{"id":32471,"date":"2018-03-17T06:16:17","date_gmt":"2018-03-17T11:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32471"},"modified":"2018-03-17T06:16:55","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T11:16:55","slug":"hope-from-chaos-could-political-upheaval-lead-to-a-new-green-epoch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32471","title":{"rendered":"Hope from chaos: could political upheaval lead to a new green\u00a0epoch?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hope from chaos: could political upheaval lead to a new green\u00a0epoch?<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) published its first major report<\/a>28 years ago. This watershed document described the ominous implications of escalating emissions and the scale of the challenge in reversing this seemingly inexorable trend.<\/p>\n

Today, despite four further IPCC reports, 23 rounds of international negotiations, and thousands of climate change papers and conferences, annual emissions are more than 60% higher than in 1990<\/a>, and are still rising<\/a>. Put simply, the international community has presided over a quarter of a century of abject failure to deliver any meaningful reduction in absolute global emissions.<\/p>\n

Certainly the rhetoric of action is ramping up. Yet those who talk confidently about renewables, nuclear and \u201ccarbon capture and storage\u201d (CCS) eventually driving down emissions in decades to come are guilty of misunderstanding the fundamental science of climate change.<\/p>\n

We face a \u201ccumulative problem\u201d, with rising temperatures relating to the build up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Based on this, the Paris 1.5\u00b0C and 2\u00b0C commitments demand total emissions remain within a small and rapidly dwindling \u201ccarbon budget\u201d. Time is truly of the essence. Less than 12 years of current emissions<\/a> will see our 1.5\u00b0C aspiration go the way of the dodo, with the 2\u00b0C carbon budget exceeded by the mid 2030s.<\/p>\n

Paris defines a timeframe and scale of mobilisation reminiscent of major wars, yet our collective response remains much more akin to the apocryphal tale<\/a> of a gently warming frog.<\/p>\n

Continuing with today\u2019s ineffective \u201cmitigation\u201d, delusion and fear will bequeath many humans and other species decades and even centuries of climatic instability. This preference for short-term hedonism (for the few) over longer-term planetary stewardship is essentially an active choice for politically expedient incrementalism over revolutionary change. The latter is a prerequisite of meeting our Paris commitments \u2013 but can such rapid change ever be more than a \u201cromantic illusion\u201d?<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hope from chaos: could political upheaval lead to a new green\u00a0epoch? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) published its first major report28 years ago. This watershed document described the ominous implications of escalating emissions and the scale of the challenge in reversing this seemingly inexorable trend. Today, despite four further IPCC reports, 23 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[113,141,440,10778,8487],"class_list":["post-32471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-climate-change","tag-ipcc","tag-kevin-anderson","tag-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32472,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32471\/revisions\/32472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}