How to see it is IMPOSSIBLE for humans to go extinct from climate change in our current world - commonly believed myth - not what IPCC says
Increasingly following path of transformative change with growth of all we value
I’ve done many fact checks of this idea that humans can go extinct from climate change. I go into some of the main scenarios here such as sea level rise, heat, etc:
BLOG: No risk of human extinction - and so much positive going on
N.B. when I say “BLOG:” I am linking to my own work. The posts are based on careful fact-checking.|
This is another blog post in the same vein. But my aim here is to give you a simple way to see the idea of human extinction from climate change simply doesn’t make sense
This is specifically about extinction from climate change. If you look closely at other scenarios like asteroid impacts and anything cosmological it is a similar picture but I will focus here on climate change.
If you are worried about us going extinct from cosmological things see my:
Or for anything else see my:
BLOG: Could anything make us extinct in this century? Answer No
If worried about the idea of a mass extinction see:
If you worry about nuclear winter, it is now an out of date idea, the modelers can’t get it to work and evidence from the Kuwaiti oil well fires and wildfires don’t match it. The models that hit the news so often start with 5 gigatons of soot high up in the stratosphere at the start of the run. But they never explain how it gets up there. The mushroom clouds do get up there but are nowhere near big enough and are mostly heavy dust which falls out of the sky as fallout. The soot of “nuclear winter” is from fires that take hold long after the mushroom clouds but these are just like ordinary wildfires. These dark clouds may temporarily bring night to day locally but depending on when it next rains they can be gone in hours to weeks because they never rise above the level of the clouds that bring rainfall. I now have a section about this at the end.
Actually we are increasingly following the path of growth in everything we value.
But I’ll go back to that after first fact checking human extinction.
SIMPLE WAY TO SEE THAT HUMAN EXTINCTION FROM CLIMATE CHANGE IS IMPOSSIBLE - WHAT WOULD THE LAST HUMANS DIE OF?
It is not possible for humans to go extinct in our current world or even millions of years in the future. With minimal technology we can live on just shellfish as ancient people did in the colder parts of the world when they couldn’t find anything else to eat, with huge shell middens around where they used to live. There are plenty of shellfish of course in tropical regions too.
That is a simple example because shellfish are present year round, aren't seasonal and are found at all latitudes in all climates. This is an example from the USA.
Text on graphic: Easy way to see that human extinction is impossible - with minimal technology humans can live on shellfish - not the best of food but humans have lived o nit for thousands of years.
Glidden shell midden.
The big reports say our world can grow enough food fo everyone on all scenarios to 2100 and beyond.
Photograph by Paul VanDerWerf Shell Midden
They are hardly the most desirable food for us, but humans can live on them and have done so historically for thousands of years.
Shellfish
Can sustain human life
Are present year round along every kilometer of the coastline
Are present at almost every latitude.
They aren’t the best of food but humans have lived on them for thousands of years in the past.
This is another example of one of these old shell middens, this time from Argentina and you can see the individual large shells.
. Conchero_al_sur_de_Puerto_Deseado.jpg
There can't be a world so uninhabitable that it can't even have shellfish. That makes literally no sense.
So all talk like that is just slogans, hyperbole or bulls**t. Here I’m using bulls**t as a technical term.
A bulls**tter is someone who is only interested in sounding impressive and doesn’t care or know what is true and what is false. So it is quite common for activists to speak buls**t in this sense because they are focused on trying to persuade people and not on what is true.
It actually doesn’t work very well for climate activism to claim human extinction. It gets a lot of news and attention yes, but it’s not the best way to inspire people to act on climate change.
Psychologists say that people are inspired to act by success, activists need four positive or supportive framing for each climate threat they mention if the aim is to inspire action on climate change and not just to hit the news without any action.
See my:
HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOT IN THE CLIMATE REPORTS AND HUMANS ARE LISTED AS OF LEAST CONCERN IN THE IUCN RED LIST OF SPECIES
Human extinction is NOT in any of the climate reports.
The IPCC red list shows us as “least concern”. They don’t give a photograph of a human for their entry so I added one to it for my image:
BLOG: No risk of human extinction - and so much positive going on
HUMANS CAN LIVE IN ALMOST ANY TERRESTRIAL HABITAT AND THERE IS NO SITUATION WHERE THE WORLD IS TOO HOT OR TOO COLD TO HAVE ANY HUMANS ISN IT, OR TOO DRY OR TOO WET OR NOT ENOUGH OXYGEN
Also, there is clearly no scenario where the world is too hot or too cold for humans. There will always be ice sheets in Antarctica on any scenario so it can't be too hot everywhere on Earth at least for millennia and even on millions of years timescales it can't get too hot for humans. With land near the poles and at the south pole we just can't have a climate for earth that is too hot for humans no matter what happens.
As for oxygen, then it only varies by minute amounts, even if we could impossibly burn all the forests and vegetation in the world it would hardly make any difference to the oxygen which builds up over very long periods of time.
Then there is no way it gets too cold for humans given that we can live in Siberia and Alaska but it's projected to get warmer not colder.
As for water, fresh water falls from the sky as rain. Though there are some places that are getting drier e.g. the Mediterranean, others are getting wetter. In a warmer world, there is more not less rain. It is not possible to have a world without water and without places in the world with rain and rivers in it.
How can there be a world where there isn’t enough clean fresh water for 100 people? It is not possible.
So even millions of years from now through all possible changes of our climate it will be habitable for humans, we can't go into any climate regime that could make humans extinct.
So it is just nonsense.
As someone who has worked it through in this way, I find it hard to understand how intelligent people can say such things. But I think it is because of the compartmentalized thinking that we all do.
It is easier to notice in others than in ourselves. Slogan thinking. Or it is hyperbole and exaggeration and they don't really believe it.
SHELLFISH ARE ONLY ONE OF NUMEROUS SOURCES OF FOOD FOR HUMANS - BUT A PARTICULARLY CLEAR CASE TO SHOW HUMAN EXTINCTION IS IMPOSSIBLE - BECAUSE THEY OCCUR YEAR ROUND, GLOBALLY, NOT SEASONAL AND EASY TO HARVEST, REQUIRING MINIMAL SKILL
If you still think that humans can go extinct ask yourself:
What does the last human die of? Or what do the last 100 humans die of?
Try thinking this through logically. If you do you will find there is no answer, no way that humans can become extinct in our world.
Shellfish are only one of many sources of food for humans but I chose that example as a simple one you can see will always be there because they aren’t seasonal, they live year round and you will always find shellfish in the sea at any time of year and almost any latitude.
HAVING RECOGNIZED THAT HUMAN EXTINCTION IS IMPOSSIBLE THAT HELPS YOU SEE THROUGH MANY JUNK SCIENTISTS WHO CLAIM IT IS POSSIBLE WITHOUT EXPLAINING HOW
Then having understood it is impossible for humans to go extinct, this shows that many people who you thought were credible can’t be if they claimed humans can go extinct and hopefully then can be receptive to the results of the big studies by IPBES, IPCC etc
Here are some debunks of specific junk scientists
BLOG: Guy Mcpherson is a JUNK SCIENTIST ON CLIMATE but a RESPECTABLE ECOLOGIST
BLOG: Short debunk of Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaptation and Rupert Read's blog post
BLOG: Deep adaptation - climate change paper which is just: ‘Crap’
THE BIG IPCC AND IPBES REPORT SHOW THAT WE CAN GROW ENOUGH FOOD FOR EVERY9ONE ON ALL SCENARIOS
If you go to the big reports such as the IPBES report, in reality we can grow enough food for everyone in all scenarios.
The issue is distribution to areas of conflict, and disaster and weaker economies, and growing the food in a way that protects nature services and biodiversity and reverses biodiversity loss.
We have increasing food security because of more efficient agriculture and improved crop varieties and the population is set to level off by the end of the century if not earlier and Africa is the continent that is least developed and also the only one with significant projected increases in population which means it is best able to develop to grow more food to feed its future larger population.
BLOG: We can grow enough food for everyone through to 2100 and beyond on all scenarios
SUDDEN WARMING IS IMPOSSIBLE
As the Earth warms it radiates away more heat (just as a warm radiator radiates away more heat) More heat is also trapped and more heat is absorbed but with each degree of warming far more heat is radiated away than absorbed or trapped. IPCC AR6 / WG1 / Chapter 7 page 7–73: “It is virtually certain that the net climate feedback is negative” i.e. no runaway warmingt. Background photo Sun Over Earth (NASA, International Space Station, 07/21/03)
In particular we didn’t have a sudden global warming from 2022 to 2023, it is just a warmer than average year because of the state of various ocean cycles like El Nino.
Some of you may have believed Hansen’s idea of a runaway warming that could turn Earth into a second Venus. He says this in a popular book as a result of a back-of-the-envelope calculation that was wrong. He was soon fact checked and his calculation shown to be mistaken by climate scientists but he hasn’t corrected the book which is still on sale. I talk about this and other such claims here:
Also
BLOG: Climate change will NOT make the world too hot for humans on any scenario
IPCC AR6 / WG2’S “LIFE THREATENING” HEAT WAVES WAS NOT ABOUT AN UNLIVEABLE HEAT - IT WAS ABOUT HEAT WAVES 30% OF THE WORLD EXPERIENCES EVERY YEAR ALREADY
The IPCC AR6 / WG2 was misrepresented in the media as about an unliveable heat when it’s about heat waves 30% of the world experiences every year already.
UN SECRETARY GENERAL USES A LOT OF COLOURFUL HYPERBOLE, THE OCEANS AREN‘T LITERALLY BOILING AND THE CLIMATE IS NOT BREAKING DOWN
Then the UN secretary general who is a politician not a climate scientist often uses hyperbole about climate change. For instance saying the world is boiling when it is very obvious it is not. No the oceans are not boiling as is obvious!
It is a bit like saying “I am so hungry I could eat a horse” which is obviously impossible as no human could eat an entire horse (an expression in English).
NO WE WON’T EVEN HAVE BILLIONS MIGRATING IN REALISTIC PROJECTIONS OF THE FUTURE MOST PROJECTIONS ARE INTERNAL TO THE COUNTRY AS SOME PARTS GET MORE FERTILE WHILE OTHER PARTS GET LESS FERTILE
This toy model got a lot of publicity though it doesn’t apply to the real world
BLOG: Paper about 3 billion migrating by 2070 little to do with real world migration - based on imaginary population distributed by temperature e.g. high density of population in Arabian desert
This report at around the same time presented the accurate situation and is about the real world. At 2 C it predicts 44 million by way of total climate related internal migration in the weaker economies, and much less climate related external migration to other countries:
BLOG: World bank report is to HELP countries plan for INTERNAL migration as parts of their country get more fertile and other parts get less fertile as the climate changes - while total crop yields increase globally
WHAT ABOUT OTHER THINGS? HUMANS WOULD HAVE SURVIVED ALL PREVIOUS MASS EXTINCTIONS FOR HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS
There are many successful species that have persisted through numerous mass extinctions.
So while it is true that genera and even higher orders of life do go extinct in mass extinction as that after all is why they get the name it does NOT follow that EVERY widely distributed creature goes extinct and indeed some are very resilient and have survived ALL mass extinctions for hundreds of millions of years. Examples, Coelacynth, and horseshoe crabs have survived almost unchanged nearly half a billion years.
. From coelacanths to crinoids: these 9 ‘living fossils’ haven’t changed in millions of years
Some widespread genera and higher orders have failed in mass extinctions but that was because the change was something that impacted on that particular group
E..g the land dwelling dinosaurs died during the asteroid impact - probably because of an asteroid winter because they weren't very warm blooded. But even then the birds survived which were related to some land-dwelling dinosaurs, the ones that walked on two legs supported by their tail for balance like Tyrranosaurus Rex.
Image credit Stephen L., Brusatte et al. Family Tree Sheds More Light on Transition from Dinosaurs to Birds | Sci.News
Or in more detail:
Credit (Brusatte et al., 2014. Gradual Assembly of Avian Body Plan Culminated in Rapid Rates of Evolution across the Dinosaur-Bird Transition : Figure 1)
See:
. Family Tree Sheds More Light on Transition from Dinosaurs to Birds | Sci.News
And mammals survived that mass extinction. As did the "dawn redwood" tree which was rediscovered in China some decades ago, and turtles and many other creatures.
So are humans survivors or not? It is rather obvious that we are with minimal technology
As mammals even without technology we would likely survive an asteroid winter.
As I’ve shown in this blog post, as omnivores we can survive on almost anything. From shell fish to seeds, nuts, to animals, to roots, can eat many plants though we can't eat grass like a herbivore.
But with our technology we can grow things and adapt to survive on almost anything almost anywhere even on the Moon in principle 🙂
It is not remotely credible that in any future our world wouldn't have shellfish which have been a staple of humans when times are hard in the past.
This is not to say we are headed for anything like that.
It is rather than so many people claim human extinction even sometimes scientists at universities.
When they say that you know that they haven’t ever given the matter much by way of sustained thought. They can't have.
As soon as you challenge it in your mind and try to figure out how they can go extinct it becomes obvious they can't. If you are talking to such a person you can ask them “how would they go extinct? What would the last human die of given that humans can eat almost anything including shellfish and survive in almost any climate?).
WHAT ABOUT OTHER THINGS LIKE ASTEROIDS? HUMANS COULD SURVIVE AN ASTEROID WINTER AFTER ALL MAMMALS DID BUT WE KNOW ALL THE LAREST NEOS ALREADY
For asteroids particularly see my:
If you are worried about us going extinct from cosmological things see my:
Or for anything else see my:
BLOG: Could anything make us extinct in this century? Answer No
If worried about the idea of a mass extinction see:
For nuclear winter see:
And for climate and biodiversity as already explained, we are increasingly following the path of growth in everything we value.
WHAT ABOUT THE FAR FUTURE? THE WORLD IS NOT TOO HOT FOR HUMANS EVEN HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS FROM NOW - AND HTEN AFTER THAT MANY THINGS OUR REMOTE DESCENDANTS COULD DO - NEARLY AS FAR REMOVED IN TIME AS WE ARE FROM THE FIRST MICROSCOPIC OXYGEN USING MULTICELLULAR LIFE
As for the idea that eventually the world will become too hot for humans, yes very very slowly over billions of years our sun warms up. But that is -much further into the future than the dinosaurs are in our past. It’s similar to the timescale since the first microscopic mutli-cellular sea creatures.
Who knows what we can do by then. We can probably move the Earth outwards slowly to keep the same temperature as the sun warms up. Or we can shade it with big solar shades in orbit. Or simpler, use reflective balloons in the atmosphere to cool it down.
Or we are all living in space habitats by then slowly spinning for artificial gravity.
BLOG: Climate change will NOT make the world too hot for humans on any scenario
also
IF YOU STILL ARE CONVINCED HUMANS CAN GO EXTINCT, SOME MORE THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
What does the last human die of? Or the last 100 humans? Try thinking this through logically.
Shellfish are a year round food source on its own that while not the best food is one that humans have lived on for thousands of years and is available along every kilometer of shore around the coasts.
What do they actually die of? Hunger, thirst, food, air? And if so why do they not have access to those things?
Remember primitive humans with only enough technology to cook shellfish could live anywhere along any shoreline of the world. How does EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING DIE?
How do they lose even the technology to start a fire?
They have to die of something. Every species that dies off does so for a reason and it depends on the species, some for one reason some for another, many different reasons.
Example:
QUOTE “Rodents are linked to the extinction of 75 species (52 bird, 21 mammal, and 2 reptile species; 30% of all extinctions) and cats to 63 extinctions (40, 21, and 2 species, respectively; 26%) whereas red foxes, dogs (*Canis familiaris*), pigs (*Sus scrofa*), and small Indian mongoose (*H. auropunctatus*) are implicated in 9–11 extinctions each”
There is no way humans will be made extinct by rodents, cats, red foxes, dogs, pigs or the small Indian mongoose.
Humans have to die of something capable of making humans extinct.
E.g. because they only live in a special type of habitat which no longer exists. But humans are not restricted to any particular habitat with minimal technology. They have to die of something.
So what do humans die of? Even one possible way it could happen?
And yes some modern people would likely be pretty clueless if they lost modern technology. But remember here you are talking about human extinction.
How can there be nobody left in the world who has basic survival skills? Not even 100?
Sure there are some people who wouldn’t survive in some situations but this needs nobody to survive in the entire world. In all the climates of the world. All the coastlines, all the habitats, that nowhere is it possible for a human to survive, nobody left. How is that supposed to happen?
None of our ancestors for the last 4.5 billion years went extinct. They evolved eventually to us. Whatever is living here 100 million years from now will be evolved from creatures that live here today. Many may be evolved from us.
WE ARE INCREASINGLY MOVING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OF TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE AND GROWTH IN EVERYTHING WE VALUE
BLOG: Videos of good things that are happening in the world for climate change and biodiversity
BLOG: We can grow enough food for everyone through to 2100 and beyond on all scenarios
And I did these a while back
It's so sad when people think they can't have children because of climate change. Two years ago most of these parents weren't despairing; they didn’t even give it thought. Climate change was not an election issue in the US elections in 2016, or the UK elections in 2017 even. Now it is one of the top issues for most governments worldwide. This gives so much more hope for the future, for those who have been following it all along, but many of those who have just begun to give it serious attention for a couple of years are already despairing only three years after the Paris agreement.
This is all topsy turvy. The underlying situation hasn't changed significantly. Scientists knew all of this (in less detail) decades ago.
We start to something about it in a serious way, and for the first time, many people feel like giving up. Meanwhile people are living longer, and our population is leveling off due to prosperity not scarcity, literacy is increasing, food security increasing, we have large food reserves, we have a new billion dollars a year fund to prevent famines before they happen, child mortality going down, greatly reduced poverty, access to clean water increasing, things are improving in so many ways and with roadmaps for the future, we know that we can continue to do this, it just needs the political will.
Yes our generation’s children are headed for a world with nature and wonder in it
Since then we are doing more and more to fight climate change and to help the weaker economies adapt, it’s extraordinary.
Also another post that I did in 2020.
Almost nobody seems to report the positive side of our recent climate change action. As someone who followed the topic before Kyoto, what happened since 2016 was remarkable. The change in attitude, pace of action, at last gives much hope that we can rise to the challenge. I have never in my life seen such a coming together of nations worldwide to solve a problem.
Before 2015, it seemed close to hopeless that we would rise te challenge. Many individual actions, but nothing compared to the scale of the problem. Now we are doing so much, and acting together globally in many ways. Yet the more we act, the more the publicity seems to focus on what we aren't doing, and almost never on our successes.
That's the key to the Paris agreement, to constantly build on successes. The pace is accelerating. Month on month it may seem glacially slow, but over a few years, extraordinary. We can do this!
Since then we are now headed for 1.8 C as I said. Nobody would have guessed we’d have reached this point already by 2023 if you asked them in 2015.
Also though we need to stop the rapid increase a warmer world is more habitable if anything. The issue is the speed not the end temperature at least if we end up well below 3 C. At 3 C we lose the coral reefs, as they just can’t live in the oceans with the pH level they reach at 3 C. But so long as we stay well below then the world is a better world for them too once they adapt.
I talk here about how we’d face difficult choices and would likely not want to go back to preindustrial temperatures if we level off at 1.8 C and are adapted to the warmer climate which has many advantages after adaptation the issue is how quickly we get there.
Adapting back to preindustrial could easily be as hard or harder than adapting to 1.8 C. That shows how it isn’t the end state is really the issue, it’s the speed of the change. Not even the direction of the change particularly.
And we are dealing with this!
And the warm year this and probably next from El’ Nino is not due to climate change not the change since last year.
We are warmer than a couple of decades ago. But we are not noticeably warmer than last year in global temperatures which are averaged over 20 years before and after and we can easily get a future year maybe as soon as a few years from now that is similarly well below average. It is bound to happen, that is why we use averages, there will be a future year where eth global average is at least 0.4 C below what it is this year, and it will also mean nothing though we can expect many uninformed in the public to think warming has stopped. So we need to explain this really clearly so people understand and don’t jump to conclusions either way from a one year global average temperature.
NOT AT RISK FROM NUCLEAR WINTER - AN OUT OF DATE IDEA THAT THE MODELERS CAN’T GET TO WORK
The evidence is pretty clear, a global winter is not possible from any number of nukes.
This was never about the mushroom clouds, those can't block out the sun, not big enough. The mushroom clouds also for the most part quickly fall out of the sky as fallout as they are full of heavy radioactive dust.
The nuclear winter claim is that soot from fires set up in cities would cause a nuclear winter. These wouldn’t start until much later long before the updrafts are over that raised the mushroom cloud into the sky.
So there are no unusual winds involved. Just the updrafts from the fires themselves. But we have vast wildfires every year and they don't cause these winter effects. Not even temporarily. Even when the soot was thick enough to turn night to day in Sao Paolo this soon rained out and was gone.
Video .Brazil Fires: Sao Paulo Goes Dark as Smoke from Amazon Fires Blankets City
Also after the Kuwait war (Gulf war) the retreating Iraqis set fire to the oil wells turning midday to night over much of the Middle East - but those big fires in Kuwait from burning oil wells didn't cause even the local area to cool down much either. The reason is the soot simply didn't go high enough in the atmosphere and soon washed out.
Sagan agreed he'd made a mistake after the Kuwaiti oil fires.
Some researchers still promote this idea. They do produce model runs that end with a nuclear winter effect - but to achieve this they have to start their model runs with vast amounts of soot already high in the stratosphere.
They give no explanation of how the soot gets up there.
Others try modelling the fires and they just never can get so much soot up so high no matter what they try.
So there are these two separate teams of modelers and they have written papers answering each other. The first team thinks of new ways the smoke could get up into the atmosphere. The second team looks at these ideas, tries to implement in their models and says “nope that didn’t work either”.
So far they have found no way to get anything like the necessary amount of soot into the stratosphere.
The ones with the models that start with soot in the stratosphere already continue to remain optimistic (or pessimistic depending how you think about it) that somehow they will think of a scenario that will get the soot up there, but it’s not very convincing after so many tries with no success.
I talk about this here.
Even if all the nukes in the world were used we still wouldn't have a nuclear winter because they just produce fires in cities similar to wildfires, or the Dresden bombing fires, and the soot doesn't go up high enough.
TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE
Then once you have seen that these are not realistic scenarios perhaps you might be interested to find out more about how we are actually increasingly on the path of transformative change outlined by the IPCC and IPBES with growth in everything we value.
Actually we are increasingly following the path of growth in everything we value.
Each year so much happens in a positive direction.
But the mainstream media since 2018 has been half glass empty and hyperbole and running stories about human extinction or civilization collapse so it is easy to miss it.
To take a recent example, how many have noticed the recent story that China’s emissions have likely peaked already?
The biggest positive story in climate change in the last week but almost nobody knows about it.
Carbon Brief says that its emissions are likely facing a "structural decline" i.e. that they will keep going down because of the rapid growth of renewables.
They have also introduced a new funding model for their coal power plants which
give them funding for capacity even if they don't produce any electricity which highlights how they need them for surge capacity if they have a big increase in demand for some reason. They are prepared to subsidize them to keep them going at a loss for the extra capacity.
This means it is likely close to the peak year also for global emissions since almost everywhere else except India of the big emitters is also going down. The emissions then need to go down rapidly to zero emissions but "under the hood" the reason China peaked so early if it did is because of the very rapidly growing renewables industry which is sure to continue to increase and likely exponentially or faster than exponential.
China has renewables doubling every 3 years right now (was every 4 years). It's electricity use is also increasing but with a much slower doubling time of 11 years with likely only one more doubling left.
I do a calculation based on assuming that China's electricity use is only going to double one more time which would bring it in line with the USA, doubling every 11 years, and the renewables continue to double every 3 years, then it works out as 2034 as the year it reaches 50% renewables and then 2040 as the year when China has enough renewables for all its electricity and also all its industry converting as much as possible to use electricity instead of fuel. Just based on constant doubling. So - exponentials are like that, from 50% renewables, just 6 years later and you have enough for everything.
The calculation is towards the end here
Of course you also need energy storage like pumped hydro or in the batteries of people's electric cars. But we can do that. Also, as the energy available soars to up above double electricity levels and you can then shift it around to industry to use it when it is low cost, then that is also a kind of energy storage too.
As someone who has been interested in this topic for decades it’s quite bizarre to see that in 2018 we suddenly get a huge upsurge in action on climate change and this is continuing, nobody in 2015 would have guessed this could happen so fast. And then at the same time we have a huge upsurge in pessimism. People who had never thought about the topic , or hardly at all before 2018 are suddenly convinced we are all going to go extinct and that our situation is hopeless.
So strange.
We are already headed for 1.8 C and it is far more important to do a clean renewables transition in India / Africa / China and green industrial revolution giving them the chance to adapt properly as they do so than to shave off the last 0.3 C as fast as possible. It is not right to force them into this without the funding they need for the adaption and to reduce emissions. The focus is increasingly on a just transition nad not just targets and t hat is how it should be. Similarly also for biodiversity. We need to follow the CO2 emission reduction paths that also protect and preserve nature services and biodiversity. Luckily there is usually a co-benefit to biodiversity of action on climate change.
Talk about some of that here
We are taking LOTS of serious action on climate change, it is astonishing the change since 2015.
This is my blog post from 2018.
QUOTE
It's so sad when people think they can't have children because of climate change. Two years ago most of these parents weren't despairing; they didn’t even give it thought. Climate change was not an election issue in the US elections in 2016, or the UK elections in 2017 even. Now it is one of the top issues for most governments worldwide. This gives so much more hope for the future, for those who have been following it all along, but many of those who have just begun to give it serious attention for a couple of years are already despairing only three years after the Paris agreement.
This is all topsy turvy. The underlying situation hasn't changed significantly. Scientists knew all of this (in less detail) decades ago.
We start to something about it in a serious way, and for the first time, many people feel like giving up. Meanwhile people are living longer, and our population is leveling off due to prosperity not scarcity, literacy is increasing, food security increasing, we have large food reserves, we have a new billion dollars a year fund to prevent famines before they happen, child mortality going down, greatly reduced poverty, access to clean water increasing, things are improving in so many ways and with roadmaps for the future, we know that we can continue to do this, it just needs the political will.
BLOG: Yes our generation’s children are headed for a world with nature and wonder in it
Since then we are doing more and more to fight climate change and to help the weaker economies adapt, it’s extraordinary.
Also another post that I did in 2020.
QUOTE STARTS
Almost nobody seems to report the positive side of our recent climate change action. As someone who followed the topic before Kyoto, what happened since 2016 was remarkable. The change in attitude, pace of action, at last gives much hope that we can rise to the challenge. I have never in my life seen such a coming together of nations worldwide to solve a problem.
Before 2015, it seemed close to hopeless that we would rise te challenge. Many individual actions, but nothing compared to the scale of the problem. Now we are doing so much, and acting together globally in many ways. Yet the more we act, the more the publicity seems to focus on what we aren't doing, and almost never on our successes.
That's the key to the Paris agreement, to constantly build on successes. The pace is accelerating. Month on month it may seem glacially slow, but over a few years, extraordinary. We can do this!
Since I wrote that, we are now headed for 1.8 C. Nobody would have guessed we’d have reached this point already by 2023 if you asked them in 2015.
Also though we need to stop the rapid increase a warmer world is more habitable if anything. The issue is the speed not the end temperature at least if we end up well below 3 C. At 3 C we lose the coral reefs, as they just can’t live in the oceans with the pH level they reach at 3 C. But so long as we stay well below then the world is a better world for them too once they adapt.
I talk here about how we’d face difficult choices and would likely not want to go back to preindustrial temperatures if we level off at 1.8 C and are adapted to the warmer climate which has many advantages after adaptation the issue is how quickly we get there.
Adapting back to preindustrial could easily be as hard or harder than adapting to 1.8 C. That shows how it isn’t the end state is really the issue, it’s the speed of the change. Not even the direction of the change particularly.
Also many are of the mistaken impression that austerity is the only way to solve climate change. But austerity wouldn’t help much at all it would reduce emissions slightly but at the cost of a collapsing economy.
We need GDP growth for action on climate change. But it needs to be the right kind of growth. There could be few things more “growth” than reversing desertification, for instance the great green belt project in Africa which is turned into a major project to stop and reverse the march of the Sahara desert using a mix of pasture and trees with a high percentage fruit trees for the people to use.
Many of the world leaders by way of action are capitalist.
Degrowth does have its place but it is an economic term. It is really about growth too, but growth that isn’t measured economically. It works well at a community level but nobody has got it to work yet at a country level.
It is part of all the big reports and mainstream ideas of how to fight climate change now to involve community in decision making, to support local projects and so on. So in that sense degrowth is mainstream but the idea of reversing GDP growth is an academic idea that so far is hard to make sense of with no actual functioning economy doing it, but luckily we don’t need to do that.