OMNI, Climate Memo Mondays, September 6, 2021

 

39.  Climate Memo Mondays, September 6, 2021

The IPCC/Greta Test: Scope and Speed
 Kate Aronoff.  Overheated

         Several decades ago the IPCC scientists began to warn us of the extraordinary changes that were already happening in our climate and therefore weather, as the temperature rose worldwide.    At first populations and governments responded with knowledge and vigor.  Then deregulated, subsidized Fossil Fuels companies' denial and disinformation succeeded in putting that knowledge in doubt and few governments did anything meaningful.  

       Then on June 1, 2017 Pres. Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Accords.   Temperature was rising, weather was becoming more extreme, and catastrophe was palpable in many countries including the US, which was by then controlled by a Party of denial and dislike of government regulation of business. 

      Three years ago Greta Thunberg went on strike for climate science.  Her first public speech was on Sept. 8, 2018.   Still the temperature rose.  Predictions of calamity
 and chaos increased.  Still our government, our power, were captured by ignorance and greed.

       So now all of us must pass the IPCC/Greta Test of knowledge and action.  Now we must learn the urgency of the IPCC reports.   Now we must engage in politics with the Gretas to meet the emergency.  Now OMNI’s Book Forum, the only climate study group in Arkansas, is poised to teach the rapidity and totality with which we must respond. 

     Many of the books we have discussed have made this case for urgency.  All of the books on the Green New Deal do.  Kate Aronoff's Overheated, is outstanding.  Her subtitle
promises How We Fight Back.  Her Chapter 12, "Emergency Internationalism," grasps the scope.  

     The following paragraph seems summative regarding scale:
"Among the best things the US can do to speed along decarbonization is to bring down its own  emissions as quickly as possible.  For that, returning to the Obama-era energy status quo simply isn't an option.  Thorough decarbonization means a truly economy-wide transformation and a government that factors a changing climate into every decision it makes. . . .making that politically palatable means pairing it with a credible promise to improve the lives of ordinary people: in other words,  a Green New Deal.    Enacting such a plan within the US at the speed and scale science demands can be an electoral boon to Democrats looking to maintain majorities in the White House and Congress--and recast climate as an issue of public investment rather than collective sacrifice.  It's also hard to imagine US residents supporting green spending international if they haven't seen it benefit them at home.  Accomplishing that entails a full-scale mobilization of the US government, thoroughly integrating decarbonization into every branch."   She follows with two pages of examples from WWII mobilization and additional examples today.

Refs.
Kate Aronoff.  Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet and How We Fight Back.  2021.
Greta Thunberg.  No One Is Too Small to Make A Difference.  2019. 
(Also see Cynthia Kaufman, The Sea Is Rising and So Are We, Chapter 4,"The Large-Scale Solutions")

--Dick