Farmers could store carbon in their soils:
Futures Forum: Climate change: and sequestering carbon
Lay people could actually take some action:
Futures Forum: Climate change: How do we empower people to take action?
The government could take some action too - maybe:
Futures Forum: Climate change: A Carbon Tax Won't Stop Hurricanes
The trouble is that we all want our cake and eat it - for example:
Russia wants to protect itself from climate change—without reducing carbon emissions | Science | AAAS
So, is there any point?
Climate Change Is Happening.
Why Not Trade In Your False Hope For A Humvee?
SEP 21, 2017 @ 11:33 AM
President Trump's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord has been greeted unfavorably by other world leaders, but it doesn't make much difference to the planet — not in terms of cooling things down.
Most scientists agree: it's too late to reverse, or even slow down, global warming/climate change. Too much energy has already been pumped into the atmosphere by greenhouse gases. Yet Al Gore and other environmentalists continue to argue that there's still something we could do, just maybe. Of course we should stop polluting; pollution kills us and other living things. But climate change? Better to accept that it's happening and that the time to do something about it passed it decades ago. Cartoon by Ted Rall.
Climate Change Is Happening. Why Not Trade In Your False Hope For A Humvee?
So what is the accepted scientific view?
Scientists have produced estimates of how warm the world will get if the amount of carbon increases to double pre-industrial levels. This produces a range of results from about 1.5C to 5C. The lower end of the scale would be relatively benign; the upper end would result in the end of human civilisation as we know it.
Those who say we will be fine make the same mistake as those who say we are heading for Armageddon – insisting on certainty when there is doubt. The question then is what is the wisest course? Roll the dice and hope for the best or make efforts to ensure the worst-case scenario does not happen?
Have scientists really admitted climate change sceptics are right? | The Independent
Climate optimism has been a disaster. We need a new language – desperately
The extreme weather of the past months is a game-changer: surely now the world is ready to talk about climate change as a civilisation-collapsing catastrophe
President Trump's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord has been greeted unfavorably by other world leaders, but it doesn't make much difference to the planet — not in terms of cooling things down.
Most scientists agree: it's too late to reverse, or even slow down, global warming/climate change. Too much energy has already been pumped into the atmosphere by greenhouse gases. Yet Al Gore and other environmentalists continue to argue that there's still something we could do, just maybe. Of course we should stop polluting; pollution kills us and other living things. But climate change? Better to accept that it's happening and that the time to do something about it passed it decades ago. Cartoon by Ted Rall.
Climate Change Is Happening. Why Not Trade In Your False Hope For A Humvee?
So what is the accepted scientific view?
Scientists have produced estimates of how warm the world will get if the amount of carbon increases to double pre-industrial levels. This produces a range of results from about 1.5C to 5C. The lower end of the scale would be relatively benign; the upper end would result in the end of human civilisation as we know it.
Those who say we will be fine make the same mistake as those who say we are heading for Armageddon – insisting on certainty when there is doubt. The question then is what is the wisest course? Roll the dice and hope for the best or make efforts to ensure the worst-case scenario does not happen?
Have scientists really admitted climate change sceptics are right? | The Independent
Climate optimism has been a disaster. We need a new language – desperately
The extreme weather of the past months is a game-changer: surely now the world is ready to talk about climate change as a civilisation-collapsing catastrophe
A flooded home in Houston. ‘Major parts of the dominant global superpower have been decimated by two Katrina-dwarfing storms in less than a month.’ Photograph: David J Phillip/AP
Thursday 21 September 2017 14.24 BST
In 1988, when the scientist James Hansen told a senate committee that it was “time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here”, those who took him seriously assumed that if they just persisted with emphasising that this terrible fact would eventually destroy us, action would be taken. Instead, the opposite happened: when confronted with the awful reality of climate change, most people tended to retreat into a panglossian vision of the future, or simply didn’t want to hear about it.
A lot of work has been done since to understand why climate change is so uniquely paralysing, most prominently by George Marshall, author of the book Don’t Even Think About It. Marshall describes climate change as “a perfect and undetectable crime everyone contributes to but for which no one has a motive”. Climate change is both too near and too far for us to be able to internalise: too near because we make it worse with every minute act of our daily lives; too far because until now it has been something that affects foreign people in foreign countries, or future versions of ourselves that we can only conceive of ephemerally.
It is also too massive. The truth is if we don’t take action on climate change now, the food shortages, mass migration and political turmoil it will cause could see the collapse of civilisation in our lifetimes. Which of us can live with that knowledge?
It’s not surprising, then, that some years ago climate activists switched to a message of optimism. They listened to studies that showed optimism was more galvanising than despair, and they began to talk about hope, empowerment, and success stories. They waited for some grand extreme weather event to make the final pieces fall into place. Maybe the submerging of New Orleans would be it; maybe some of the rich white people who were battered by Hurricane Sandywould use their privilege to demand action. Maybe Harvey or Irma – or now Maria– would cause us to snap out of our stupor. It hasn’t happened.
Instead what I think a message of optimism has done is create a giant canyon between the reality of climate change and most people’s perception of it. An optimistic message has led to complacency – “people are saying it’s doable so it will probably be fine” – and championing success stories has convinced people that the pathetic, threadbare action taken by governments so far is sufficient. I’ve lost count of the sheer number of politically engaged, conscientious people I’ve met who have simply no idea how high the stakes are.
The fact is, nobody knows how to solve the riddle of persuading the public to demand action on climate change. I certainly don’t have the answers. But I do think we need to contemplate that something is going disastrously wrong here – that perhaps it’s time to get back to the drawing board and rethink how we talk about climate change.
Two significant things have happened since that senate committee hearing in 1988: the first is the Paris agreement in 2015 to try to limit warming to 1.5C – research out this week shows this is still possible. The second is that major parts of the dominant global superpower have been decimated by two Katrina-dwarfing storms in less than a month. Circumstances have changed in the past 30 years: climate change is a material fact now, and we have a specific target to aim for, to limit the damage it will cause.
‘We have to challenge the pervasive silence on climate change.’
Thursday 21 September 2017 14.24 BST
In 1988, when the scientist James Hansen told a senate committee that it was “time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here”, those who took him seriously assumed that if they just persisted with emphasising that this terrible fact would eventually destroy us, action would be taken. Instead, the opposite happened: when confronted with the awful reality of climate change, most people tended to retreat into a panglossian vision of the future, or simply didn’t want to hear about it.
A lot of work has been done since to understand why climate change is so uniquely paralysing, most prominently by George Marshall, author of the book Don’t Even Think About It. Marshall describes climate change as “a perfect and undetectable crime everyone contributes to but for which no one has a motive”. Climate change is both too near and too far for us to be able to internalise: too near because we make it worse with every minute act of our daily lives; too far because until now it has been something that affects foreign people in foreign countries, or future versions of ourselves that we can only conceive of ephemerally.
It is also too massive. The truth is if we don’t take action on climate change now, the food shortages, mass migration and political turmoil it will cause could see the collapse of civilisation in our lifetimes. Which of us can live with that knowledge?
It’s not surprising, then, that some years ago climate activists switched to a message of optimism. They listened to studies that showed optimism was more galvanising than despair, and they began to talk about hope, empowerment, and success stories. They waited for some grand extreme weather event to make the final pieces fall into place. Maybe the submerging of New Orleans would be it; maybe some of the rich white people who were battered by Hurricane Sandywould use their privilege to demand action. Maybe Harvey or Irma – or now Maria– would cause us to snap out of our stupor. It hasn’t happened.
Instead what I think a message of optimism has done is create a giant canyon between the reality of climate change and most people’s perception of it. An optimistic message has led to complacency – “people are saying it’s doable so it will probably be fine” – and championing success stories has convinced people that the pathetic, threadbare action taken by governments so far is sufficient. I’ve lost count of the sheer number of politically engaged, conscientious people I’ve met who have simply no idea how high the stakes are.
The fact is, nobody knows how to solve the riddle of persuading the public to demand action on climate change. I certainly don’t have the answers. But I do think we need to contemplate that something is going disastrously wrong here – that perhaps it’s time to get back to the drawing board and rethink how we talk about climate change.
Two significant things have happened since that senate committee hearing in 1988: the first is the Paris agreement in 2015 to try to limit warming to 1.5C – research out this week shows this is still possible. The second is that major parts of the dominant global superpower have been decimated by two Katrina-dwarfing storms in less than a month. Circumstances have changed in the past 30 years: climate change is a material fact now, and we have a specific target to aim for, to limit the damage it will cause.
‘We have to challenge the pervasive silence on climate change.’
George Marshall, the author of Don’t Even Think About It, speaks at a Guardian event.
A new campaign could centre on the demand for governments to meet the 1.5C target, emphasising how dire the consequences will be if we don’t. People don’t need to imagine what climate change looks like any more: they can see it in the sea water that has enveloped the islands of the Caribbean, the drowning houses in Houston, the communiques from those who couldn’t escape, and prepared themselves to lose everything. In Britain we’ve seen floodwater inundate entire villages; a pub that became a thoroughfare for a swollen river. This is what catastrophe on our doorsteps looks like, and perhaps it’s time we link these images to climate change with as much gusto as the fossil fuel industry denies it.
Could the language of emergency work? It has never been tried with as much meteorological evidence as we have now, and we’ve never had a target as clear and unanimous as the one agreed in Paris. The one thing I know is that the events of the last few months have changed the game, and this is the moment to start debating a new way to talk about climate change. It may be that if the time for a mass movement is not now, there won’t be one.
• Ellie Mae O’Hagan is an editor at openDemocracy, and a freelance journalist
Climate optimism has been a disaster. We need a new language – desperately | Ellie Mae O’Hagan | Opinion | The Guardian
See George Marshall here:
Futures Forum: Climate change: and the film 'The Merchants of Doubt'
Futures Forum: Climate change: appealing to values and identity >>> From 'worthy but dull' to re-framing the debate >>> It's about: pollution >>> inter-generational debt >>> conserving the local landscape
Futures Forum: Climate change: the language of framing... "Climate change hysteria is really a feeling."
Futures Forum: Climate change: the language of framing... "Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change"
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A new campaign could centre on the demand for governments to meet the 1.5C target, emphasising how dire the consequences will be if we don’t. People don’t need to imagine what climate change looks like any more: they can see it in the sea water that has enveloped the islands of the Caribbean, the drowning houses in Houston, the communiques from those who couldn’t escape, and prepared themselves to lose everything. In Britain we’ve seen floodwater inundate entire villages; a pub that became a thoroughfare for a swollen river. This is what catastrophe on our doorsteps looks like, and perhaps it’s time we link these images to climate change with as much gusto as the fossil fuel industry denies it.
Could the language of emergency work? It has never been tried with as much meteorological evidence as we have now, and we’ve never had a target as clear and unanimous as the one agreed in Paris. The one thing I know is that the events of the last few months have changed the game, and this is the moment to start debating a new way to talk about climate change. It may be that if the time for a mass movement is not now, there won’t be one.
• Ellie Mae O’Hagan is an editor at openDemocracy, and a freelance journalist
Climate optimism has been a disaster. We need a new language – desperately | Ellie Mae O’Hagan | Opinion | The Guardian
See George Marshall here:
Futures Forum: Climate change: and the film 'The Merchants of Doubt'
Futures Forum: Climate change: appealing to values and identity >>> From 'worthy but dull' to re-framing the debate >>> It's about: pollution >>> inter-generational debt >>> conserving the local landscape
Futures Forum: Climate change: the language of framing... "Climate change hysteria is really a feeling."
Futures Forum: Climate change: the language of framing... "Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change"
.
.
.
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