<
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-difficult-necessity-of-claiming-climate-victories/>
"The summer of 2023 has witnessed a harrowing revival in the resonance of the
phrase “global warming.” Climate scientists prefer the term “climate change,”
because it better acknowledges the staggering scope of the crisis, which
encompasses everything from precipitation patterns to the basic chemistry of
the world’s oceans. But this summer was all about scorching heat. The Earth’s
overheated atmosphere – driven by an intense El Nino cycle amplified by climate
change – incinerated temperature records around the world and combined with
abnormally low precipitation to unleash ferocious wildfires across Canada and
beyond, some of the most destructive of them still raging.
I’m starting with the bad news – the very bad news – both because there is no
denying the urgency of the human crisis this summer and because any discussion
of our collective response to the climate crisis right now should first
acknowledge the present-tense tragedy in communities such as Lahaina, Kelowna
and Yellowknife, to name just the three most recent and proximate victims.
But I’m a self-proclaimed climate optimist, and so I’ve been keeping my eye on
another series of developments through the smoke. And I’ve witnessed just as
much evidence in recent months that this turbulent time is also one of
unprecedented achievement in the global fight to defuse the climate crisis. It
might even be time to declare real victories in certain battles, and to
consider the possibility that this is what winning the whole war will look like
in the years to come. Climate victories are not tidy – there will be no
jubilant celebration of the enemy’s surrender in the streets – but claiming
them, even under skies gone sickly orange with wildfire smoke, is vital for
building the broad consensus of support for the changes so desperately needed
to limit the overheating of the planet.
Let’s begin with a crucial fact of the climate crisis, which is that the
victories mostly do not occur on the same battlefields as the losses. No action
taken in recent months to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, no matter how
dramatic, would have done anything at all to diminish the horrible force of the
fires that burned much of the Hawaiian town of Lahaina to the ground and led to
the evacuation of the capital of the Northwest Territories. The feedback loops
on climate action simply cannot work that quickly or precisely.
The paths to climate victory have emerged elsewhere – and, lately, nearly
everywhere. Together they chart a global transition from fossil fuels to clean
energy that is unprecedented in both its speed and scope and rapidly
accelerating. And it wasn’t only unprecedented: It was widely dismissed in many
circles of economic and political power, as recently as a decade back, as
somewhere between unlikely and fantastical. Which is why clean tech’s very
existence today represents a significant win."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-poverty-bangladesh-conservation-ecuador-indigenous-fire-australia/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
