Three Years to Stop Climate Catastrophe Say Experts
I don't like sounding the alarm about the incredibly dangerous situation we, as a species, have created for life in our planet. And I'm sure that Former UN climate chief Christiana Figuere doesn't like to be charged with the label of "alarmist" either. But we all need to be running around with our hair on fire:
Avoiding dangerous levels of climate change is still just about possible, but willrequire unprecedented effort and coordination from governments, businesses, citizens and scientists in the next three years, a group of prominent experts has warned. [...]
... This year’s weather has beaten high temperature records in some regions, and 2014, 2015 and 2016 were the hottest years on record.
But while temperatures have risen, global carbon dioxide emissions have stayed broadly flat for the past three years. This gives hope that the worst effects of climate change – devastating droughts, floods, heatwaves and irreversible sea level rises – may be avoided, according to a letter published in the journal Nature this week.
The authors, including former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, argue that the next three years will be crucial. They calculate that if emissions can be brought permanently lower by 2020 then the temperature thresholds leading to runaway irreversible climate change will not be breached.
Sadly, the Paris climate agreement is insufficient to accomplish this goal, despite all the folderol around Trump's withdrawal from it. And speaking of Trump, we know our government currently under Republican rule, and our past lack of effort to seriously address this issue under the administrations of both parties, means America is incapable of facing up to this monumental challenge.
Unfortunately, I doubt anyone in the rest of the world, especially the major sources of new emissions, such as India and China, and those countries whose economies depend on burning fossil fuels (Most of the Middle East, Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, etc.) aren't likely to destroy their economies to save the planet.
Are we all doomed then? Maybe. It certainly is discouraging to hear people so prominent in the field of climate science say we are in dire straits, but I can't blame them for trying to get the media to focus on this looming disaster for life on this planet. I fear for the future of my children and their children and everyone's children. Because we all know nothing is going to change in the next three years to stop the worst case scenarios from playing out.
A damn shame no one in the Democratic Party (I long ago gave up on the Republicans) gives a damn about this threat to all humanity, which will hurt the poor and vulnerable the hardest, though in truth no one will escape the impacts, no matter how wealthy they are. People (especially certain folks demanding more and better Democrats) mercilessly criticize the Greens every chance they get, but at least they had a plan, the Green New Deal, that would have addressed this issue, while also providing a boost to our economy as we rapidly transitioned to renewable energy and dramatically lowered emissions of greenhouse gases.
There is a lot of blame to go around, from our pathetic political leaders, the oligarchs and corporate interests that control them, the entire coterie of climate deniers funded by the fossil fuel industries, and last, but not least, traditional legacy media outlets, which in America continue to ignore this issue as if it was a rabid dog that might bite them in the ass if they even mention it in passing.
God, if he or she or it exists, help us. We sure aren't helping ourselves from fending off the train wreck headed our way.
While the greenhouse gases poured into the atmosphere over the last two centuries have only gradually taken effect, future changes are likely to be faster, scientists fear. Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre said: “We have been blessed by a remarkably resilient planet over the past 100 years, able to absorb most of our climate abuse. Now we have reached the end of this era, and need to bend the global curve of emissions immediately, to avoid unmanageable outcomes for our modern world.”
Comments
If I was a praying man
I'd be on my knees praying for a miracle.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
Hey Bud, I think you are.
You're not alone.
"When you've been pushed over the cliff, you might as well flap your arms on the way down. It can't hurt, and who knows..."
I am not sure how individuals can do much, other than those
who are trying now. Should I spend $$$$$ buying an electric car when there is still coal being burned here? (not approved for a conversion to CH4, so effectively just employs workers now). I do not have the need for A/C (yet) with shade trees, not in my HVAC system. I drive little. I fear for my children and any that they might consider.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
There are lots of things individuals can do.
Buying a battery operated lawnmower. I have one and it works great.
Get rid of your charcoal bbq. Propane is not as polluting, and the charcoal lighter fluid is the worst of all.
Buy local, local food, local made clothes or manufactured goods. Avoid anything shipped from afar.
Consume less, of everything.
Repair, repurpose, recycle, reuse, whenever possible.
If available, sign up for your electric to come from renewable sources.
Conserve water, electricity, fuel, as best you can.
Re-aquaint yourself with a clothesline, and use your drier to finish from damp.
Not everyone can do all these things. But if some of us do some of these things, we can make a difference.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
@riverlover Don't buy any new car is
Don't buy any new car is the best thing you can do in that area, for the biosphere.
A new electric or hybrid sale fuels further production, and the overall results between available options is debatable, but what isn't debatable is the much larger effect not building any new car has.
It is massive economies built on the model of eternal, and eternally increasing consumption, combined with unrestrained breeding, that are the causes of this environmental crisis. They are also two things that every one of us can chose to not participate in exacerbating.
Personally, I like old Mercedes and American trucks. I do buy a little more gas (not nearly as much as I thought), but almost nothing new is being produced to move us and our stuff around.
Respectfully disagree
Conversion to ALL ELECTRIC vehicles is crucial. It is, by far,the single most important changeover we can make.
The hit to the fossil fuel industry will force them to turn the corner and begin heavy investments in renewable sources of energy. The price of fossil fuels are already plummeting.
Of course more electricity production will be needed, but it doesn't have to come from ff.
Phasing out the internal combustion engine and replacing with electric motors worldwide would cut co2 emissions greatly.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
We can expect exponential growth
in climate refugees shortly. Human, animal, insect, and even plant.
The recent heat spell here, over a hundred degrees, in the PNW is not normal for June. The chickadee hatchlings in my back yard birdhouse have perished in the excessive heat. Normally, they would've had weeks before these kind of temperatures, long enough to grow and leave their nest.
This is only the beginning.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
This could make the Green Party a lot more relevant
A lot faster than most people thought possible.
Beware the bullshit factories.
The Green party in Germany was polling at 23% nationwide
right after the atomic power plant meltdowns at Fukushima in 2011.
This election season, they’re down to 7%.
Easy come, easy go.
Germany is already one of the leading countries
in renewable energy. I believe there's been a number of days where over 50% of Germany's electricity came from solar, despite being at about the same latitude as Alaska. We got too much fossil fuel derived corruption for that to happen here. I think when climate change becomes impossible to deny, after its too late, desperate people will turn to the one party which has always been unapologetically Green.
Beware the bullshit factories.
Well, of course.
Given what Cassiodorus keeps posting here about "climate departure," and what others have said elsewhere about reaching 500 ppm by 2050, it was clear that we had at best ten years to get on the right track, and I was aware that that guess was extremely optimistic.
I'm surprised we're not over the line now.
We have four possibilities:
1)We rise up in revolution and attempt to throw the current powers out in 2 years or less. Then we put a government in in record time and put the correct policies in place. Even if all 300 million of us were willing to bear those costs--and we're not--it's extremely unlikely that we could overcome the massive military force that the powers that be have erected around themselves to protect their capture of the government, if for no other reason than that they have access to weapons of mass destruction.
2)Another superpower--China or Russia--defeats the United States and pushes those people out of power, without triggering a nuclear war. That superpower would have to be in favor of saving the planet, of course, and would have to get us on the right track quickly.
3)Someone (actually quite a lot of someones) within our Deep State engineer an internal coup. They too would have to be in favor of saving the planet. For what it's worth, the military knows that global warming is real and the biggest security threat they've ever faced. I'm not sure that's worth much, given that they seem willing to go along with the oil and defense contractor guys in every oil war they've ever desired.
4)The rich and powerful snap out of their psychopathic fugue state and change their minds.
The first two seem incredibly unlikely; I don't think we could overthrow our government at all, and certainly not in two years, I don't think Russia or China actually wants to take over the United States, and I think if either tried, there would definitely be a nuclear war. I'm also less than sure that either of those entities have all that much interest in saving the planet.
The third is slightly more likely, but still extremely unlikely.
So is the fourth. It's hard to imagine that the rich and powerful actually want Armageddon, but apparently they do. Once you become the sort of person who wants that, do you ever change?
You shouldn't feel bad for "sounding the alarm," but sounding the alarm to members of the 99% is like setting off a fire alarm in a burning building when everybody inside the building is securely tied to chairs. There's no blame in it, but...well, but this has been my problem with most climate activism for the past seven years or so. Once it became clear that policies were not going to change regardless of who was elected, once it became clear that the rich knew the biosphere was going to be destroyed and kept to their course regardless, it became clear that there was nothing the 99% could do.
We could die fighting the people who chose to kill us, I guess. We couldn't overwhelm them with numbers. They'd just use their nukes, or some other choice thing they have hidden away. They've shown that they're just as OK with nuclear war as they are with global climate collapse. World-ending scenarios don't bother them.
We can't bargain with them, because they can take anything they want from us with no trouble. We can't reason with them, because they don't give a shit. We could try, for the umpteenth time, to beg them to stop. Has anyone actually gotten down on their knees?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
You're giving them targets.
You're telling the powers that be, here we are, nuke us for thinking of doing something to halt climate change at only a really bad level instead of a species-killing one.
The whole point of asymmetric warfare is NOT giving them a target to shoot at. Millions of little actions everywhere are the tactics of asymmetric warfare -- refusals to buy their products, refusals to join their military and law enforcement battalions, replacements of the consumerist patterns we've been conditioned to want with simpler coalitions of neighbors who can do what we really need, and (not least) millions of instances of gumming up the works. Just in case you haven't done this before, check out what the OSS, now CIA, proposed [WARNING: Link goes to the CIA Archives].
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-feature...
Edited to add, you can get this Field Manual No. 3 from several sources:
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&an=&tn=&kn=Strategi...
@dance you monster
Had a bit of a look through the CIA sabotage document: page 28 'General Interference with Organizations and Production' made me wonder as to whether the bureaucracy was designed for sabotage against citizens...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
They really do think they'll survive whatever
comes and lets face it, at least in the short term they'll do a lot better with climate change than nukes. While I don't doubt some are crazy enough to think they'll survive nukes, in the end most of these people are not stupid. They've got their hidey holes, and the ones that don't will eventually. They live in denial but even they will wake up.
I really do believe they are willing to sacrifice the rest of us however they have to do it, but I do think they prefer the slow bleed rather than nuclear destruction. What little money and resources we might have left they want those too. But any ways they can cull the herd out they're willing to take. They kill people all over the world every single day and don't bat an eye, it was only a matter of time before they brought their game back here.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
@lizzyh7 Try this one on for
Try this one on for size...
Nuclear winter to counter global warming?
See the last episode of Henson's "Dinosaurs." Sorry I
have a link, but I can't do fancy stuff on my tablet.
Edit: "lat" to "last"
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
@Greyhound
Whether via profitable-for-polluters-but-massively-toxic 'geoengineering' now officially funded and underway or nuclear winter, further diminishing already pollution-reduced sunlight essential for life and destroying the Earth's already damaged protective ozone layer against deadly solar radiation will polish off what remains of the rapidly vanishing highly complex and interdependent natural life support system, especially as integral portions such as pollinators and flowering plants dependent upon them are about to go due to industrial pollution, administering the final death-blow to global oxygen production, as that produced by slowing and poisoned-for-additional-profit/expediency oceanic currents is also perishing.
This, even without considering the effects of radiation - and yet 'geoengineering' is in process and nuclear winter has been seriously suggested by those who evidently believe that they can somehow survive and that surviving this would be a good thing for them rather than the self-inflicted punishment suffered by those who laid waste to the world of life out of murderously suicidal greed, appalling ignorance and a dire lack of sufficient cognitive abilities basic to survival.
They are killing life on the planet and destroying even the immediate future because we have no idea of how to deal with psychopaths stealing our power.
This is why people must know and stop letting themselves be passively tied to chairs, as mere watchers in a theatre, (as per an analogy upthread) so that they can act when they are warned of the soon-raging fire coming and perhaps find a way to stop it, if only because none of us have anywhere to go to get away from it.
The more people aware, the better the odds of constructive action being discovered and of being taken.
It's a symptom of learnt helplessness that anyone could think that it might be cruel/pointless to warn the other victims precisely because the 99% feel helpless against psychopaths and stooges among the 1% who seem to think that they can duck down a trapdoor under the raging inferno they've set and presumably happily survive forever in the basement with nothing remaining above, without their no-longer-naturally-renewed air being sucked out by the flames and without the lifeless destruction they've created above crashing down on their heads.
WE are the public - would it be preferable that none of us knew anything of what's going on, leaving climate scientists and strangely unmentioned ecologists to weep alone, and continued blindly supporting those destroying us all?
Ignorance is only bliss until you actually step off that cliff and begin the lengthy fall to that now-inevitable splat at the bottom which, with luck, will at least kill you instantly. Knowledge is power, and it's non-polluting, too! We just have to figure out how to apply it.
Pandora's Box had - not pop-up Obama - but actual Hope at the bottom of it; if nothing else, we can at least beat the perps upside the head with that while we're figuring out what to do.
There will be something, we just need to find it in time.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Unfortunately, I came to the conclusion a few years ago
that there would be no avoiding the worst of climate change, and that the worst would likely be mass (if not complete) extinction. There might be actions that can be taken to promote survival on an individual level, but that's about if. If anything, I would say that 3 years is wildly optimistic and Christiana Figuere is probably well aware of that, but is hoping to spur governments into action.
I also find that whenever I actually want to talk about it, all it ends up doing is scaring people.
@Dhyerwolf I don't know that three
I don't know that three years is optimistic. It could be about right.
It doesn't matter because nothing's going to change.
Politically, things needed to start changing drastically in Barack Obama's first term, at the latest. It takes political machines a while to do things, most of the time (not when there's a war or a bailout wanted, but for everything else.)
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Thought we were past the
Thought we were past the point of no return?
But regardless, if we say we have 3 years, we'll get to it in 30.
Somehow we need to operate from
... A vantage point of ... "Ok ... This climate shit is going down but I am going to approach it from a proactive do-what-I-can position."
We just can't give in to hopelessness.
If we do, we are hopeless.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Excellent essay Steven!
I'm what some call an ender, so this is old news to me.
For every even or lower month of carbon dioxide discharge, we produce even or larger amounts of methane.
I cook with methane and release little. The oil and gas wells are spewing large amounts even with flare-off.
Anybody like to cook while doing nothing?
The next few years are beyond critical. Unless you like charred toast.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Apologies to Swift, but I have a modest proposal
I think that when the evidence becomes irrefutable the remaining populations of the world will (over) react, and this will be beneficial in the long run. The first nation to become uninhabitable will be Indonesia (in 3 years) Where will 100 million Indonesians try to evacuate to when they start dying in mass numbers - Australia. Australia cannot possibly provide for 100 million refugees, even for a short time. Eventually the Australian air force and navy will have to use force to stop the refugees - kill millions of innocent people in rafts. But, being a civilized people, they will resort to the inevitable too late, and Australia will fail. The rest of the world will resort to what is really genocide to save themselves. But will it come in time? Will 1 billion people kill 6 billion and save themselves?
And the real question; when (if) it's over will we wipe the blood off and go back to driving 5000 lb pickup trucks?
On to Biden since 1973
Bonus points.
How fricken cray z and stupid does mankind become?
The limits are unknown.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
It's been too late for a long time
At 280 ppm CO2 ice on the planet is stable, losing some in the Summer and gaining some in the Winter. At 180 ppm, the CO2 level during glacial periods, the planet gains ice. At 410-??? the Planet will continually lose ice. As it does so it triggers about a dozen reinforcing positive feedback loops that accelerate warming. If we were to stop all fossil fuel use tomorrow we would still be screwed. The more likely scenario is that we continue to 450 ppm, then 500 ppm and land at about 560ppm, double the pre-industrial concentration of CO2. That looks like about 9 degrees C temperature rise. Very few commercially useful food plant species would survive. The result will be an enormous die-back of billions of people, as many as 9 billion. They will die a horrible death due to starvation and war. All pretenses of civilization will disappear.
There is a possibility of some level of survival. That would entail CO2 capture to bring CO2 concentration to below 280 ppm, along with ..ugh.. geoengineering to temporarily reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the planet. It goes without saying that we need to eliminate almost all fossil fuel use within the next few years. We can only begin to attempt this while we have a healthy industrial sector. As the world economies begin to collapse there will be no hope of correction. Even if we get our planetary climate back, we will have made drastic and irreversible changes in the biosphere.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
@The Wizard The rich can make "the
The rich can make "the global economy" do whatever the fuck they want it to do, so that's not really the problem--at least not until civilization collapses.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@The Wizard
Geoengineering does more than endlessly dump untold trillions of tons of pollutants from the stratosphere all over the Earth in a steady, if typically invisible, (likely acid, depending upon what's being pumped up there) rain, it destroys the protective ozone layer, making the sunlight essential to life inimical to life. This is why it's admitted to be 'difficult to stop'. Life cannot survive 'geoengineering', but polluters and others of The Right People will be making great profits from it in whatever time remains.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
World decisionmakers’ position on global warming seems to be
like German chancellor Angela Merkel’s attitude towards the 2015 refugee crisis: Wir schaffen das (= we’ll manage).
In Hamburg there’s a G-20 summit of world leaders coming up. I suspect a lot of ordinary people are thinking, hey, if the danger from planetary heating is real, it’ll be at the top of their agenda, right? And if they aren’t worried enough to do anything about it, what am I supposed to do?
Most of us are screwed. The super wealthy will provide
for themselves. Will war then break out among them as with the feudal nobility? They were, after all, a bunch of brawling thugs.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
At the same time
life in the Pacific ocean seems to be collapsing while desertification grows.
The worst thing about our Establishment (apart from their rampant murder and threat around the world) is that they possess neither insight nor vision. They are crafty and cunning, but show no intelligence.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Like the aliens in Stephen King's "The Tommyknockers."
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Those nearing the end of their expected life span
have less difficulty recognizing the deep shit the entire biosphere is in than do those busy living out their turn chasing the tattered remains of The American Dream. Young people, for the most part, simply don't want to know about how fucked up a future is comming their way. If you persist in bringing up the subject they will hate you for being such a buzz kill. A Debbie Downer is not an effective motivator, as I can personally attest.
I am resigned to simply doing as much to slow the climate change freight train that is bearing down us and as little as possible to hasten it. This I can do. I can be one small part of a solution that will never arrive to completely vanquish the problem, but which may incrementally soften the body blow to the planet that is clearly coming.
Each day I look for the beauty and mystery of life on this planet, knowing that it is fragile and impermanent, just like me.
“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024
A bunch of data--quite long, several studies:
Since your experience doesn't tally with mine (not exactly, anyway) I thought I'd look to see what the latest data is about Americans' perceptions of global warming:
Here's something from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/21/climate/how-americans-thi...
The first map has data on Americans' attitudes toward restricting carbon emissions from coal:
Americans want to restrict carbon emissions from coal power plants. The White House and Congress may do the opposite.
This map represents the percentage of adults per congressional district who support strict CO2 limits on existing coal-fired power plant. The darker orange/redder areas of the map represent areas where more than 60% of the population wants this; the lighter orange areas represent where 50-60% of the population does (sorry, I couldn't cut and paste the actual key to the map for some reason):
In every congressional district, a majority of adults supports limiting carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal-fired power plants. But many Republicans in Congress (and some Democrats) agree with President Trump, who this week may move to kill an Obama administration plan that would have scaled back the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Nationally, about seven in 10 Americans support regulating carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants — and 75 percent support regulating CO2 as a pollutant more generally. But lawmakers are unlikely to change direction soon.
The next two maps present data on how many Americans think global warming will hurt Americans generally, or themselves personally:
The map on the left, below, represents the percentage of Americans who think global warming will hurt Americans. The map on the right represents the percentage of Americans who think it will hurt them personally. Areas that are more blue in the left-hand map represent fewer people who believe global warming will hurt Americans; areas that are more red represent more people who believe in it. Dark blue represents 20% or less of the population believing in it; red represents over 80% of the population believing in it; pale orange is the 50% mark. The same color scheme holds true for the right-hand map.
I'm sorry for all this long-winded explanation, but, like I said, the map keys wouldn't cut and paste. As you can see below, in most counties in America, people believe that global warming is going to affect Americans, but, in most counties in America, they also believe it won't affect them. I would love to see this cross-referenced with data on age.
There are three sets of data I found about young people and beliefs about global warming. There's these two, from the League of Conservation Voters and Pew.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jan/15/chris-mur...
Pew's relevant cohort was 18-29, and the LCV was people under 35, and Pew had a more conservative result. LCV only had 3% of voters 18-34 saying global warming wasn't happening; Pew had 18%. Either way, it looks to me like most of the young believe global warming is happening. You don't find a lot of deniers there--but that's not really the question anymore; the question is how much of a danger, and how much of a priority, people think it is. The LCV poll shows good results with their 18-34-year-old voters on this issue:
• On a subsequent question in the same poll -- "When, if ever, will the consequences of climate change personally affect people like you?" -- the number answering "never" was 6 percent.
That's a good number. These polls are from 2013. The only other poll I found was a Yale poll from 2010, and its numbers suck much more. This study does not provide cool maps, but instead a tedious paragraph or two, so apologies!
Overall, the survey data, collected between December 24, 2009 and January 3, 2010, offer no predictable portrait of young people when it comes to global warming: While less concerned about and preoccupied with global warming than older generations, they are slightly more likely to believe that global warming is caused by human factors and that there is scientific consensus that it is occurring. They are also somewhat more optimistic than their elders about the effectiveness of taking action to reduce global warming. And, while they are less open to new information about global warming than older generations, they are much more trusting of scientists and President Obama on the issue. media. Of note, young evangelicals, an increasingly important group politically, place strong levels of trust in religious leaders as sources of information about global warming, though they are also trusting of scientists and President Obama.
Nationwide, liberals and conservatives exhibit wide differences in their beliefs about global warming, with conservatives more skeptical and less engaged than liberals, and this ideological divide is no different among young Americans.
Members of the current college-age generation (18-22 year-olds), who have grown up with even less scientific uncertainty about climate change, are somewhat more concerned and engaged than their slightly older 23-34 year-old counterparts_ however, this does not hold across the board.
It's nice that the worse numbers are four years older than the better ones. But I think more studies need to be done.
The key, as far as I can see, is not whether or not someone believes in climate change, but how worried they are about it.
In Europe, it's one of the top worries for the young, right up there with terrorist attacks and economic troubles.
Something I found interesting. This is from a variety of polls, reported by The Atlantic:
When you start proposing hypothetical policies, the numbers often fall. (Fifty percent of Americans support or strongly support a carbon tax, according to a study from the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College.) But when policies aren’t hypothetical—when they’re the status quo—Americans line up behind them. (Almost 70 percent support former President Obama’s Clean Power Plan; roughly the same number want the United States to stay in the Paris Agreement.)
This supports my long-held opinion that what was (is?) needed here is leadership. Most studies show that 45-60% of Americans are worried about global warming. Proposed solutions that are currently in existence show them enthusiastically rallying behind. But ideas of something that could work but hasn't been implemented show a lower rate of support. I suspect it's because Americans don't really believe that good ideas that have not yet been implemented have any chance of being implemented in the future. I've run into this when talking about replacing fossil-fuel-based jobs with green jobs, and providing no-cost retraining for such. It is a good idea. Nobody believes it will happen. They believe the government will let them rot in unemployment. (Gee, where might they have gotten that idea?) There's a sort of "Show Me" attitude amongst the public. But that's just my interpretation of these findings, and it might not be right.
If you include a partisan watchword in a question, people start answering through a different frame. They give the answer that matches their affiliation—their societal “team”—even if they may harbor doubts about it.
Jesus wept. God, how I hate partisanship. The primary brain-rotter of the American public. Isn't it shitty to watch groupthink take over a person's own individual doubts and concerns?
When you leave partisan politics, however, larger majorities appear. Eighty-nine percent and 83 percent of Americans, respectively, support building more solar and wind plants.
It's almost like the partisan divide was engineered to prevent the changes the human race needs to survive.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
We won't be the first civilization to fail, but since we are
in many respects a global community, we will be the biggest. Too bad the Guinness Book won't be around to record our record failure.
Edit: took the word "no" out of the first line
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
My comment was more about observed behaviors and choices
being made by my children, their friends and their peers (in their 20's and 30's), and less about their opinions of climate related public policy issues and science. There seems very little doubt among this cohort that anthropogenic climate change is real, that global temperatures are rising and that polar ice is disappearing. Where differences begin to emerge is in their assessment of just how fast and how serious the changes will come, and whether new technologies will be able to mitigate the effects of higher CO2 levels and prevent a worst case scenario.
I see a surprising amount of what I would call willful optimism in this admittedly small sample; a lifestyle replete with gas guzzling SUV's, large families, rampant consumerism and other behaviors that belie an actual cognizance of the terror of the situation.
“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024
@ovals49 Total agreement. But
Total agreement. But I see the same odd lack of terror almost everywhere.
It is a hard thing to hold in your head, and still live.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I'm quietly freaking out on a daily basis. My cortisol level is
probably through the roof. Everyday decisions involve how my actions will affect the environment.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
Sound like they did political surveys among registered Dems and Repubs only?
Indies form the largest voting group - and isn't there a very large group of Americans who don't vote at all?
If they referred only to the Two-Faced Corporate Party voters, this could be providing misleading data.
And your last line is so accurate that it turns my stomach...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
After sleeping on it (badly), I came up with this
We could stop, or vastly decrease, our buying of new things. We could also strike.
Both of these would be a hard sell with the American public, especially if climate change is given as the reason we're doing it.
If we strike, under these economic and psychological/propagandistic conditions, the establishment will almost certainly find lots of willing scabs to replace us with.
A consumer's strike would have a better chance of working, at least in the sense that Americans would be more likely to do it, and stick to it, but I'm not sure whether the establishment would care anymore, since the success of their businesses, in terms of stock prices, apparently doesn't necessarily have anything to do with either our buying patterns or profits made by said businesses. Amazon has never made a cent of profit, apparently, and its stock prices remain high. I suspect it's not a business at all, but merely a tool for putting local businesses out of business.
If we did a buyer's strike, maybe combined with a move your money tactic, so we could reject the banks as well, we could perhaps get the American public behind that. It wouldn't be easy, but it would be easier than getting them behind a traditional strike.
However, I would suggest that we not put climate front and center, but put corruption front and center, and bolster it with a list of examples of that corruption. Climate could be one of them. The fact is, it's corruption that is the problem here; it's corruption that's kept us from dealing with global warming, just as it's corruption that's kept us from dealing with low wages, high unemployment, fraud by Wall St, endless war, poisoned water, a degraded food supply, the high cost of medical care, the police, as an institution, murdering people on a regular basis, and a score of other issues.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Excellent point. Corruption is the key that keeps us locked
onto the path to disaster.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
Monopolistic major corporations are destroying democracy and the economy, as well as the ecology, and should be boycotted in the interest of survival in all areas.
Boycott widely to weaken the stolen power of corporations enough to get them out of politics and public policy so that power returns to the people so that the people can have a government serving, rather than draining, the public interest, supporting living wages, healthcare, breathable air, safe food, water, products and everything else poisoned by the pathological greed of a relative few also killing the planet.
There you go, something for everybody, all linked together.
Edit: ran to let the dog in and start coffee and, upon return, failed to realize I'd missed the whole last part of your post where you had this covered, lol. Shoulda guessed, but will leave this anyway, as a sign of agreement.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Okay. My hair is on fire.
I am totally flipped out over this.
Think I feel more powerless than at any previous time in my life.
@Granma I hate it too.
I hate it too.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@Granma
Our backs may be to the wall - meaning that we're facing the facts and that we will have to deal with this or let the world die and that either we work out how to shove back effectively now or allow ourselves to be squashed like bugs.
A mass boycott of problem corporations sounds like a good start, doesn't it?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Meanwhile, Trump is pushing for arctic and offshore drilling
To create jobs and give the US "energy dominance". Not a word about climate change from him. Not a word about how jobs and "energy dominance" really don't matter if the planet becomes uninhabitable. Not a word about all the jobs that could be created by a green economy. Jobs / death money
, Energy Dominance
Beware the bullshit factories.
son of a gun.
if this continues we are "toast".
I believe they have given up on usa and are looting the store.
but now this is same idea applied to the planet.
if so, they will just do worse as the end approaches.
they want to be in top position after the apocalypse.
we need a twist in the plot line.
rewrite!.
@Timmethy2.0 Energy dominance my ass.
Energy dominance my ass. If he wanted real energy dominance, he'd get us farther off the petroleum economy.
Competing with Russia and the Middle East's oil by fracking and thus poisoning our water (not good for a nation's power relative to other nations) or by stripping really low-quality fuel out of sand, or by attempting to do the more dangerous work of drilling under the ocean...
rather than competing with their oil by leaping forward to the next energy era
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver