Are we, the larger society around us, ready to wake up? Are we ready now to take action and stop what is happening?

An opinion piece published at The Hill asks these questions...
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How dire a warning must there be for us to do something about global climate change? Is there anything scientists can say or the weather can do to persuade us to stop dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?

Perhaps not.

After issuing five detailed “synthesis” reports about climate change since 1988 — each more certain and urgent than the last — the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just issued its sixth report. It minces no words. Our final chance to avoid a global catastrophe is to make massive cuts in fossil-fuel emissions within 12 years.

Yet, energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide set a record last year. Countries still provide fossil fuels with trillions of dollars annually in direct and indirect subsidies. The world’s 60 biggest banks provided $4.6 trillion in fossil fuel financing, including $742 billion in 2021, since nations agreed to the Paris climate accord in 2015. Four of the biggest oil companies had $1 trillion in sales and record profits last year. And 20 of the biggest oil companies plan to spend nearly $1 trillion to develop new oil and gas fields by the end of 2030. Even President Biden, fully aware of the climate crisis, has given the go-ahead to an $8 billion oil project in Alaska.

In other words, the global oil and gas industry has never been better, while the world has never been closer to simultaneous environmental, economic and humanitarian disasters expected to displace 1.2 billion of the world’s people by 2050 and have violent impacts that will last thousands of years.

A year ago, The Guardian reported on climate-related “doomerism” — even resulting in suicide in some cases.

“Studies have shown that while alarm over worsening wildfires, droughts, flooding, and societal unrest is on the rise, not many of us talk about climate angst with others to avoid political arguments or simply avoid bringing down the mood. Those who do speak out are often younger activists – research has shown that half of people between 16 and 25 years old believe the Earth may be doomed, while three-quarters feel anxiety when they think or hear about climate change. Some speak openly of not wanting to bring children into a hotter, harsher world,” according to The Guardian.

“But the worst part is that everyone’s acting normal — it’s like we are zombies,” clinical psychologist turned climate activist Margaret Klein Salamon told The Guardian. “The sense of helplessness and hopelessness is holding back conversations and political action.”

So, will the masses wake up and force industry and governments to take the radical steps necessary at this late date?

In a brilliant essay published by the Washington Post, author and historian Rebecca Solnit suggests that since wealth accumulation and retention seem to rule, we should redefine what wealth is. While fossil fuels make a few people financially wealthy, they impoverish the rest of us in ways not measured by goods and money.

“Even the affluent live in a world where confidence in the future, and in the society and institutions around us, is fading,” Solnit points out, “and where a sense of security, social connectedness, mental and physical health, and other measures of well-being are often dismal. This is the world we live in with fossil fuel — the burning of which makes us poorer in many ways.”
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SOLNIT ESSAY -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/15/rebecca-solnit-climate-change-wealth-abundance/

HILL OPINION PIECE -- https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3912939-fossil-fuels-are-impoverishing-us/

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction #ClimateEmergency #CO2 #Emissions #Anticapitalism

A message from Greta Thunberg (@gretathunberg)...
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School strike, week 251.

Today, I graduate from school, which means I’ll no longer be able to school strike for the climate. This is then the last school strike for me, so I guess I have to write something on this day.

When I started striking in 2018 I could never have expected that it would lead to anything. After striking every day for three weeks, we were a small group of children who decided to continue doing this every Friday. And we did, which is how Fridays For Future was formed.

Some more people joined, and quite suddenly this was a global movement growing every day. During 2019, millions of youth striked from school for the climate, flooding the streets in over 180 countries. When the pandemic started, we had to find new ways to protest.

With time, we started to get back on the streets again. We’re still here, and we aren’t planning on going anywhere. Much has changed since we started, and yet we have much further to go.

We are still moving in the wrong direction, where those in power are allowed to sacrifice marginalised and affected people and the planet in the name of greed, profit and economic growth. They continue to destabilise the biosphere and our life supporting systems. We’re rapidly approaching potential nonlinear ecological and climatic tipping points beyond our control.

And in so many parts of the world, we are even speeding up the process. There are probably many of us who graduate who now wonder what kind of future it is that we are stepping into, even though we did not cause this crisis.

We who can speak up have a duty to do so. In order to change everything, we need everyone. I’ll continue to protest on Fridays, even though it’s not technically “school striking”. We simply have no other option than to do everything we possibly can. The fight has only just begun.
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#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #ClimateAction #ClimateJustice