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Peter Watts’ lucid, grim take on the IPCC report is a must-read.<\/p>\n
\nIt\u2019s been a couple of weeks now since the <\/span>IPCC report<\/a>came out. You know what it says. If the whole damn species pulls together in a concerted effort \u201cwithout historical precedent\u201d\u2014 if we start <\/span>right now<\/i>, and never let up on the throttle\u2014 we just might be able to swing the needle back from Catastrophe to mere Disaster. If we cut carbon emissions by half over the next decade, eliminate them entirely by 2050; if the species cuts its meat and dairy consumption by 90%; if we invent new unicorn technologies for sucking carbon back out of the atmosphere (or scale up extant prototype tech by a factor of two million in two years) \u2014 if we commit to these and other equally Herculean tasks, then we might just barely be able to keep global temperature from rising more than 1.5\u00b0C.[1]<\/sup><\/a> <\/span>We\u2019ll only lose 70-90% of the word\u2019s remaining coral reefs (which are already down by about 50%, let\u2019s not forget). Only 350 million more urban dwellers will be exposed to severe drought and \u201cdeadly heat\u201d events. Only 130-140 million will be inundated. Global fire frequency will only increase by 38%. Fish stocks in low latitudes will be irreparably hammered, but it might be possible to save the higher-latitude populations. We\u2019ll only lose a third of the permafrost. You get the idea.<\/p>\n
We have twelve years to show results.<\/p>\n
If we <\/span>don\u2019t<\/i> <\/i><\/span>pull all these things off\u2014 if, for example, we only succeed in meeting the flaccid 2\u00b0C aspirations of the Paris Accords\u2014 then we lose all the coral. We lose the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Greenland Ice Shelf (not that it isn\u2019t already circling the bowl, of course). Twice as many people suffer \u201caggravated water scarcity\u201d than at 1.5\u00b0C; 170% more of the population deals with fluvial flooding. The increase in global wildfire frequency passes 60% and keeps going. Marine fisheries crash pole to pole. The number of species that loses at least half their traditional habitat is 2-3 times higher than would have been the case at 1.5\u00b0C. It goes on.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no real point in worrying about a measly 2\u00b0 increase, though, because on our current trajectory we\u2019ll blow past 3\u00b0 by century\u2019s end (the Trump administration is predicting 4\u00b0, which is why they\u2019re so busy dismantling whatever pitiful carbon-emission standards the US had already put into place; what\u2019s the point of reducing profit margins if we\u2019re headed straight for perdition no matter what we do?). We don\u2019t really know what happens then. Methane clathrates released from a melting Arctic could turn the place into Venus, for all I know.<\/p>\n
You probably know all this. You\u2019ve had two weeks to internalize it; time to recoil, to internalize the numbers, to face facts.<\/p>\n
To shrug, from what I can see.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n