The Great Disruption Begins
I think there are now clear signs of climate system destabilisation, as I argued was likely in my last blog post, linked below. This will trigger widespread economic, social and political disruptions. For some, the question remains whether this is a serious acceleration or is it in line with climate model’s assumptions during an El Nino period?
A recent article by Gavin Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said our current models fail to explain the past 9 months of temperature records. He argued that if the temperature anomaly does not begin to stabilise by August, (in line with previous El Ninos), we’ll enter completely uncharted territory. “It could imply that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates”.
How should we respond? Do more research and try to understand what is happening? That is the call of climate scientists, and it is of course needed. But our default position is to seek to understand, then we use uncertainty as an excuse for inaction. True, it may not be as bad as it now seems. Or it may be far worse.
We must stop defaulting to ‘artificial hope’ as Jonathon Porritt recently argued (see my last post here on LI). We should instead default to a radical mobilisation, given the possible outcomes include global economic and social collapse. It is, after all, how we prepare for other catastrophic risk scenarios. We don’t know we will be invaded but spend trillions on defence. We don’t know we will get sick or that our house will burn down, but we pay for insurance. We plan and prepare for realistic scenarios so if they occur, we can manage them.
Even seeing today’s climate reality and responding with “we need to do much more” is woefully inadequate. We need a radical systemic transformation of the global economy and we need to start today.
If we do not undergo a WWII like mobilisation, throughout every sector of our economy, we risk a Hollywood style collapse of society.
That is not doomist or extreme. It is a rational reaction to the evidence that we may be facing the greatest challenge our species has ever encountered. As such we must jettison ‘artificial hope’ and prepare for the possibility that it’s actually worse than we fear.
We have all the technology we need. We have the economic capacity. We just need to decide.
#Climatemobilisation #Climateaction
Published by Paul Gilding |