Glasgow COP26
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Here is a summary of the IPCC’s 5 possible “pathways” to 2100:
“1. SSP1 – 1.9 Sustainability
Warming levels reach 1.50C above 1850-1900 levels in 2100 after a slight overshoot. Net zero CO2 emissions are achieved by 2050.2. SSP1- 2.6 Middle of the Road
Warming stays below 2C by 2100
Net zero CO2 emissions achieved in second half of century.3. SSP2 – 4.5 Regional Rivalry
Emission reductions approximately in line with upper end of the combined Paris Agreement pledges. Estimated warming of 2.7oC by 2100.4. SSP3- 7.0 Inequality
No additional climate policy is enacted
Particularly high non-CO2 emissions released including aerosols.5. SSP5 – 8.5 Fossil-fulled development
No additional climate policy is enacted
Economy is still fossil-fulled.”(Source)
The worst case scenario (5) is not going to happen. In fact isn’t happening. At the time of the report scenario 3 seemed the most likely. With the additional pledges at Glasgow it seems that the move is towards scenario 2 rather than scenario 4 (the second worst). My guess is that net zero carbon will be achieved before the end of the century but not in time not to overshoot 2 degrees by 2100. That will cause problems, big problems, but not the collapse of civilisation or of capitalism
So, not enough to be too alarmed and catch “eco-anxiety”.
I quite liked this passage aimed at the extinction-mongers in a trot leaflet handed out at the 6 November climate marches in Oxford and Manchester:
“The world isn’t ending.
We are facing an ongoing struggle, not a single apocalypse. There may be tipping points and disasters in climate breakdown, but there is no end point on the horizon after which nobody will be left to suffer, or to fight.”Pity that the fight they envisage is not for socialism but only against the effects of capitalism. But, then, they are only trots after all. In this case RS21, a breakaway from the SWP.
Who knows for sure, is the real question
“…If climate change was to reach 3°C, most of Bangladesh and Florida would drown, while major coastal cities – Shanghai, Lagos, Mumbai – would be swamped, likely creating large flows of climate refugees. Most regions in the world would see a significant drop in food production and increasing numbers of extreme weather events, whether heat waves, floods or storms. This likely scenario for a 3°C rise does not take into account the considerable risk that self-reinforcing feedback loops set in when a certain threshold is reached, leading to an ever-increasing rise in temperature. Potential thresholds include the melting of the arctic permafrost releasing methane into the atmosphere, forest dieback releasing the carbon currently stored in the Amazon and boreal forests, or the melting of polar ice caps that would no longer reflect away light and heat from the sun…”
https://issuu.com/globalchallengesfoundation/docs/gcf-annual-report-2018
The authors of the Nature study acknowledge that the science of tipping points is complex such that there is great uncertainty as to how they might unfold, but nevertheless, argue that the possibility of cascading tipping points represents “an existential threat to civilisation”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0
“To err on the side of danger is not a responsible option.”
“Our analysis suggests that the Earth System may be approaching a planetary threshold that could lock in a continuing rapid pathway toward much hotter conditions—Hothouse Earth. This pathway would be propelled by strong, intrinsic, biogeophysical feedbacks difficult to influence by human actions, a pathway that could not be reversed, steered, or substantially slowed.
Where such a threshold might be is uncertain, but it could be only decades ahead at a temperature rise of ∼2.0 °C above preindustrial, and thus, it could be within the range of the Paris Accord temperature targets.
The impacts of a Hothouse Earth pathway on human societies would likely be massive, sometimes abrupt, and undoubtedly disruptive…”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6099852/“…Because the consequences are so severe — perhaps
the end of human global civilisation as we know it —
“even for an honest, truth-seeking, and well-intentioned investigator it is difficult to think and act
rationally in regard to… existential risks”…Even for 2°C of warming, more than a billion people
may need to be relocated and In high-end scenarios,
the scale of destruction is beyond our capacity to
model, with a high likelihood of human civilisation
coming to an end…”https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_a1406e0143ac4c469196d3003bc1e687.pdf
Such radical revolutionary actions – letting down car tyres
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-59254298
15 of the world’s largest and most reputable academic publishers – including Elsevier and Cambridge University Press – have, for the first time, made available FOR FREE their most important articles on climate heating.
https://www.growkudos.com/showcase/collections/climate-change
An example is I just read
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2021.708913/full‘…We argue that critical social science should be able to name the global economy as “capitalism”; and instead of speaking about “transforming the global economy” as a necessary precondition for limiting climate change, instead speak about transforming, or even transcending, capitalism. We propose three principles are helpful for critical social science researchers willing to name and analyse the structural features of capitalism and their relation to greenhouse gas removal technology, policy, and governance. These principles are: (1) Greenhouse Gas Removal technologies are likely to emerge within capitalism, which is crisis prone, growth dependent, market expanding, We use a broad Marxist corpus to justify this principle. (2) There are different varieties of capitalism and this will affect the feasibility of different GGR policies and supports in different nations. We draw on varieties of capitalism and comparative political economy literature to justify this principle. (3) Capitalism is more than an economic system, it is ideologically and culturally maintained…Approaching the global economy as “Capitalism” is a bold move. It detaches the discussion from a generalized term (“the global economy”) and allows us to analyse a specific mode of production, as well as the cultural, social, and ecological relations that come along with it.’
It is all in the words.
The 2nd draft COP26 apparently softens the pledge on ending fossil fuels.
The latest draft proposal from the meeting’s chair released Friday calls on countries to accelerate “the phaseout of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels.”
A previous version on Wednesday had called on countries to “accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuel.”
Apart from the title — “Permission to Say ‘capitalism’” — that article is rather pretentious. It reads like one of those that academics have to write to fill their quota of so many ‘research’ papers a year. I doubt if it made any useful contribution to research to develop Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) technologies.
I simply thought that it indicates that scientists self-censor their research by choosing their terminology to exclude political ideological connotations
Hundreds of delegates have walked out of COP26 to join a protest outside the summit to express frustration at a lack of results from the UN conference on its final day.
Members of environmental groups and trade unions were among those who sang “power to the people” as they left the arena to join hundreds of protesters in the street outside the blue zone.
trade officials have been accused of “taking a chainsaw” to a draft EU law to protect the world’s forests, as a leaked document revealed an attempt to water down the plans.
During a “People’s Plenary” on the last day of COP26 Ta’Kaiya Blaney, 19, a member of Canada’s Tla’Amin First Nation, decried the summit as a “performance”.
👏👏 "COP26 is a performance. It's an illusion constructed to salvage capitalist economy rooted in resource extraction & colonialism.
I didn't come here to fix the agenda, I came here to disrupt it. I'm not going to my coloniser for solutions"- @salishmemer at People's Plenary pic.twitter.com/Tbre2CKnvA
— Climate Justice Coalition (@CJ_Coalition) November 12, 2021
COP27 in 2022 will be in the wealthy tourist resort of Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt.
COP28 in 2023 will be in the United Arab Emirates
KEEP 1.5 ALIVE protest
Huge crowd of protestors from the movements for #ClimateJustice including the large numbers who walked out after the #PeoplesPlenary outside the gates of #COP26 chanting "Keep 1.5 Alive!"#ClimateJustice #JustTransition
Credit: @agisilaos_k Agisilaos Koulouris | #COPCollab26 pic.twitter.com/sHKpJK3pND— Climate Justice Coalition (@CJ_Coalition) November 12, 2021
Failures on Covid-19 vaccine equity and net-zero by 2050 pledges, he said, “are just the latest examples of deliberately sacrificing the poor for profit by those whose wealth was, and continues to be, looted from the Global South.”
Honestly so fed up with the lies and spin from rich countries that I decided to rip up my speech about the #COP26 cover decision at today’s high level segment & bring the message from @COP26_Coalition into the halls instead pic.twitter.com/LiqA9QmdKJ
— asad rehman (@chilledasad100) November 10, 2021
Posting on Facebook page from Glasgow activity. https://www.facebook.com/groups/779523775463252/permalink/4639960219419569/
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