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The Point of No Return [1]

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Date: 2023-06-30

BREAKING, as reported by Reuters:

Climate nears point of no return as land, sea temperatures break records, experts say

SINGAPORE, June 30 (Reuters) - The target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) is moving out of reach, climate experts say, with nations failing to set more ambitious goals despite months of record-breaking heat on land and sea. As envoys gathered in Bonn in early June to prepare for this year's annual climate talks in November, average global surface air temperatures were more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for several days, the EU-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said.

So is that it? Is it game over? Is it really all hopeless and pointless from here on out?

Where do we go from here? What steps can we take? Do we begin to grieve, start processing, make our own personal final plans? Depending on our age, do we start looking for a refuge — a bolthole — for the next few decades? Do we gather our kids and our pets and move someplace north, where we can go off grid and maybe eke out a living as the globe heats and the growing seasons change and crops fail and the weather grows hotter and wetter and wilder and more savage?

Do we stay where we are and hope for the best? That’s all most people can afford, let’s face it. If you live in Texas or Louisiana or Mexico (or southern Italy or Spain or India...) do you just stay put and swelter, try to find cooling stations, buy as much water as possible, plan to head for the nearest watering hole?

What. Do. We. DO?!

This isn’t a drill. This isn’t a warning. This isn’t a shot across the bow, after which we will have time to regroup, plan, make sober decisions. That time is long past. We are literally, not figurately, out of time for sober, step-wise, “business-as-usual” legislative fixes and palatable compromises.

THIS IS IT. This is the climate catastrophe, and we are staring right down its barrel this summer.

The experts are gathering in November in Bonn, likely whooshing in on GHG-spewing private jets equipped with icy air conditioning, Veuve Clicquot on ice, and every mod con of which the inventive minds of the ultra-wealthy can conceive.

This august gathering will include our one and only Climate Envoy — placid, plodding, reliable Old Hand John Kerry. There will be fossil fuel lobbyists and fossil fuel industry leaders in attendance, as well, because of course there will. And they will glad-hand one another, and grab drinks after sessions, and take little side trips to see the sights, and have a lovely time intoning BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. They will feel very serious and very accomplished, and not one good goddamned actual thing will get done.

At a similar gathering 8 years ago:

Countries agreed in Paris in 2015 to try to keep long-term average temperature rises within 1.5C…

That did fuck all, because, per the Reuters piece linked above:

there is now a 66% likelihood the annual mean will cross the 1.5C threshold for at least one whole year between now and 2027, the World Meteorological Organization predicted in May

So really — I am seriously putting the question to you: NOW WHAT? What do we do?

What we are doing is not working. Fancy experts and reelection-focused career politicians and skeevy lobbyists talking in fancy conference rooms has done nothing.

The numbers do not lie. Emissions have gone up since the much ballyhooed Paris Climat 2015 gathering, and they show no signs of abating.

We can argue in the comments and on Twitter and Mastodon until we are blue in the face about renewables and EVs and wind farms and recycling and our personal CO2 footprint and how well the personal solar revolution is going… it makes no difference. Emissions are going up. That’s all that matters.

As they rise, our president continues to sign new drilling permits. He has not declared a climate emergency. His hair is quite clearly not on fire, as it should be.

A certain amount of warming is, of course, already baked in, even if GHG emissions go FLAT starting tomorrow.

But even given that, it is madness, utter and complete barking, howling lunacy, to continue the path we have been treading. No matter what else we must drive emissions down, which will at least have the salient effect of not making things bloody worse!

So what do we need from Joe Biden?

At a bare minimum we need the president to declare a climate emergency and then work with his capable cabinet officials to immediately launch a sensible system of rationing.

We must ration gas, air travel, energy consumption by homes and businesses.

We need to ration meat, and sharply contract the footprint of the meat industry.

We need to limit frivolous water consumption for now-antiquated follies like golf courses, casino fountains, and lawns in the desert.

We need to ration how many cars an individual can purchase, how often they can be replaced with a new vehicle, and how energy efficient a new or replacement vehicle must be.

And there is more. Much, much more, which I am relying on the federal boffins to know and write into the plan.

The federal government could start by allocating a mere 5% of the 2024 defense budget of $824 billion in order to free up $42 billion to kick this work off. It would be, at the least, a fucking start.

So what is my plan? My plan is to do everything in my power (working of course with many other activists, because who am I to think anyone will listen to just me?) to kick off a massive movement of non-violent direct action that will take these demands not to the streets, where we can be ignored, but to the White House, to ExxonMobile headquarters, and to Congress. Occupy — resist — do not leave until we are HEARD. Sit down, sit in, and stay. They can’t arrest all of us.

But to do this, a million or more participants are necessary — a million or more climate activists committed to this cause.

Who is with us?

Remember:

Acting did not work.

Voting did not work.

Marching did not work.

Emissions keep going up.

OUR LEADERS HAVE FAILED US.

But we have the power to try and save ourselves.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/30/2178580/-The-Point-of-No-Return

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