So we’re just going to wait around for global warming, then?
Crimes of the hot
We’re living in an amazing technological era — one in which we’ve reached a level of advancement that allows us to travel globally in mere hours and create algorithms to understand and predict how and why we’re seeing changes in our atmosphere and climate. We’ve matured to the point of self-awareness of our environmental impact brought on by our industrial and technological foibles and follies, yet we’re not quite advanced enough it seems, to actually make the necessary changes.
In article on Vox.com titled, The world just agreed to a major climate deal in Paris. Now comes the hard part, Brad Plumer outlines how the best and the brightest in the world gathered in Paris in December 2015 to address climate change, and approved a 31-page document that “add[s] structure and and momentum to efforts that are currently underway around the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” These pledges look really nice on paper, but with global emissions “projected to keep rising through 2030, putting us on pace for 2.7°C (or more) of warming by century’s end,” it would seem like there should be a little bit more urgency. It seems like it’s all promises and no action.
“To stop global warming,” writes Plumer, “Every country will have to do much, much more in the years ahead to transition away from fossil fuels (which still provide 86 percent of the world’s energy), move to cleaner sources, and halt deforestation.” We have to go beyond diplomacy, go beyond negotiations. It’s interesting that the Paris talks differed from past agreements like the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which an agreement was emission cuts were negotiated — instead in Paris each country decided for itself how much it will cut emissions. How and what will actually happen remains to be seen, especially when fossil fuels continue to be the cheapest fuels out there.
Ultimately what it comes down to is that yes, there’s a deal, but these voluntary climate pledges are so far “awfully flimsy.” Without clearly defined action these kinds of talks are basically worthless. We’re smart enough to know that we’re poised at the brink, and we’re facing two choices: we can actually do work to help lower emissions into the atmosphere, or we can just continue on, business as usual. These choices can’t merely be solved through science or technology or climate models or diplomacy — they need real humans taking responsibility and making changes.
Gavin Schmidt ends his TED talk, The emergent patterns of climate change, with a quote by Sherwood Rowland, who won the Nobel Prize for the chemistry that led to ozone depletion, and this quote just seemed apropos. Rowland asked during his acceptance speech, “What is the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?”
