Tag: New Yorker

Copping out on COP

Climate Alliance photo via Flickr CC

Net zero? When it comes to net zero carbonization that sounds like a game that countries and companies play, much like getting to zero fuel emissions for some auto fleets, but not for others. It’s all about the math and playing with the numbers in a time-honored way to game the system and look good.

That really won’t cut it when it comes to the climate crisis because the corporations with the most to lose – and who are the most responsible for the crisis in the first place – don’t really want to hurt themselves too much while talking the net zero game.

From Triplepundit: “At COP27, companies, NGOs and governments are discussing what it takes to create a just transition, as in a climate action plan that is socially equitable.”

Hmm, that sounds like gobbledygook, or as Greta Thunberg might say (quoted in the Nov. 28 New Yorker article written by Elizabeth Kolbert: “blah blah blah…”

Can technological advances get us to net zero emissions? Maybe, but again, blah blah blah!

Here is part of Thunberg’s quote from the Youth4Climate conference in September:

“This is all we hear from our so-called leaders: words—words that sound great, but so far have led to no action. Of course, we need constructive dialogue, but they’ve now had thirty years of blah, blah, blah, and where has that led us?”

Governments and corporations need to develop and deploy climate technologies critical for the world’s net-zero agenda.

Now.

Thanks for Bill McKibben: A voice shouting in the wilderness of a shrinking planet

air air pollution climate change dawn
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

“We are on a path to self-destruction, and yet there is nothing inevitable about our fate. Solar panels and wind turbines are now among the least expensive ways to produce energy. Storage batteries are cheaper and more efficient than ever. We could move quickly if we chose to, but we’d need to opt for solidarity and coördination on a global scale. The chances of that look slim. In Russia, the second-largest petrostate after the U.S., Vladimir Putin believes that “climate change could be tied to some global cycles on Earth or even of planetary significance.” Saudi Arabia, the third-largest petrostate, tried to water down the recent I.P.C.C. report. Jair Bolsonaro, the newly elected President of Brazil, has vowed to institute policies that would dramatically accelerate the deforestation of the Amazon, the world’s largest rain forest. Meanwhile, Exxon recently announced a plan to spend a million dollars—about a hundredth of what the company spends each month in search of new oil and gas—to back the fight for a carbon tax of forty dollars a ton. At a press conference, some of the I.P.C.C.’s authors laughed out loud at the idea that such a tax would, this late in the game, have sufficient impact.”

The above is a short excerpt from Bill McKibben’s, remarkable article in the New Yorker, “How Extreme Weather is Shrinking the Planet.” He is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org and the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in environmental studies at Middlebury College. His new book Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? will be out in the spring. His article is necessary reading.

This year as we gather to give thanks, it rings a bit hollow for me because I wonder what people will be thankful for 20 or 30 years from now as we fail to take proper care of the planet and take action to deal with climate change. (Maybe thanks, Exxon! as wildfires rage, temperatures rise, species disappear and sea levels make large swaths of coastlines uninhabitable and islands disappear.)

It may be too late for us but it’s not too late to try.