UN, IPCC to the World- Had your chance. Muffed it.
It is time to allow for the grief. The latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report dropped like a bombshell, stating,
“Climate change is already affecting every inhabited region across the globe with human influence contributing to many observed changes in weather and climate extremes.”
When the UN says “every inhabited region across the globe” it includes the never ending super fires of the entire West Coast, gas lines in deep freeze in Texas, a million acres of Midwest cropland flooded, and 121 deg heat dome in Canada. Not in India, but Canada!
This is the new normal. We used to be able to say, “there is nothing you can do about the weather,” but we created this weather. And like many a mad scientist, we created it, but we can’t control it. Even if we were to halt carbon emissions completely in the next ten years, it could be centuries until we get back to the weather patterns many of remember in the 1990’s and earlier.
Moreover, temperatures are expected to remain steady rather than dropping for a few centuries after emissions reach zero, meaning that the climate change that has already occurred will be difficult to reverse in the absence of large-scale net negative emissions. Carbonbrief.org
It feels like it is too late. And it is.
It is too late to prevent climate disruption.
We failed to stop global heating.
We failed to keep our carbon emissions at our 1990 level of 354 ppm.
We need to own the grief of this. Let it sink in. We created a hundred years of crap weather that will make life very difficult for our children, grandchildren and beyond. Difficult in terms of health, food supply, and survivability of super storm events.
For me, this is on top of the grief I already felt for the loss of my nature friends- the fact that we will never walk among 300 year old forests, we will never drink from clean streams, we will never be tempted to walk across the backs of thick fish runs, we will never wonder at the glaciers in Glacier National Park, and so on.
What do we do with all that grief? What do we do with the guilt?
Greif is but one stage, which we must go through to get to the other side. In Active Hope, Joanna Macy teaches the work that reconnects us to our purpose and each other. If we deny that sorrow, it festers and can create despair. When we can sit with it, give it a voice, and let it out- it can be turned to hope and action.
Because it is NOT too late to TAME climate change, to stop it in its tracks, and to avoid more and more severe consequences. There is NO technological barrier to reducing GHG emissions, only our will to do it. (See Project Drawdown)
What does it take to harness our will? What has been standing in our way? When Pres. Jimmy Carter put solar hot water panels on the White House in 1979, we had a path forward that would have led to a different future than the climate crisis we now face.
What would today look like if we had followed that path? Solar on every roof, electric vehicles of all sorts, mag lev trains across the country, no oil spills, no pipelines… The movie 2040 paints a picture of what can still be, if we actually commit to creating it. Can we find our way back to that future?
I left out the first part of that title quote from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Lord Scrumptious says, “Times up. Had your chance. Muffed it.” Professor Potts did not give up at that point, and neither should we. Time is not up, yet. We are still here. Let’s not waste another minute waffling on climate change.
We know what needs to be done. It is our job to hold our leaders accountable. To become leaders ourselves in our communities. And to do what we can to bring those trapped in fear along to the scrumptious future possible with clean energy for all.