First the bad news. Via the IPCC report.
Limiting global warming to 1.5C is ambitious – but is not fanciful. In the 2019 amendment to the Climate Change Act, the UK showed the intent required and committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Still, achieving that aim will be a challenge. The climate crisis is as much a rural problem as an urban one. It is both economic and human, domestic and international. This means transformation is required at every level of society: individuals, employers, institutions and international partners will need to work together to understand the trade-offs, agree compromises and seize opportunities. And just as scientists are pooling insights from diverse fields of expertise, policymakers will need to work in new ways, sharing ideas across disciplines to plot a clear path from here to net zero. This is a whole systems challenge. Tackling it will require a systemic approach.
And now the bad news. Societal "transformation" on the scale required here is not and has never been brought about by deliberate action toward the purpose of avoiding catastrophe. Instead, societal transformation is a purely reactionary process brought about through ad-hoc responses to and conflicts generated by catastrophe itself. In other words, we're not going to change in order to avoid the worst affects of the climate disaster. Instead the disaster is going to impose changes on us. Mostly through violence. This is always how it was going to happen. There is nothing in human society and politics that can make it operate any other way.
Anyway, it's Monday. How is everyone?
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