Amid all the bad climate news flowing out of the Trump administration, you might have missed a quiet new consensus congealing in think tanks and big business. The targets set out by the Paris climate agreement, they argue—to limit global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit)—are a lost cause. It’s time to prepare for a world warmed by at least three degrees Celsius.
Owing to “recent setbacks to global decarbonization efforts,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a research report last month, they “now expect a 3°C world.” The “baseline” scenario that JP Morgan Chase uses to assess its own transition risk—essentially, the economic impact that decarbonization could have on its high-carbon investments—similarly “assumes that no additional emissions reduction policies are implemented by governments” and that the world could reach “3°C or more of warming” by 2100. The Climate Realism Initiative launched on Monday by the Council on Foreign Relations similarly presumes that the world is likely on track to warm on average by three degrees or more this century. The essay announcing the initiative calls the prospect of reaching net-zero global emissions by 2050 “utterly implausible.”
This already happened in conservative circles back circa 2016ish. Lots of Republicans got tired of being called morons for denying climate change, and pivoted to, “well it’s too late to do anything anyways”. This is just businesses adopting the same rhetoric, for the same reason; if it’s too late, there’s “no point” trying anything, so we should all just keep on polluting and let someone else fix it later.
Good point, and I agree that the “it’s too late anyway” rhetoric was probably just an easy excuse, though it looks a lot like it’s actually too late now to stop or even reverse global warming.
This should of course not be an excuse to forgo damage control, but I think the situation has changed. Whether that encourages you to fight harder and try to save what’s left, or just give up and have fun while it lasts is entirely up to you…
I think it’s actually quite a good thing to acknowledge that climate change isn’t going to be prevented, only mitigated in the far future if we decarbonized today and that we’ll have to live through hell regardless, unless some magical solution is found. This kind of rhetoric could actually be really useful and directed towards the minimization of damage like creation of essential goods for use rather than profit, focus on relief methods, start cutting back on emissions to shorten the amount of years future generations will have to suffer through - that kind of stuff.
But of course, the liberals and conservatives in power (likes the ones mentioned in the article) instead pivot towards nationalist brainrot-fuelled defeatism just so companies can continue making profit unimpeded and “bring wealth to the nation”. This is where I would say that it’s the perfect opportunity for people to realize who the true enemies are, that relying on “good” rich and powerful people to fix problems isn’t a solution and more of a facade, and to actually rise up and bring up actual internationalism/international change against an upcoming catastrophe, but seeing the resistances worldwide and how mild they are, there’s no shot this is going to happen unless we all somehow collectively escape the media machine and narratives we grew up with and actually examine the world around us for what it is, rather than thinking in “natural” abstractions we were/are being fed.
Sorry for the rant, but as someone who’s still pretty young, seeing the upcoming catastrophe and it not being taken with the seriousness it really deserves by the people who currently are in a position to change things is sickening.
If I can give you any small kernel of hope, there are a lot of people in the world, including non profits, government workers, community champions, and people that talk to their friend networks about living for and facilitating a more sustainable and respectful life on this planet - that care about people and the environment, and are fighting every day of their lives, dedicated to mitigation and adaptation regarding climate change. They may not have very much power, but they are surely standing up right now against this brain drain, and I feel confident that the tide will eventually turn. Will it be in the time we need it to? Absolutely not, but all is not lost.
Let your great grandchildren roast in the wake of your ignorance & spite
That may be true of the voters but not of the multi-millionaires. They will comfortably deal with 3⁰. And many middle class people might be desperately, delusionally, thinking they need to become multi-millionaires soon so that they too can shield themselves from 3⁰.
The other day a Swiss newspaper published a study that a temperature increase of 4°C would probably cost us (on average) about 40% of our wealth globally.
Mind you, that was a single study that had to make a lot of assumptions about the coming decades. But working with these ballpark figures and assuming the 40% hit will be distributed evenly, most middle-class people will probably manage somehow, though they definitely won’t be middle-class anymore by today’s standards. The rich will likely be inconvenienced (more indoor golf halls and huge water bill for the pool) but generally fine.
As for those just getting by somehow…And the wealth gap just keeps increasing. Even the centre-left are not reversing it.
But there is lobbying for remedy https://patrioticmillionaires.uk/
