CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #122,

 

122.  CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #122, APRIL 10, 2023

IPCC report on climate calamity. Mronline.

Noam Chomsky on Savage Capitalism: From Climate Change to Bank Failures to War

 

IPCC’s conservative nature masks true scale of action needed to avert catastrophic climate change

Editor.  Mronline.org (4-4-23).  

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) synthesis report recently landed with an authoritative thump, giving voice to hundreds of scientists endeavouring to understand the unfolding calamity of global heating.

 

“Savage Capitalism: From Climate Change to Bank Failures to War.  By Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian

[The following is excerpted from David Barsamian's recent interview with Noam Chomsky at AlternativeRadio.org][ [ Brought to us by TomDispatch/TomGram, “Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian, When Lunatics Run the Asylum.”  April 6, 2023.]

 

David Barsamian: On March 20th, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its latest report. The new IPCC assessment from senior scientists warned that there's little time to lose in tackling the climate crisis. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, "The rate of temperature rise in the last half-century is the highest in 2,000 years. Concentrations of carbon dioxide are at their highest in at least 2 million years. The climate time bomb is ticking." At COP 27 he said, "We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator. It is the defining issue of our age. It is the central challenge of our century." My question to you is: You'd think survival would be a galvanizing issue, but why isn't there a greater sense of urgency in addressing it in a substantial way?

Noam Chomsky: It was a very strong statement by Guterres. I think it could be stronger still. It's not just the defining issue of this century, but of human history. We are now, as he says, at a point where we'll decide whether the human experiment on Earth will continue in any recognizable form. The report was stark and clear. We're reaching a point where irreversible processes will be set into motion. It doesn't mean that everybody's going to die tomorrow, but we'll pass tipping points where nothing more can be done, where it's just decline to disaster.