“When you’re among young people, it’s hard for them to understand how long we’ve known all the basic facts about climate change,” said Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research who has worked on the topic for 35 years. “Even when I started as a PhD student in the 1980s, it was very clear that our emissions were causing global warming and all the consequences it would have.”
Yet even as Europe’s leaders acknowledge the scale and cause of the problem, they have weakened the very rules in place to stop it from getting worse. Two weeks ago, the European Commission proposed watering down the continent’s emissions trading system, a form of carbon market widely hailed as its most successful tool to cut pollution.
“What people are not getting is that we can’t turn this back – the CO2 to a large part remains in the air for thousands of years,” said Rahmstorf. “Some people think we can wait and, when it gets too bad, then we reduce emissions and things will get better again. People don’t realise that we can’t make it get better again. We can only prevent it from getting much worse.”
A study Rahmstorf co-authored in 2023 found ExxonMobil’s predictions of global heating over the following decades to have been mostly accurate, as skilful as independent academic and government models, and also very much at odds with its public statements on the matter.
I swing between the extremes of “maybe we’ll finally take action” and “we’re doomed”. At my most dejected, including today, I wonder if we’ll just see more climate change denialism because taking action means changing our lives and giving up some little bit of comfort and convenience at time when our own backyard isn’t on fire or flooding or buried under unusual amounts of snow or… well, I think we’re very good at sticking our heads in the same even as our asses ablaze. And it seems we can’t rely on the politicians to do sba.
To drastically reduce fossil fuel use, I don’t think the average person needs to do that much.
We need the uber-rich, who have the largest carbon footprints, to rein in their fossil fuel use. More than anything, we need governments and other decision-makers to say “no” to the FF lobbyists and commit to transitioning to clean energy through policy.
But the mega-rich don’t want to make their concessions. So they spend billions trying to convince average persons like you and me that the transition will be too burdensome FOR US, so we should be opposed to it. For example, the villainification of “carbon tax”.
Something I’ve been thinking about lately is how failure to pivot to renewables (and the associated propaganda I outlined above) predominantly affects ‘the West’ (ie, US, Canada, UK, Australia). In contrast, China still burns a lot of coal but they’re pivoting to renewables faster than anyone. This helps them build relations with Cuba and African countries such as through solar energy development partnerships. With the US-Israel-manufactured war with Iran showing how volatile fossil fuel prices are to interruption and manipulation - I think ‘the West’s’ relative failure to pivot to renewables will be a big means by which it cedes soft power to China already and especially going forward. The O&G industry doesn’t mind dependency on its products though, and they won’t sacrifice their profits today to position Canada for success tomorrow. Keep lobbying for that next (taxpayer-funded) pipeline! /s
It would take a global change. I fully believe some places can change, but not change in a sufficient way to make a meaningful difference.
I’m doing my part, no kids, no car, public Transit, I avoid meat, etc but even if everybody in Canada did the same as me, while it would significantly reduce our climate footprint, it wouldn’t realistically change anything.
That said, people should still do it. Better to die fighting I believe.
If you look at the last 50 years I think you know what will happen