save ourselves without contesting oligarchic control, the fight for democracy and justice and the fight against environmental breakdown are one and the same. Do not allow those who have caused this crisis to define the limits of political action. Do not allow those whose magical thinking got us into this mess to tell us what can and cannot be done….”
And what has been our recent contribution to the discussion – a debate on Summer School’s menu …veggie or meat and two veg. Or did it focus on breakfast, sausages and rashers of bacon.
Talk about fiddling while Rome burns.
“Don’t expect good news from me. Capitalism doesn’t produce such news.”
Keep it up please Alan – you’re doing a great job.
I’m with Janet. My comment above was in humour. And Alan is correct hence the title and thrust of this thread – we dintd have time as a Party, as individuals or even as species to keep debating, appealing or dithering. The planet doesn’t give two fucks for life, let alone humans.
We have to start getting involved in this issue. Maybe a special edition of the Standard!?
Despite a significant core of “sleeping” membership, we do have the good fortune to possess active members. We possess many resources and funds that others do not have access to that can compensate for those “missing” members.
Just how numerous is Extinction Rebellion? What sort of organisational strength do they possess behind them? I would say very little.
Yet in one action they received more publicity and exposure for themselves and their statement than we have ever achieved on climate change
As they say, action speaks louder than words. Maybe we should be considering doing something so that our presence and our position is noted. Suggestions welcome. I’m not proposing Fathers 4 Justice stunts
We will attend Saturday’s rally on racism and have our stall. All very good, but we will be just one amongst scores. Will our banner be there? Have we purchased a specifically themed banner to muster under? WORLD SOCIALIST MOVEMENT – ONE WORLD, ONE PEOPLE – WORLD SOCIALISM. Such a banner for 50 quid or even a 100 would have been a wise move something that presently is small change to ourselves. We could have opened HO up and paid for travel and eating expenses for out -of -towners to come to boost our numbers. A free weekend in London as an enticement for the sacrifice of a few hours.
We will have a presence at this rally but will be seen? I have my doubts.
But maybe i’m wrong but no doubt some comrades will be critical of me since i won’t be there. As if i haven’t attended protests before, sometimes being the only SPGBer at them, a lonely wee soul clutching a handful of soggy Standards in the pouring rain. So don’t dare lecture me…I’ve walked the talk.
What is the text of the leaflet we are handing out on Saturday so the blogs (and our other social media) can reproduce it
A few photos of us at the event will be appreciated too for posting.
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