New reality [3]: thresholds matter, be gentle

29 min readJul 28, 2023

[Note: all {x} references within this essay refer to sections in the Synthesis Report for the Sixth Assessment Report The Longer Report (the Report) by the IPCC which are included either verbatim from the text in the Report or augmented for clarity based on additional available information and my interpretation of the effects of the politicised process of approving the final text in the Report. The essay broadly follows the flow of the topic areas and content of the Report.]

[End notes identified using <i> format]

Be gentle. There are no more warnings.

As unprecedented heatwaves smother much of the Northern Hemisphere into uninhabitability, now is the time to move beyond the habitualised paralysis of being unable to receive the information being provided to all of us by the natural systems of our planet. Thresholds matter. Time to grasp what is really happening, what is really at stake, and that it is happening now… not in a far off time.

And yes, whilst this essay is deliberately intended for those in positions of power and authority over other life, over other humans — those most tightly locked into habits that must now be relinquished — it is now a time for all humans to question the stories that we have been told, and that have been rammed down the throats of too many for too long. Infinite growth, commoditisation and monetisation of nature and other humans, separation and sovereignty, titles, status and social credentials, all hard-programmed habits that we need to release from.

There are other stories, other ways of being in relationship with each other and with all life on Earth. Many have forgotten them, some have not.

Find a safe place, preferably with others who care for you, who you care for, and be with the interdependent reality you-we are experiencing right now — hold all that fear, all that anxiety, all that uncertainty, that worry, that panic as it will be your liberation to let go of what you know you have been conditioned to know and to be open to knowing what is there now to be known. It may be best to do this whilst walking, wandering, sitting, exploring in nature. It will be demanding. Getting unstuck is tough. Challenging your habits, your relationships with the world. This is not lo-fi brain work, so prepare yourself by eating well, getting a good night or two of sleep… and freeing your mind.

“Denial is the most predictable of all human responses”, The Architect, The Matrix Reloaded

I am not saying this will be easy. I am saying that there will be no more warnings. In our habits of denial, we have crossed thresholds. Irreversible thresholds.

The recently released Synthesis Report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report Longer Report (the Report) recognised the interdependencies of climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, and human societies and the value of diverse forms of knowledge; and the close linkages between climate change adaptation, mitigation, ecosystem health, human well-being and sustainable development {1}. It also recognised that this is our final warning. Once thresholds are crossed, there is no way back.

This essay explores the findings in the Report and highlights the pervasiveness of non-adaptation and maladaptation (aka denial and delay) as well as the systemic underestimation of immediate and immanent consequences (aka BAU bias) that are prevalent in the final text of the Report. The result is not easy reading if you think through what these words really mean in the wider arc of the history of our species and of all other living beings and systems on this planet… but it is urgent reading. Your ability to be able to receive the messages conveyed within is constrained by the habits you have formed and the premises that constrain the way that you are perceiving your world as you begin reading. These sticky habits and premises can be challenged… by you, by us.

“The premises work only up to a certain limit, and, at some stage or under certain circumstances, if you are carrying serious epistemological errors, you will find that they do not work any more. At this point you discover, to your horror, that it’s sticky. It is as if you had touched honey. As with honey, the falsification gets around; and each thing you try to wipe it off on gets sticky, and your hands still remain sticky”, Gregory Bateson, 1969
(Bateson [1972] 2000: 487)

Time for some epistemological WD-40?

I humbly ask that you leave your ego and your scripts and narratives outside as you walk through this doorway, this portal of possibility and learning. It is my hope that the following words may help shift your perception, because a shift in perception shifts everything and the way that you are able to then make meaning of our world can again be full of possibilities for how we may step forward… together, in relationship with all life.

Introduction: where are we now?

In articulating the observed increases in GHG concentrations, the Report states that those increases since 1750 <i> are unequivocally caused by GHG emissions from human activities. Importantly it goes on to say that the net cooling effect which arises from anthropogenic aerosols peaked in the late 20th century <ii> (that is, mainly, sulphur dioxide pollution — in particular from coal-fired power stations in the US, Europe and China and from international shipping) {2.1.1}.

Human and ecosystem vulnerabilities are interdependent {2.1.2}

Climate change has caused substantial damages and irreversible losses in terrestrial, freshwater, cryospheric, and coastal and open ocean ecosystems. Impacts on some ecosystems are already irreversible, such as the impacts of hydrological change resulting from the retreat of glaciers, or the changes in mountain and Arctic ecosystems driven by permafrost thaw {2.1.2}.

Climate change has adversely affected human physical and mental health globally and is contributing to humanitarian crises where climate hazards are interacting with high vulnerability. Cultural losses, related to tangible and intangible heritage, reduce adaptive capacity and result in irrevocable losses of sense of belonging, valued cultural practices, identity and home {2.1.2}, furthering the sense of disconnection and separation from nature and the living systems of the world–which may matter more than we can currently imagine.

Yet by 2020, only 56 countries (covering 53% of measured global emissions) had laws primarily focusing on reducing GHG emissions and only 20% of (measured) global emissions were covered by carbon taxes or emissions trading systems — and of these the coverage and pricing to date has been insufficient to achieve any meaningful reductions {2.2.2}. More COPs and IPCC Assessment Reports do not seem to be helping us to realise that we are on a rollercoaster climbing our way to the drop point after which (just like a rollercoaster in free-fall) emissions will fall very quickly and we will transition into another form <iii>.

1 Non-adaptation and maladaptation remain the norm

Integrated, multi-sectoral solutions that address social inequities, differentiate responses based on climate risk and cut across systems, increase the feasibility and effectiveness of adaptation in multiple sectors {2.2.2}. However, there remain few examples of integrated approaches and there remain significant gaps between global ambitions and the sum of declared national ambitions, further highlighting the issues with maintaining the supreme right of sovereignty rather than embracing complementarity and solidarity. Despite some progress, adaptation gaps persist due to many initiatives prioritising short-term reduction, hindering transformational adaptation {2.3}.

Transitioning from incremental to transformational adaptation can help overcome some adaptation limits. However, prioritisation of options and transitions from incremental to transformational adaptation are limited due to vested interests, economic lock-ins, institutional path dependencies and prevalent practices, cultures, norms, and belief systems. Challenges also remain for green bonds and similar products which continue to avoid addressing critical structural concerns around integrity and additionality with the overwhelming majority of tracked climate finance still directed towards mitigation not adaptation {2.3.2}.

Limits to adaptation have been reached in some sectors and regions {2.3}, in spite of some adaptation having buffered some climate impacts there is clear evidence {2.3.2} that maladaptation is increasing and disproportionately affecting vulnerable groups {2.3}. Maladaptation can be avoided by flexible, multi-sectoral, inclusive and long-term planning and implementation of adaptation actions with benefits to many sectors and systems {2.3.2}.

Even as limits to adaptation are reached systemic barriers remain, such as funding, knowledge and practice gaps, including lack of climate crisis literacy and data that hinders adaptation progress. Insufficient financing, especially for adaptation, limits climate action in particular in countries still suffering from the structural destruction of colonialist ideologies {2.3} <iv>. Many funding, knowledge and practice gaps remain for effective implementation, monitoring and evaluation and current adaptation efforts are not expected to meet existing goals. At current rates of adaptation planning and implementation, the adaptation gaps will continue to grow {2.3.2}, further accelerating the irreversible economic, cultural and human and ecosystem losses worldwide.

In essence, further accelerating the trophthybris <v> of our addiction to violence.

Adaptation initiatives continue to be driven by ill-suited economic and financial considerations and as a result prioritise immediate and near-term climate risk reduction, for example through hard flood protection which reduces the opportunities for transformational adaptation such as societal retreat from unsurvivable low-lying coastal locations. Most observed adaptation is fragmented, small in scale, incremental, sector-specific, and focused more on planning rather than implementation. Further, observed adaptation is unequally distributed across regions and the largest adaptation gaps exist among populations subject to historical and ongoing colonialist ideologies of extraction and violence {2.3.2}.

In addition, the complexity of land ownership and management systems {3.3.3} — anchored as they are in abusus <vi> — and cultural aspects prevent any approaches attempting to address these deeper premises and pervasive mythologies (such as the culturally dominant Myth of Objectivism <vii>).

With increasing warming now inevitable due to inertia in the climate system, adaptation options are becoming more constrained and less effective. At even higher levels of warming, losses and damages, and additional human and natural systems will move further beyond adaptation limits {3.2}.

Integrated, cross-cutting multi-sectoral solutions increase the effectiveness of adaptation, whilst maladaptive responses to climate change (such as seawalls) create lock-ins of vulnerability, exposure and risks that are difficult and expensive, if not impossible, to change and which exacerbate existing inequalities {3.2}. A range of adaptation options, such as disaster risk management, early warning systems, climate services and risk spreading and sharing approaches, have broad applicability across sectors and provide greater risk-reduction benefits when combined {4.5.6} which can realise potential synergies between multiple Sustainable Development Goals {4.6}.

2 Intentional systemic underestimation?

Limitations of assumptions and “neutrality”

Fossil fuel reserves cannot be burnt and emitted now or in the future anywhere {2.3.1}. But the burning and emitting continues as the modelled pathways continue unrealistic and unchallenged underlying assumptions. As the Report clearly states: “The global modelled emission pathways, including those based on cost effective approaches contain regionally differentiated assumptions and outcomes, and have to be assessed with the careful recognition of these assumptions. Most do not make explicit assumptions about global equity, environmental justice or intra-regional distribution.”

It continues… “The IPCC is neutral with regard to assumptions underlying the scenarios in the literature assessed in this report, which do not cover all possible (or even probable) futures {2.3.2} (for example, forced displacement is not considered in the assessment) {3.1.2}”. In other words, the IPCC explicitly allows the majority of modelled emission pathways to be based on the maintenance of the global economic and financial distribution of power regardless of whether this creates unresolvable tensions for the possibility of achieving stated global aims.

The nonsense of net-zero: “overshoot” and the “remaining carbon budget”

An example of the stated “neutrality” is the inclusion of the global net-zero narrative which is based on unachievable levels of GHG emissions removals and indefinite storage, and is therefore not relevant for any substantive consideration of current and future options. The various net-zero pledges are little more than further acts of climate denial, and delay meaningful attention on the underlying power dynamics that maintain a very high risk fossil-fuel based infinite economic growth model {2.3.1}.

The official narrative woven throughout the assessment report is that limiting human-caused global warming requires net-zero anthropocentric CO2 (not GHG) emissions and that exceeding a warming level and returning (i.e. overshoot) implies increased risks and potentially irreversible impacts, however that achieving and sustaining global net negative CO2 emissions would reduce warming. It continues, by suggesting, that limiting global temperature increase to a specific level (which as noted elsewhere is not possible) requires limiting net CO2 emissions to within a finite carbon budget, along with strong reduction in other GHGs {3.3}.

Only a small number of the ambitious (i.e. unrealistic given what is also reported about increasing maladaptation) modelled global pathways limit global warming to 1.5 C (with >50% certainty) without overshoot. Also noting that overshoot of a warming level results in more adverse impacts, some irreversible, and additional risks for human and natural systems compared to staying below that warming level, with risks growing with the magnitude and duration of overshoot {3.3.4}. And perhaps more importantly, framing a future with overshoot nourishes hubris and BAU.

Overshooting 1.5 C (which is now locked-in as the WMO warned in May 2023 and has been once again breached in June 2023 <viii>) results in irreversible adverse impacts on certain ecosystems, such as polar, mountain, and coastal ecosystems, impacts by ice-sheet glacier melt, or by accelerating and higher committed sea level rise. Overshoot increases the risks of severe and irreversible impacts, such as increased wildfires, mass mortality of trees, drying of peatlands, thawing of permafrost and weakening of natural land carbon sinks, such impacts will increase releases of GHG making temperature reversal even more improbable {3.3.4}… in reality, making temperature reversal impossible. Why would we want to increase the risks?

The larger the overshoot, the more net negative CO2 emissions needed to return to a given warming level. Reducing global temperatures by removing CO2 would require currently (and almost certainly also in the future) impossible levels of net negative emissions. However, the text allowed to be included in the Report provides an ostensibly plausible and numerical statement of how much fantastical net negative emissions and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) would be required — giving a median estimate of 220 GtCO2 for every tenth of a degree of warming, and a high overshoot estimate of 360 GtCO2.

But the Report adds reassuringly that we could reduce feasibility and sustainability concerns, and social and environmental risks, if there are more rapid reductions in CO2 and non-CO2 emissions, particularly methane, and limit peak warming levels {3.3.4}. That is a very big “IF” given emissions continue to rise, not fall.

“Who controls the past now, controls the future; who controls the present now, controls the past”, Testify, Rage Against The Machine

This official narrative of “limiting warming to a specified level” becomes even more problematic due to the inclusion of very significant caveats in the footnotes to the suggested best estimate of the remaining carbon budget (RCB) from the beginning of 2020 to limit warming to 1.5 C (with a 50% likelihood) being 500 GtCO2. The footnote states that this likelihood is based on the uncertainty in transient climate response from cumulative net CO2 emissions and additional Earth system feedbacks and provides the probability that global warming will not exceed the temperature levels specified {3.3}.

Those are existential level caveats because there is significant understatement in the climate response from trillions of tons of historic emissions and Earth system feedbacks that have not been considered (including additional ecosystem responses to warming not yet fully incorporated into climate models, such as GHG fluxes from wetlands, permafrost, and wildfires <ix>, which would further increase concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere {3.3}). In fact the caveats make statements about “limiting warming” absurd. Particularly because “in scenarios with increasing CO2 emissions, the land and ocean carbon sinks will be less effective at slowing the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere” {3.3}.

Unfortunately, these caveats give invalid credibility to the pursuit of a number of net-zero approaches (like Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) approaches and CDR… that the Report states are apparently unavoidable to “counterbalance” hard-to-abate emissions {3.3.2}) which if they were to be implemented, introduce a widespread range of new risks to people and ecosystems, which are not well understood. Lack of robust and formal SRM governance poses risks as deployment by a limited number of states (or individuals) could create further international tensions {3.1.2}. And implementation of carbon capture and storage (CCS) — a prominent form of CDR — currently faces technological, economic, institutional, ecological, environmental, and socio-cultural barriers. It is important to note also that global rates of CCS deployment are far below those included in modelled pathways limiting global warming to 1.5 C {3.3.3}… that is, they are fantasies that support the narrative of net-zero, which itself supports the continuation of business-as-usual with incremental changes rather than challenging business-as-usual as suicidal and moving immediately to transformational, systemic and structural shifts. An example is in the statement that “maintaining emission-intensive systems may, in some regions and sectors, be more expensive than transitioning to low emission systems” {4.5.1}. But in which future does maintaining emission-intensive systems make sense given the irreversible nature of changes that are now underway globally?

Ultimately the issue is epistemological with the underlying thinking embedded in the Report being stuck in a narrative of solving and outcomes — specifically the notion of a “desired climate outcome” — on which the timing of net-zero CO2 emissions, followed by net-zero GHG emissions, is contingent {3.3.2}. Further fantasies are described in the section on reducing industry emissions: “this will entail coordinated action throughout value chains (and necessarily between nations and regions) with transformational changes in production processes necessary. This includes deep reductions in cement process emissions that will rely on cementitious material substitution and depend on the availability of (currently unavailable) CCS, CCU (carbon capture and use) and DAC (direct air capture) until new chemistries are mastered” {4.5.2}. “Until new chemistries are mastered” is a pretty big leap of faith…

Sea-levels

Future warming, sea-level rise and other now irreversible changes will be driven by future, current and past emissions {3.1} — with cumulative GHG emissions dominating {3.1.1}; not only future emissions. This is due to the known lag between emissions and the manifestation of impacts — with concurrent and multiple changes in climatic impact-drivers {3.1.1} likely to be far greater given that climate sensitivity and carbon cycle feedbacks are higher than currently included estimates {3.1.1} with irreversible impacts across all major climate system components (including in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level) on centennial to millennial time scales {3.1.1}. Sea level rise is now unavoidable for centuries to millennia due to continuing deep ocean warming and ice sheet melt. Sea levels will remain elevated for thousands of years {3.1.3}. This alone requires the abandonment of and retreat from almost all low elevation coastal human settlements, as soon as possible.

Due to relative sea level rise, extreme sea level events that occurred once per century in the recent past will occur at least annually at more than half of all tide locations in the coming years, and risks for coastal ecosystems, people and infrastructure will continue to increase beyond 2100… assuming people are still here. At the sustained warming levels that will be experienced above 2 C, the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets will be lost almost completely and irreversibly over multiple millennia. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is going to continue to weaken over the 21st century for all considered scenarios with indicators of very near-term abrupt collapse already being observed {3.1.3} <x>.

Clean air and “termination shock”

Changes in short-lived climate forcers (SLCF) resulting from the five considered future emissions scenarios lead to additional global warming in the near- and long-term. Simultaneous stringent climate change mitigation and air pollution control policies have a limiting effect on this additional warming and lead to strong benefits from air quality for human physical and mental health {3.1.1}.

However, significant reductions in atmospheric sulphate aerosols through reductions in the use of high-sulphur fuels in power generation and transport contribute to albedo reduction and acceleration in the Earth’s heating rate (with observed Absorbed Solar Radiation increasing by 4x from 2014 compared to pre-2014 — even before the COVID pause and post-2020 IMO sulphur fuel regulations are factored in, which have caused an even more rapid acceleration of EEI <xi>), and cause runaway aerosol termination shock… sort of like that roller-coaster in free-fall, except the track is not there and coming to rest will be very bumpy, very very bumpy.

Understatement of risks

The probability of low-likelihood outcomes (“tail risks” <xii>) associated with potentially very large impacts increase with the higher global warming levels now locked-in. Warming substantially above the very likely range for a given scenario cannot be ruled out (for instance due to the deep uncertainty in ice-sheet processes), and there is high confidence this would lead to regional changes greater than assessed in many aspects of the climate system, such as forced relocation of populations in low elevation coastal zones {3.1.3}.

Further evidence of systemic conservatism and understatement resulting from the nature of the IPCC assessment process includes that for a given level of warming, many climate-related risks are assessed to be higher than in Assessment Report 5 (AR5). Levels of risk for all Reasons for Concern (RFCs) are assessed to be high to very high at lower global warming levels compared to what was assessed in AR5. This is based upon evidence of observed impacts, improved process understanding, and new knowledge on exposure and vulnerability of human and natural systems, including limits to adaptation. With the transition to a very high level of risk having an emphasis on irreversibility and adaptation limits {3.1.2}.

“People hate to think about bad things happening so they always underestimate their likelihood”, Charlie Geller, The Big Short

Risks, including cascading risks and risks from overshoot are projected to become increasingly severe and increasingly complex and more difficult to manage with every increment of global warming {3.1.2} — that is now known to be accelerating rapidly due to termination shock effects and continuing maladaptation noted above. If global warming increases even faster than expected (which continues to be the observed reality), compound extreme events will become more frequent, with higher likelihood of unprecedented intensities, durations and spatial extents with irreversible and unsurvivable consequences {3.1.3}. Multiple climatic and non-climatic risks will interact, resulting in increasing compounding and cascading impacts becoming more difficult (and even impossible) to manage. In the near-term, many climate-associated risks <xiii> to human and natural systems depend more strongly on changes in these systems’ vulnerability and exposure than on differences in intensity and frequency of climate hazards, for example developing integrated health action plans that include early warning and response systems are effective for surviving some extreme heat events and pervasive conditions {4.5.5}.

Human and ecosystem vulnerabilities are interdependent {4.2}, and human vulnerability will continue to concentrate in informal settlements and rapidly growing smaller settlements; and vulnerability in rural areas will be heightened by reduced habitability and high-reliance on climate-sensitive livelihoods {4.3}. In the urban context, the largest adaptation gaps exist in projects that attempt to manage complex risks, for example in the food-energy-water-health nexus or the inter-relationships of air quality and climate risk {2.3.2}. Climate change risks to cities, settlements and key infrastructure will rise sharply with further global warming, especially in places already exposed to high temperatures, along coastlines or with high vulnerabilities {3.1.2}. Changes in urban form, reallocation of street space for cycling and walking, digitalisation (e.g. teleworking) and programs that encourage changes in consumer behaviour (e.g. transport pricing) are examples of potential adaptation actions that can reduce the demand for transport services and support the shift to more climate-efficient transport modes {4.5.3}. Whilst the implementation of packages of multiple city-scale mitigation and adaptation strategies can have cascading effects across sectors and reduce GHG emissions both within and outside a city’s administrative boundaries {4.9} <xiv>.

Concurrent cascading risks from climate change to food systems, human settlements, infrastructure and health will make these risks more severe and more difficult to manage, including when interacting with non-climatic risk drivers such as competition for land between urban expansion and food production, and pandemics. Loss of ecosystems and their services has cascading and long-term impacts on people globally, especially for Indigenous Peoples and local communities who are directly dependent on ecosystems to meet basic needs {4.3}.

Increasing transboundary risks are projected across the food, energy and water sectors as impacts from weather and climate extremes propagate through supply-chains, markets and natural resource flows and may interact with impacts from other crises such as pandemics. Risks also arise from some responses intended to reduce the risks of climate change including risks from maladaptation and adverse side effects of some emissions reduction and CDR measures, such as afforestation of naturally unforested land or poorly implemented bioenergy, compounding climate-related risks to biodiversity, food, water security, and livelihoods {4.3}.

3 Irreversibilities and the “window”

The likelihood of further abrupt and irreversible changes and their impacts increase with the high global warming levels we will experience in the very near future. As warming levels continue to increase, so do the risks of species extinction and irreversible loss of biodiversity in ecosystems, such as forests, coral reefs, and in Arctic regions. Risks associated with large-scale singular events or tipping points, such as ice sheet instability or ecosystem loss from tropical forests, have already transitioned to high risk and will transition to very high risk above 2.5 C of warming. The response of biogeochemical cycles to anthropocentric perturbations will be abrupt at regional scales and irreversible on decadal to centennial time scales. The probability of crossing other uncertain regional thresholds increases with the continuing warming {3.1.3}.

According to the Report there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all, but even that small window may have already closed as cost-benefit analysis remains limited in its ability to represent all damages from climate change, including non-monetary damages, or to capture the heterogeneous nature of damages and the risks of catastrophic damages {3.4}. That is, the damages that would not just close the window for good but smash it to pieces. With the near inevitability of exceeding 2 C of global warming, it is warned that climate resilient development will not be possible in some regions and sub-regions and any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss the brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all {3.4.2}.

Is it just me or are others observing that there still is no concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation? Thus suggesting that that tantalisingly offered window may actually no longer be there… or actually that it has not been there for quite some time due to the endless delays clearly visualised in the climbing rollercoaster above.

Interestingly it is noted that the magnitude and rate of climate change and associated risks depend strongly on near-term mitigation and adaptation actions, and projected adverse impacts and related losses and damages escalate with every increment of global warming. Whilst also noting that scaling-up climate action may generate disruptive changes in economic structure with distributional consequences and the need to reconcile divergent interests, values and worldviews, within and between countries {4.2}.

Why was “may” selected here? Surely the sort of climate action that the rest of the Report calls for WILL generate massively disruptive changes in the economic structure with unprecedented distributional consequences in terms of challenging and reworking what it is that constitutes economic activity (and the accumulation of financial wealth for the purposes of maintaining existing global geopolitical power dynamics).

Barriers to the feasibility of scaling-up climate action need to be reduced or removed to deploy available and necessary mitigation and adaptation options. Many limits to feasibility and effectiveness in responses can be overcome by integrating diverse knowledges and values (including cultural values, Indigenous Knowledge, local knowledge, and scientific knowledge) and addressing a range of barriers systemically, including economic, technological, institutional, social, environmental, geopolitical, geophysical, and epistemological {4.2}.

4 Equity and inclusion in climate action

Adaptation and mitigation actions, across scales, sectors and regions, that prioritise equity, climate justice, rights-based approaches, social justice, and inclusivity, lead to more sustainable outcomes, reduce trade-offs, support transformative change and advance the possibilities of climate resilient development. Meaningful participation and inclusive planning, informed by cultural values, Indigenous Knowledge, local knowledge, and scientific knowledge can help address adaptation gaps and avoid maladaptation {4.4}.

Equity remains a central, though not primary, element in the UN climate regime given the concessions that are made in the differentiation between states over time and the challenges in assessing fair shares {4.4} under a sovereignty-based rights model rather than a complementarity-based or solidarity-based rights model. An example of this central conflict is the statement that effective climate governance enables mitigation and adaptation by providing overall direction based on national circumstances, setting targets and priorities, mainstreaming climate action across policy domains and levels based on national circumstances and in the context of international cooperation {4.7}.

Cooperation and inclusive decision-making, with local communities and Indigenous Peoples, as well as recognition of the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples, is integral to successful adaptation across forests and ecosystems. Maintaining the resilience of biodiversity and ecosystem services at a global scale depends on this form of cooperation and inclusive decision-making for effective and equitable conservation of all of Earth’s land, freshwater and ocean areas, including currently near-natural ecosystems {4.5.4}.

Climate-literacy and information provided through climate services and community approaches, including those that are informed by Indigenous Knowledge and local knowledge, can accelerate behavioural changes and planning. Educational and information programmes, using the arts, participatory modelling and citizen science can facilitate awareness, heighten risk perception and influence behaviours. The way choices are presented can enable adoption of low GHG intensive socio-cultural options, such as shifts to balanced, sustainable healthy diets, reduced food waste, and active mobility. Judicious labelling and framing, and communication of right-based and equitable social norms can increase the effect of mandates, subsidies and taxes {4.5.6}.

5 Finance and international cooperation

There is sufficient global capital to close the global investment gaps but there are barriers to redirect capital to climate action {4.8}, such as the need to remove fossil fuel subsidies which would reduce emissions {4.7}. Scaling-up financial flows requires clear signalling from governments and the international community. Together investors, financial intermediaries, central banks and financial regulators can begin to shift the systemic underpricing of climate-related risks {4.8.1}.

The large majority of emission modelling studies assume significant international cooperation to secure financial flows and address inequality and poverty issues in pathways limiting global warming. There are large variations in the modelled effects of mitigation on GDP across regions, depending notably on economic structure, regional emissions reductions, policy design and the level of international cooperation {4.8.2}, which can be enhanced with multilateral governance effects to help reconcile contested interests, world views and values about how to address climate change. Improvements to national and international governance structures would further enable the decarbonisation of transboundary activities like shipping and aviation {4.8.2}.

Technological innovation can have trade-offs and include externalities such as new and greater environmental impacts and social inequalities; rebound effects leading to lower net emission reductions or even emission increases; and over-dependence on foreign knowledge and providers {4.8.3} further maintaining and reinforcing colonialist world views, values and structures.

Conclusion: where to now?

Where now shall we wander…?

Which stories now shall we share with each other…?

It is my sense that time has run out for the fixing-and-solving so prevalent in the Report to now be possible without great loss, an acceleration of the thinning of life, a deepening of the muting of life before the end of this current cycle of state shifting settles into another harmony… likely beyond the time of humans.

Thomas Kuhn pointed out that getting unstuck, that is, the transfer of allegiance from one paradigm to another is “a conversion experience that cannot be forced” (Lent 2017: 372). And Gregory Bateson observed, “if a man achieves or suffers change in the premises which are deeply embedded in his mind, he will surely find that the results of that change will ramify throughout his whole universe. Such changes we may call ‘epistemological’” (Bateson [1972] 2000: 336).

In a sense, as Robin Kimmerer has written, unless we find a way together to move away from current dominant epistemologies of violence to enter into reciprocity and gentleness, we are walking away with goods for which we have not paid; but for which we are and will pay dearly (Kimmerer [2013] 2020: 328). This epistemological shift to valuing and honouring the caregiving responsibility <xv> may be our way out of the binding and damaging structural violence inherent in our stuck social arrangements which maintains that progress in human culture remains firmly anchored in the monetisation of the destruction of the relationships between all life on Earth. It may be the shift to release ourselves into new metaphors that embody the interactional nature of the way that humans make sense of our reality.

Can we be in spaces together to mutually absorb all of this information about the conditions of the Earth systems on which we rely on to continue to exist and re-relationship with ourselves, with each other and with all life on Earth to respect and tend to all life simply because it is life?

Can we be in right relationship with life, respecting thresholds rather than hubristically believing we can overshoot them and then magically reverse course?

Can we be curious enough about other ways of being on Earth and care for each other as we realise that the reality we have been living is nothing more than a dream, one possible dream… and that other dreams are out there waiting for us?

Are you afraid? Good.

Are you alone? No.

Some have already acknowledged our new reality, many are waiting to be with you as you step across the threshold into your new perception of reality so that you are able to receive what is being said. Combining our stories, hands in hands as life breaks down and our conditioned edges fray, melting into each other, into life shared… we can be.

“I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… you’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin”, Neo, The Matrix

Share some new stories of healing, of caring, of responsibility and love for all life, but mostly just be gentle and respect thresholds.

Because thresholds matter, a lot.

Be gentle.

🦆

This is the 3rd in the New Reality series and was published on a random Friday in the midst of the awesomeness of the forces of nature that we have unleashed upon ourselves as a provocation and exploration of the limitations of our perceptions and the errors in our premises, our hubristic disregard and denial of thresholds, and the opportunities to become unstuck from ill-suited ways of being in this world together... by being gentle.

The 2nd essay in the New Reality series published in October 2022 is “New Reality: New way of life with no way back, but perhaps a way forward?” and is available here: https://medium.com/p/1d0735750b2d

The 1st essay in the New Reality series published in June 2022 is “New Reality: Hysteresis, Perceptions and Spaciousness” and is available here: https://medium.com/@scott42195/new-reality-hysteresis-perceptions-spaciousness-afd4091a8f44

Bibliography

Bateson [1972] 2000. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. University of Chicago Press. Chicago.

Graeber and Wengrow [2021] 2022. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Penguin Books. UK.

Kimmerer [2013] 2020. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Penguin Books. UK.

Lakoff and Johnson [1980] 2003. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press. Chicago.

Lent 2017. The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning. Prometheus Books. Maryland.

End notes

<i> 1750 being the appropriate baseline for pre- / post-industrial human civilisation, rather than the baseline more frequently used throughout the Report: 1850.

<ii> See section on “termination shock” for more details on why this matters.

<iii> Remembering here the simple learning codified into the First Law of Thermodynamics that energy is never lost, it simply changes form in response to changes in the conditions of the environment in which it exists — like kinetic energy becoming heat energy when you press your foot on the brake pedal of a moving vehicle (incidentally, that’s not a bad analogy to hold onto throughout the rest of this essay… taking our collective foot of the accelerator pedal and dabbing the brakes is maybe a good way of starting to visual what a change from our collective — though differentiated — habit of infinite growth would like look). It is not that “we will go extinct”, but rather that “we will no longer continue in our current homo sapiens form”… we will be in relationship with each other and with all life differently.

<iv> Whilst these countries are conventionally referred to as “developing countries”, I think that it is more appropriate to refer to them as “countries still suffering from the structural destruction of colonialist ideologies” or perhaps just “destroyed and recovering countries”. I welcome your thoughts on new ways of referring to what is generally classified only according to current income and financial wealth measures, rather than a more systemic acknowledgement of the historical role of colonialist ideologies and objectivist violence and dehumanisation: “developed countries” = “cruel/ violent/ extractive/ colonialist countries” perhaps?

<v> A word formed from the Greek root words tropos + phthisis + hybris which has the meaning “the transformation towards the wasting away/ atrophying/ collapsing of arrogance” (and by extension of abnegation of our understanding of the realities of the ways of living systems).

<vi> “What makes the Roman Law conception of property — the basis of almost all legal systems today — unique is that the responsibility to care and share is reduced to a minimum, or even eliminated entirely. In Roman Law there are three basic rights relating to possession: usus (the right to use), fructus (the right to enjoy the products of a property, for instance the fruit of a tree), and abusus (the right to damage or destroy). If one has only the first two rights this is referred to as usufruct, and is not considered true possession under the law. The defining feature of true legal property, then, is that one has the option of not taking care of it, or even destroying it at will” (Graeber and Wengrow [2021] 2022: 161). It can perhaps even be said that ‘nature’ (and human life, by extension) is worthless unless it has been destroyed (or is able to be destroyed: think of a forest), in the sense that to be considered a possession requires the severing of the living relationships and interdependencies of which it had been a part.

<vii> “In a culture where the myth of objectivism is very much alive and truth is always absolute truth, the people who get to impose their metaphors on the culture get to define what we consider to be true–absolutely and objectively true. All cultures have myths, and people cannot function without myth any more than they can function without metaphor. And just as we often take the metaphors of our own culture as truths, so we often take the myths of our own cultures as truths. The myth of objectivism is particularly insidious in this way. Not only does it purport not to be a myth, but it makes both myths and metaphors objects of belittlement and scorn: according to the objectivist myth, myths and metaphors cannot be taken seriously because they are not objectively true. However, the myth of objectivism is itself not objectively true” (Lakoff and Johnson [1980] 2003: 160, 186).

<viii> “The year 2023 saw the hottest early June on record, with the global average topping out at more than 1.5°C higher than pre-industrial average temperatures for this time of year — echoing the WMO’s prediction that we will start to see this threshold crossed more and more often.” Grace Stinson

<ix> With 2023 officially the worst wildfire season in Canadian history, the federal government is warning that the fire risk will remain very high across the country for the rest of the summer, Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said: “Drought conditions, when coupled with above-normal temperatures across most of the country, means that the risk of fire activity is going to remain very high throughout the majority of the summer.”

<x> “This decline [of the AMOC in recent decades] may be associated with an almost complete loss of stability over the course of the last century, and the AMOC could be close to a critical transition to its weak circulation mode.” (Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation | Nature Climate Change) and importantly “climate models show a common bias toward a stable AMOC (with a single equilibrium). This bias in AMOC stability casts serious doubt on the projection of future AMOC change” (sic, for example, the statement included in {3.1.3} that “an abrupt collapse is not expected before 2100”) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1601666. The Gulf Stream system could collapse as soon as 2025, a new study suggests, and that “the shutting down of the vital ocean currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) by scientists, would bring catastrophic climate impacts”.

<xi> EEI (the Earth’s radiative Energy Imbalance) is the difference between absorbed solar radiation and outgoing thermal radiation emitted by Earth at the top of the atmosphere (TOA).

<xii> “Tail risk” refers to the end portions of distribution curves (the bell-shaped diagrams that show statistical probabilities for a variety of outcomes).

<xiii> Principal natural hazards and associated risks expected in the near-term (at 1.5 C global warming) are:

hot extremes and dangerous heat-humidity conditions, including marine heatwaves
forest ecosystems and kelp and seagrass ecosystems collapse
Arctic sea-ice and terrestrial ecosystems and warm-water coral reef systems collapse
extreme rainfall and associated flooding, and peak wind conditions
water scarcity, wildfire damage and permafrost degradation
continued sea-level rise and increased frequency of extreme sea-level events, including land salinization
ill health and premature deaths from food-borne, water-borne, and vector-borne disease risks and mental health challenges including anxiety and stress
cryosphere-related changes in floods, landslides and water availability

<xiv> This was articulated in: “Roadmap 2030: Financing and implementing the Global Goals in Human Settlements and City-Regions”

<xv> I feel the caregiving responsibility here being an open non-reciprocal, non-controlling, undefined sense of being in which (as I frame it: “nourishing/ tending into the vitality of life-ing”) as humans we are always open to caring, tending into caring spaces not in a predefined or saviour-esque mode but rather in a way of being that is absent a sense of violence = progress.