Christmas is for kids and having a couple of my grandkids here for Christmas is motivating me to try and get you to wake up.
Look at your kids and/or grandkids, your nieces and nephews, the rugrats and toddlers in your neighbourhood – they are dependent upon you to protect their future. Warming caused by the accidental greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs)from burning fossil fuels has now taken us past the 1.5C guardrail into deep existential danger. The warming we’ve caused is setting off latent feedbacks which could raise temperatures many degrees, many degrees beyond safety to a largely uninhabitable world for our kids and their kids and all future generations.
The end of our very fortunate world isn’t coming anytime soon (although worsening climate events, extreme weather, heatwaves, etc could destabilize our present global economy within decades). No, a largely uninhabitable world will take many decades, probably at least a century or more, but the important point that isn’t being understood is that our emissions in the next couple of decades could set off irreversible warming and we must radically reduce our emissions right now to have any chance of not triggering these latent feedbacks.
We need to reduce GHG emissions by at least half – probably by more than half – before 2030 to have a reasonable chance of staying climate safe. And we aren’t reducing emissions at all; emissions are still rising; after decades of pretend, failed mitigation.
And the only way we are going to reduce emissions is to stop producing and using, burning, fossil fuels. And we are not. The production and use of fossil fuels continues to expand and with this expansion the accidental GHG side effect and ever increasing warming.
Instead of actually being reduced, fossil fuel production and use continue increasingly unchallenged, with emissions. We who are responsible have been in society-wide denial lying to ourselves that we are mitigating.
The powerful economic actors in our society, the legislators we elect, and all of us in our various publics, all refuse to give up our use of fossil fuels; we tell ourselves a story about an energy transition displacing fossil fuels so that we can keep our fortunate lifestyles. But the energy transition is systemically ineffectual: energy transitions are historically additive: the new form of energy does not displace but adds to the existing forms of energy. Renewables are very hopeful and we are building renewables at a rapid, hopeful, rate. But this is not displacing fossil fuels and we should know this and recognize that they aren’t and won’t – at least not in the all important immediate time frame where we need deep emission reduction urgently.
Renewables are great but we need to stop producing and using fossil fuels – by at least half this decade. Or else we risk setting off feedbacks and incomprehensible tragedy for our kids and every future generation. This is possible; we will need to power down and do way more with less; after at least three decades of pretend mitigation, mitigation will have to be disruptive and painful to some degree. But we must and we are incredibly wealthy and innovative and we will survive.
Instead we tell ourselves lies: energy lies, cost of living lies, hopeful disinformation about the energy transition and new sources of energy, etc. etc etc. The powers that be, esp the economic actors and their captured legislators, use the mass media they own to spin stories to keep us in denial and keep us from even considering real, responsible mitigation: stopping the production and use of fossil fuels. They have been successful at spinning disinformation for decades and confident in their investments that they can delay needed effective mitigation for their economic timeframes.
2030 is going to come and emissions will still be rising. Renewable capacity will have surged but so too will energy demand. There is insatiable potential demand; in our developed societies with new tech uses and in a developing world that wants lifestyles like what we all have. As long as fossil fuel production continues – and it is continuing to expand with rising investment in production in the future – there will be a market and they will be burned and emissions will continue to grow and mitigation will not even begin to reduce emissions, and your kids and their kids future is toast.
Look at the kids you love and realize that they need us to successfully mitigate. Right now today. Successful mitigation is hopefully still possible. But effective mitigation requires us to get out of denial and the deceitful energy transition lies we tell ourselves and actually confront and overcome those supporting fossil fuels. It requires those of us who are responsible to find a way to stop the production and use of fossil fuels.
Wake up and help try to find a path to real mitigation in the coming year.
Bill Henderson is a climate change activist
