Climate

A powerful editorial by George Monbiot of the Guardian.

I often try to see the world’s actions through the lens of an alien race observing us from outside, which is a similar thought experiment to the article’s.

That lens helps surface all our contradictions, hypocrisy, idiosyncrasies, tribalism, and collective inability to fight the greatest Moloch of all times

A powerful editorial by George Monbiot of the Guardian.

I often try to see the world’s actions through the lens of an alien race observing us from outside, which is a similar thought experiment to the article’s.

That lens helps surface all our contradictions, hypocrisy, idiosyncrasies, tribalism, and collective inability to fight the greatest Moloch of all times

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/15/dying-earth-cop29-azerbaijan-species

PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Aviator, diver, ETH maxi, nexialist | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

“Our dying earth” is a bit hyperbolic no? US+EU carbon emissions peaked years ago, the fast growing emitter is China

Well, there certainly are shades of “dying”, ranging from “dying is a natural process that begins at birth” to “every living thing will be extinct by the end of the century”.

Semantically speaking, the planet itself cannot die. But we’re losing species at 1K–10K the natural extinction rate (https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/biodiversity/biodiversity). And when a species dies, so do its predators, and so on until the food chain has collapsed (and we’re just at the top of it).

That’s not only due to CO2 emissions but also deforestation / encroachment into natural habitats, and chemical / plastic pollution.

As far as CO2 is concerned, we’ve blown past the lesser Paris goal of 1.5°C warming meant for the end of the century and are well on track to blow past 2°C. The damage is unfortunately not linear because of feedback loops and tipping points (ocean acidification, AMOC stilling, clathrate gun, etc). 1/2

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energy

It’s not just the net direction of travel that matters — it’s the speed of travel too in this case.

We’ve already blown past the 1.5°C lesser goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement and we’re headed for a 2°C exceedance well before the end of the century.

Every ton of CO2 emissions that could have been avoided, but wasn’t, will have an increasingly expensive opportunity cost (the social cost of late carbon is greater than that of early carbon).

And the current valuation of Trump’s expected energy policies puts America (the world’s second largest scope 1 emitter, let alone scope 3) well off-course from where we need it to be (Biden’s policies would have also missed the mark, but by a lesser margin).

I’m not American and not a US resident, but I obviously share the same atmosphere so this concerns me just as much.

Methodology at https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-trump-election-win-could-add-4bn-tonnes-to-us-emissions-by-2030/

That US/EU emissions may have peaked —though with Trump in power that remains to be seen—, but what matters is that global emissions are still growing, and receding nowhere near enough to stay on track with the Paris goals.

Blaming China (to whom the US/EU have largely outsourced their own CO2 emissions through offshore manufacturing, which is an accounting trick of shifting from scope 1 to scope 3 emissions) is exactly the type of tribal argument that the all-seeing eye / alien race would find baffling. Nations and borders are completely arbitrary and have no physical reality; what matters is mankind’s inability to address the problem collectively. 2/2

That US/EU emissions may have peaked —though with Trump in power that remains to be seen—, but what matters is that global emissions are still growing, and receding nowhere near enough to stay on track with the Paris goals.

Blaming China (to whom the US/EU have largely outsourced their own CO2 emissions through offshore manufacturing, which is an accounting trick of shifting from scope 1 to scope 3 emissions) is exactly the type of tribal argument that the all-seeing eye / alien race would find baffling. Nations and borders are completely arbitrary and have no physical reality; what matters is mankind’s inability to address the problem collectively. 2/2

https://warpcast.com/aviationdoctor.eth/0x3ca6f38e