Climate records and effective mitigation

GIBSONS, B.C.—It’s been 13 straight months of off-the-charts global temperature records; 12 consecutive months with temperatures exceeding the 1.5C threshold. No winter, record wildfires, heatwaves on land and in the water all over the planet, and all varieties of extreme weather close to home. But we’re still not out of denial, and we're still not acting appropriately on climate. It’s an emergency, and we’re still thinking about it like it was a problem low down on our list of priorities. There has been reasonable coverage of the continuing climate records, and speculation about possible reasons for the astonishing rise in temperature. Inayat Singh for the CBC News recently wrote an insightful article also explaining how global temperatures have risen by more than 1.5C for this hottest year ever, but why this doesn’t mean we’ve crossed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's guardrail for all scientific purposes (and we won’t officially know for decades). His article also had a couple of pertinent and really chilling quotes. Singh quotes Zeke Hausfather who, after explaining that this rise in temperature was in line with what the climate models had been predicting comments, said: "It is a pretty dire sign that the world will soon exceed the 1.5 C target, and that we have effectively waited too late to reduce emissions to avoid it.” And later Singh quotes Stanford climate scientist Rob Jackson: "It's surprising and discouraging to be so close to crossing the 1.5C threshold," he said. "We've sprinted right to the edge of that threshold quickly and quite cavalierly." Quite. The 1.5C guardrail breached, just like we foolishly passed Hansen’s 1C/350ppm red line without changing our mitigation course from pretend to effective. The existential possibility of setting off feedbacks and crossing over tipping points is suddenly here (along with way worse, more dangerous, and more costly weather, much more serious harm to more vulnerable parts of the planet, etc., etc.). And climate change looks to be accelerating, so we must accelerate mitigation, too. Having dithered until climate has become an urgent, edge-of-the-cliff problem, what are we now going to do about it? Not much. The new Pembina report on mitigation in Canada—reported upon by authors Sarah McBride and Thomas Guntun in a Hill Times op-ed last week—is hopeful in that both federally and with most provincial governments we have begun to reduce emissions to a degree that might meet our not nearly sufficient 2030 carbon targets. There is a very big if—everything has to go right: the politics, the investment, and the wider economy, the presently recalcitrant provinces. Canada has never met a climate target, and an informed, reasonable person might not be so hopeful. And this country's emission targets don't include the huge uncounted elephant in the room: our fossil fuel production. Waking up to how serious a danger climate has become would mean a full, open conversation about responsible risk management, and what responsible mitigation must mean: climate is an existentially threatening emergency that needs mitigation that isn’t happening and can’t happen in political and economic business as usual. This conversation presently isn’t possible—not allowed—and there’s an election brewing so let’s focus on the real priorities, especially growing the economy and cutting costs so we can keep enjoying our very fortunate lifestyles. And, hey, we can’t fall behind on AI. Climate change is accelerating, and the effects are getting worse. We may have already crossed a threshold to Hothouse Earth. But it’s still the economy stupid in the real world. Bill Henderson is a longtime climate activist. He can be reached at bhenderson@dccnet.com The Hill Times

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Climate records and effective mitigation

Climate change is accelerating and the effects are getting worse. We may have already crossed a threshold to Hothouse Earth. But in the real world, it’s still the economy, stupid.

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