Peter Chow: What Will You Say To Your Grandchildren? – SaultOnline.com

WE NEED THE GREATEST ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION IN HUMAN HISTORY, IN THE SHORTEST TIMESPAN.OR ELSE ITS GAME OVER

You might be forgiven for tuning out whats going on atCOP26, the latest UN Climate Change Conference.

Like many, youre probably tuning out becauseyou know the score:countries get together, some announce goals that are lauded as ambitious, though theyre not nearly enough, and then, fast forward a few years later, not even that much has been delivered.

503 fossil fuel lobbyists attended COP26, more delegates than any delegation from any one country, representing100 fossil fuel companies and 30 oil and gas trade associations.

The likes of Shell and BP were inside these talks despite openly admitting to upping their production of fossil fuels.

Its like having arms dealers present at a disarmament conference

The World Health Organization didnt get serious about banning tobacco until all the lobbyists for Big Tobacco were banned from WHO meetings.

It should be the same treatment for Big Oil.

TheClimate Change movement is still not strong enough.

With last years defeat of Donald Trump, its enemies lost their most powerful figurehead.

But the governments of Australia, Brazil, Russia and Saudi Arabia continue to obstruct progress and at Cop26, yet again, they and the other backers of the fossil fuel-powered status quo outgunned supporters of the immediate decarbonisation that is needed.

Australias deputy prime minister told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Monday the Australian government had done a great job to protect coalminers jobs before proceeding to mock the chairman of COP26.

US climate action was limited at the summit because the countrys action ultimately depends on Congress, and, more specifically, on Sen. Joe Manchin, who represents coal-rich West Virginia and who opposes climate legislation that would rapidly reduce the use of fossil fuel.

Emissions must shrink by around 45% this decade to keep alive the chance of limiting heating to 1.5C.

Based on current commitments, we are on track for 2.4C.

Meanwhile, our children and grandchildren will have to live on a planet Earth afflicted by climate catastrophe and environmental collapse, intensifying year after year.

Shrug..MehWho cares?

Another day, another failure.

If this was a football match, Boris Johnson explained in a speech in week one of the conference, the current score would be 5-1 down in the match between Humanity and Climate Change.

What I think you can say today after two days of talks with about 120 world leaders is that weve pulled back a goal, or perhaps even two, and I think were going to be able to take this thing to extra time.

Righto.

As Boris himself would say, Donnez-moi un break.

This mainly confirmed that this clown doesnt even understand how football works, which suggests that stewarding a historic international effort against climate change might be a conceptual task some galaxies of distance beyond him.and all the other leaders.

The World is going to have huge difficulty coping with the crises of the 21st century.

Covid-19 has already shown that.

More frequent future pandemics, the looming climate catastrophe, environmental collapse, the ongoing 6th Mass Extinction with loss of species, water wars, overpopulation, mass human migration all these await Mankind.

Climate change is a vastly much more immense, much more complicated problem than COVID, a problem that requires navigation of complex scientific analysis and the imposition of intensely painful policies internationally to ensure collective survival.

Covid-19 didnt require much more than leaders who listened to basic medical advice.

And we couldnt do even that.

Covid-19 was like a pop quiz before the big final exam, and it revealed thatsignificant portions of Civilizations elites do not care about mass death in their country and, to put it in the most naked terms, have no capacity to impose policy or respond collectively to events.

The challenges are monumental.

They will force us to question our identities, our values, and our loyalties like no other experience in our history.

Who are we?

Are we, first and foremost, human beings struggling to raise our families, strengthen our communities, and coexist with the other inhabitants of Earth?

Or do our primary loyalties belong to our nation, our culture, our race, our ideology, or our religion?

Can we put the survival of our species and our planet first, or will we allow ourselves to become hopelessly divided along national, cultural, racial, religious, or party lines?

Will we overcome denial and despair; kick our addiction to fossil fuels; and pull together to break the grip of corporate power over our lives?

Can we foster genuine Democracy, harness renewable energy, reweave our communities, re-learn forgotten skills, and heal the wounds weve inflicted on the Earth?

Or will fear and prejudice drive us into hostile camps, fighting over the dwindling resources of a degraded planet?

The worry is that our response to the Climate Crisis will look eerily similar to our response to COVID:

Denial, Delay and Incrementalism.

Initial denialism and delay about the severity of the looming crisis.

Double down on Individual Liberty rhetoric.

Obsession with economic impacts of mitigating measures.

Tentative, slow, incremental measures, playing whack-a-mole, rather than early, deep, sharp effective actions to tackle the crisis.

Desensitization to mass death.

The next 50-100 years will be a Critical Existential Test for our children and grandchildren.

If it feels like theres an elephant in the room, which all those Prime Ministers and Presidents arent discussing, thats because there is.

There is a very good reason that this theatrical spectacle lets save the planet oops, we didnt do much of anything plays out year after year after dismal year.

That reason is the macroeconomics of climate change,the macroeconomics of our civilization.

Perpetual Economic Growth And Development Are Capitalisms Sacred Cows.

No-Growth Capitalism is an oxymoron: when Economic Growth ceases the system is in a state of Crisis.

In fact, all Economics is based on the absurd Myth of Perpetual Growth.

The science of economics is not science.

Yes, it looks scientific with all the fancy math algorithms and computer models and charts that economists use, but all thats just window dressing to make the economist look scientific and rational.

Theyre not.

Their conclusions are pre-ordained, fabricated, based on their biases, personal ideologies and whatever their employer wants to prove to manipulate consumers, voters or investors to buy what theyre selling.

BusinessWeek in a famous editorial several years ago headlined: What Do You Call an Economist with a Prediction??

Wrong!!

Unfortunately, we live in a world of Capitalists who thrive on the great Myth of Perpetual Growth, endless growth, ad infinitum, forever, till the end of time.

But driving the economists growth myth is Population Growth.

Its the independent variable in their equation.

Population Growth drives all other derivative projections, forecasts and predictions.

All GDP growth, income growth, wealth growth, production growth, everything.

These unscientific growth assumptions fit into the overall left-brain, logical, mind-set of Western leaders, all the corporate CEOs, Wall Street bankers and government leaders who run America and the world.

But just because a large group collectively believes in something doesnt make it true.

Perpetual Growth is still a Myth no matter how many economists, CEOs, bankers and politicians believe it.

Its still an illusion trapped in the brains of all these irrational, biased and uncritical folks.

Two centuries of fossil fuel combustion have saturated the biosphere with climate-altering carbon that will continue wreaking havoc for generations to come.

The damage to Earths living systems the circulation and chemical composition of the atmosphere and the oceans; the stability of the hydrological and biogeochemical cycles; and the biodiversity of the entire planet is essentially permanent.

Humans have become the most harmful invasive species the planet has ever known.

Although we are a mere .01% of the planets biomass, our domesticated crops and livestock dominate life on Earth.

In terms of total biomass, 96% of all the mammals on Earth are livestock; only 4% are wild mammals.

70% of all birds are domesticated poultry, only 30% are wild.

80% of all the Earths wild animals have been lost in just the last 50 years.

Scientists estimate that half of all remaining species will be extinct by the end of the century.

There are no more unspoiled ecosystems or new frontiers where people can escape the damage theyve caused and recover from collapse.

Is biodiversity a luxury affordable only to the richest countries on the planet?

The human predicament is driven by overpopulation, overconsumption of natural resources, and the use of unnecessarily environmentally damaging technologies and socio-economic-political arrangements to service Homo sapiens aggregate consumption.

The uncomfortable truth is that the physical resources of the biosphere are finite.

Were not approaching the Ecological Limits To Growth were well past them.

And in the process were polluting the globe with our wastes and threatening the natural systems on which humanity and all other species depend.

How far the human population size now is above the planets long-term carrying capacity is suggested (conservatively) by ecological footprint analysis.

It shows that to support todays population of 7.9 billion sustainably (i.e. with business as usual, including current technologies and standards of living) would require over half an additional planet Earth.

If all citizens of Earth consumed resources at the US/Canadian level, it would take 15 more planet Earths.

Adding the projected 2.5 billion more people by 2050 will make the human assault on civilizations life-support systems disproportionately worse.

Growth is Capitalisms Sacred Cow but its Grow or Die theory doesnt work anymore.

Its being challenged by a New God Of Reality thats flashing warnings of an emerging new reality from critics, contrarians and eco-economists.

The difference between the mind-set of traditional economists and the new eco-economists is simple:

Traditional economists think short-term, react short-term, pursue short-term goals.

New eco-economists think long-term.

We can see that in plain sight.

Were now in the midst of the first Anthropocene (human-made) Mass Extinction, the Sixth Mass Extinction.

(The last major mass extinction event which wiped out all the dinosaurs was 66 million years ago.)

Vast numbers of species are dying off.

Its not just those at the bottom of the food chain apart from our livestock, weve killed off more than 80% of wild mammals on the planet.

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Peter Chow: What Will You Say To Your Grandchildren? - SaultOnline.com