{"id":39823,"date":"2018-10-29T05:28:44","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T10:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39823"},"modified":"2018-10-29T05:29:14","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T10:29:14","slug":"world-wakes-up-to-scale-of-climate-challenge-so-what-should-a-labor-government-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39823","title":{"rendered":"World wakes up to scale of climate challenge, so what should a Labor government do?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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World wakes up to scale of climate challenge, so what should a Labor government do?<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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Quite suddenly, in the wake of the recent IPCC report, it\u2019s become commonplace to talk about a global climate emergency. Al Gore<\/a> told PBS on 12 October: \u201cWe have a global emergency. You use a phrase like that and some people immediately say, \u2018okay calm down, it can\u2019t be that bad.\u2019 But it it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

On 9 October, a stunning editorial<\/a> was published in the UK. \u201cThe Guardian view on climate change: a global emergency\u201d opened with the sentence: \u201cClimate change is an existential risk to the human race.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Image Source: Climate Code Red.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A year ago, that would have been extraordinary, but no longer. (An existential risk is one that poses permanent large negative consequences to humanity which can never be undone, or an adverse outcome that would either annihilate intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential).<\/p>\n

<\/a>n many ways, the recent IPCC report on 1.5\u00b0C was too conservative<\/a>, overestimating the length time till we hit \u20281.5\u00b0C, and failing to account for crucial feedbacks<\/a> in the climate system.<\/p>\n

Yet the report\u2019s evidence was that 2\u00b0C of warming would be catastrophic in so many ways, including for sea-level rise, for coral systems, and for food and water security of hundreds of millions of people, if not more.<\/p>\n

The current Paris commitments are a path to 3.4\u00b0C of warming, and closer to 5\u00b0C when the full range of feedbacks are included.<\/p>\n

But even an understatement of the evidence leads to radical conclusions. In response to the report\u2019s release, there was a certain shock and awe, for example by Jeff Goodell in Rolling Stone<\/i><\/a> (\u201cWhat\u2019s Another Way to Say \u2018We\u2019re F-cked\u2019?\u201d) and David Wallace-Wells in New York Magazine<\/i><\/a> (\u201cUN Says Climate Genocide Is Coming. It\u2019s Actually Worse Than That\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

World wakes up to scale of climate challenge, so what should a Labor government do? Quite suddenly, in the wake of the recent IPCC report, it\u2019s become commonplace to talk about a global climate emergency. Al Gore told PBS on 12 October: \u201cWe have a global emergency. You use a phrase like that and some […]<\/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":[22217,141,17943,17945,11048,369,5161,440,22649,826],"class_list":["post-39823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-catastrophe","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-system","tag-david-spratt","tag-feedback-loops","tag-global-warming","tag-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change","tag-ipcc","tag-renew-economy","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39823","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=39823"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39826,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39823\/revisions\/39826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}