Threat of climate change is clear and increasing and delayed action is incurring a greater cost
Just as the climate conference, whose goal is to reduce and eventually eliminate the burning of coal, oil and gas, is about to meet in Glasgow from 1–2 November as part of the first part of the COP 26 High-level Segment, what we have heard so far is that by 2050 or 2060 we will become carbon neutral but 2060 is far away and if global northern countries emit at the rate they are emitting the world won’t survive, so what are we going to do in the next five years that’s what the hundred or so world leaders must discuss but as we know these are the same people talking the talk but not walking the walk.
For starters, In 2006, 11 national academies of science, including the oldest in the world, Italy’s Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, issued an unusual joint statement noting that the “threat of climate change is clear and increasing,” and that “delayed action will… incur a greater cost.” Today, scientists assure us that the evidence of the reality of human-made climate change is “unequivocal,” and the World Bank tells us that its impact and costs are already being felt.
But, why would Global northern countries that depend on oil exports for much of their national income champion a worldwide abandonment of the fossil fuel sales upon which their regimes’ survival depends? Again, when will Global northern countries whose per capita emissions are four or five or 12 times the world average, reduce their carbon emissions? If they do, what impact on the global economy will a 50% reduction in fossil fuel production and consumption have, in view of the economic need for reliable energy sources?
We know that the impact that global northern countries have on our world is pretty clear: their carbon-using activities leading to glaciers melting, storms getting worse and unpredictable, harvests and agricultural cycles being altered. But for their 1% at the top, they are worried on how to rationalize an economic system designed to satisfy their hunger for profit, and the continuation of their privilege, when it is so obviously causing that collapse.
For instance, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are pouring money — while offsetting it against tax — into the escapism of space colonies, premised on the same technological exploitation and monetization of nature that have been rapidly making our own planet uninhabitable. Others are looking in more practical, if equally futile, directions. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, has estimated that half of his fellow billionaires in Silicon Valley have bought what he calls “apocalypse insurance”, investing in safe-haven islands and luxury underground bunkers. Fancifully, they imagine that this will be their life-belt when the planet’s climate system breaks down beyond repair.
The rest of us, if you are still devoted to addressing climate change, they are some practical suggestions they offer: Don’t fly; don’t drive; don’t have kids; Don’t eat and don’t breathe. The latter they say is especially important. CO2 comes out with every breath. Having kids is the single worst thing you can do. Do you still think on a personal level there is so much you can do?
In truth, it is pretty clear — if we don’t want to lose the planet, we need to fix it within this decade, and to do that leaders from the global north need to change the global socioeconomic system. See, they cannot solve the problem with the same tools and same mindset that created the problem. They need to focus differently, rethink their economic system and prioritize the people in the global south seeing their land degraded and losing livelihoods to extreme drought and flooding.
