Thursday, November 24, 2022

Bye, Bye 1.5

Looking at global emissions.
Small steps are insufficient. A reduction by a factor of seven
in greenhouse gas emissions is required (©t-online)
At the recent Convention of Climatic Change 27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, the governments of 200 countries said Goodbye to the Paris Agreement, i.e., limiting the worldwide temperature increase to 1.5 degrees.

According to various sources:
An unstopped rise in global temperature (©Wikipedia)
Looking at global emissions. Global warming and its consequences are, according to unanimous scientific opinion, the most significant challenge Homo sapiens has ever faced: years of droughts and water shortages here, rising sea levels and floods there, species extinction everywhere, storms, hurricanes, and tsunamis, things are getting worse around the globe. We are on the verge of destroying the basis of life for billions of people, animals, and plants.

The World Climate Conference in Egypt has once again shown that we are not even taking decisive action to change course when the mene mene tekel upharsin is already written on the wall: the 1.5-degree target is no longer achievable, and our planet will heat up much more, with brutal consequences.

Because of the energy shortage conjured up by the Ukraine war, Germany, France, Italy, and the rest of the hypocritical Western states are relying on fossil energies.

They are dredging more coal again, building liquefied natural gas terminals, developing new gas fields off Africa's coast, and are missing their climate targets. They are not making long-term decisions but only short-term ones to keep the destructive affluent society alive and happy.

One reason for the failure of the climate conference is the old, not necessarily white, men at the helm of states because they consider climate change only as one among many problems, take other things more important, or don't want to put themselves and their countrymen through too many hardships.

In Freiburg, too.
Climate activists block federal highway B31 near Kronenbrücke (©BZ/Ingo Schneider)
In despair and anger, young climate activists of the Last Generation spill paint or soup in museums or glue themselves on streets.

Glued to the highway. That hurts! (©BZ/Ingo Schneider)
All current heads of government will not live to see the worst consequences of the man-made climate crisis. When years of droughts, famines, floods, constant extreme weather, and mass migration will make life a daily struggle not only in East Africa and Pakistan but in large parts of the world, they will have long since passed on. That is why they do so little about today's climate crisis: they do not perceive it as a problem threatening their existence. They are not personally affected.

Red Baron is neither, and his efforts are limited: Economize energy, recycle rather than produce waste, walk or use public transport, and above all, stop using resources when dead.
*

No comments:

Post a Comment