As the Guardian notes this morning:
The world is set to have been hotter in 2023 than in any other year on record, scientists have declared, before a landmark climate summit this month.
They added:
“We can say with near certainty that 2023 will be the warmest year on record, and is currently 1.43C above the pre-industrial average,” said Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. “The sense of urgency for ambitious climate action going into Cop28 has never been higher.”
The Copernicus scientists found last month was the hottest October on record globally, with temperatures 1.7C above what they were thought to have been during the average October in the late 1800s.
In this context I note another article in the Guardian this morning, which suggests:
The world's fossil fuel producers are planning expansions that would blow the planet's carbon budget twice over, a UN report has found. Experts called the plans “insanity” which “throw humanity's future into question”.
The energy plans of the petrostates contradicted their climate policies and pledges, the report said. The plans would lead to 460% more coal production, 83% more gas, and 29% more oil in 2030 than it was possible to burn if global temperature rise was to be kept to the internationally agreed 1.5C. The plans would also produce 69% more fossil fuels than is compatible with the riskier 2C target.
So will insanity prevail?
When all is said and done, that is the biggest existential question of our moment, and the sobering reality is that it is likely that insanity will win on this one. Neoliberal capital markets value dollars now much more than they value lives, including those of many now alive.
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Insanity is prevailing I’m afraid. The pre-industrial average when records weren’t a thing is now known to have been almost 1.5 centigrade cooler than now.
“The market” alone won’t operate to address climate change unless the externalities are priced in. The atmosphere does not give a price signal. It is a tragedy of the commons. But the government ok behalf of the people can set the regulatory terms on which the market operates.
I’m also tempted to say there is no such thing as “the market”, only individual men and women, and that no market can do anything except through people, and people look after themselves first. But if you change the views of the people then “the market” will also change.
But if the market denies people choice, how can they change?
The atmosphere doesn’t give a price signal neither does morality revealing the flaw in free market capitalism that human beings have to urgently fix!
I agree about the insanity but it is the insanity of the logic of the Ayn Rand credo – to maximise one’s advantages at the expense of any other considerations.
Obviously the rich are going to make as much money as they can so that their spending power will enable them to continue to live on this planet long after it has become impossible to do so for the rest of us.
I honestly think that that is their thinking. And that will be expensive for sure.
I was an active member in environmental groups in my teens London back in the 1970s. It became apparent early on that all the groups I was connected to were infiltrated by shady amoral state agents. Looking back this was just part of a wider fossil fuel corporate funded shut down of all well informed individuals that dared to questioned the social direction being taken by our ignorant and greed obsessed politicians.
Even with this experience I never believed they would continue to brutally exploit our earth so far beyond the obvious human extinction point. I have been proven, once again, to have been far too optimistic.
This only ends one way. Buckle up as best.
It became really obvious to me in the same period (1970s-80s) that even local protest groups were infiltrated, often agents provoking people to rash actions. I was more in the CND and then Miners Strike side of stuff, but the same things happened there (I was in Nottingham)
But is there not a cost associated with dealing with the effects of climate change? Should the markets not be required to factor this in? I realise that this needs more thought but perhaps if those responsible for pollution felt a substantial hit to their profits it may curb their activities.
See my sustainable cost accounting – google it