Climate Memo Mondays, #80,

 

80. Climate Memo Mondays, #80, June 20, 2022

IPCC Latest Report
Earth Overshoot Tools
Oligarchy

 

LATEST IPCC CALL TO ACTION

Recently published in Monthly Review…

June 2022 (Volume 74, Number 2)

The Editors, Monthly Review (June 3, 2022)

Time is running out for the world to carry out the social transformations necessary to avert irreversible climate catastrophe, keeping the increase in global average temperatures below 1.5°C (or below 2°C). The most optimistic scenario currently provided by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describes a pathway in which the increase in temperature will not rise to 1.5°C until 2040, peaking at 1.6°C, and then falling back to 1.4°C by the end of this century. But to achieve this will require revolutionary scale transformational change in global social relations affecting the human relation to the climate and the planetary environment as a whole. | more…

Earth Overshoot tools: Climate Denial, Inflatable Crowded Planet, 8 Billion
    Angels Film, MVP Sustainability Map 

EAR EARTH OVERSHOOT Ever meet someone who still believes that the weather changes around us are all natural? Someone who “poo poos” the idea that humans are changing the same environment on which they depend?  Earth Overshoot volunteer Amy Tschudin suggests climate denial is not limited to extremists and actually has a seat closer to home than you'd think.      READ HERE

EO's giant inflatable "Crowded Planet" attracted crowds, young and old, including these boy scouts from Virginia, at its debut near the Washington Mall on Earth Day weekend.

With Earth Day in our rearview mirror, we are turning our attention to a series of exciting events in our future:  PBS Distribution of our documentary, 8 BILLION ANGELS; Educator workshops and screenings at the National Science Teachers Association National Conference; A public awareness and engagement campaign featuring EO's new "Crowded Planet" inflatable  We can't do anything without your support.  Every penny of your donation goes directly to Earth Overshoot programs. Thank you!

The MVP Sustainability Map brings data from authoritative sources including the UN, World Bank, IUCN Red List, and Global Footprint Network, together with editorial and evaluation by Earth Overshoot staff, and a selection of more than 570 photographs to illustrate aspects of each country. Thank you John!

 

A Planet Ruled by Oligarchs, Plutocrats: Why the Economic System That Enabled Them to Create the Calamity Will Not Change Itself
     “If the tendency of capitalism to respond to a crisis with more capitalism gives the system its disastrous momentum, it also provides the capitalists themselves with insulation from the consequences of their actions.  The intensified commodification resulting from each fresh calamity creates opportunities for those with disposable wealth to ensure that they and their loved ones remain more or less unaffected.  The planet might be growing unbearably hot, but if you have the money, you can still live in air-conditioned comfort in a pleasant location.  In the midst of mass extinctions, luxury eco-resorts and private zoos allow the well-to-do to gaze on tigers and orangutans and elephants.
     That’s why, even a looming apocalypse will not, in and of itself, motivate a change of course.”
     Millionaire plutocrats are already acquiring bunkers in South Island, New Zealand.  Billionaire oligarchs are building interplanetary escape-- Space X for Mars by Elon Musk, Blue Origin for the moon by Jeff Bezos.
     “Billionaire survivalism is better understood as the extreme extension of the more prosaic methods by which the wealthy and privileged evade    the crises that everyone else must endure.  Most capitalists won’t blast off to Mars. They will, however, flee from the most polluted zones to maintain privileged lives while the destruction they oversee runs its course.”     
Crimes Against Nature: Capitalism and Global Heating by Jeff Sparrow, pp. 118-120.