Global heat

Climate change and global warming, which is the largest part of the ‘change’ aspect, is suddenly getting the kind of special treatment that’s reserved for national tragedies. A special commission has been established to investigate a way out of the biggest human-caused failure of all time.

It wouldn’t be quite so disturbing if it were not for the fact that the truth about the widespread danger from fossil fuels has been in the public domain for decades now. People in the highest positions academically, politically, and the business community have known for decades that CO2 emissions will eventually overheat the planet. But, none of them had the balls to stand up to the fossil fuel companies and rightwing hacks and the despicable denier core of charlatans. They are as guilty as the denier hacks.

Whenever society at large is under extraordinary threat, aka existential threat, special commissions composed of prominent members of the establishment pop up to study the situation and make recommendations. Only recently the 911 Commission (2002) and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (2009) are two prime examples. These special commissions have a common genesis of responding to a threat to the established way of life. Hooray (maybe, maybe not, but at any rate sorrowfully) climate change has now joined the ranks. It’s officially designated an extraordinary threat to society. As of May 2022 the Climate Overshoot Commission has been established. Its first meeting is June 2022 at Lake Como, Italy.

The commission is composed of a wide swath of pristine leadership personalities, including past presidents, prime ministers, ministers of foreign affairs, professors, former heads of international organizations like the WTO. Indeed, they are a shiny brass group with credentials up the wazoo.

The commission will consider the risks attendant to overshooting 1.5 degrees C and the range of response options for addressing overshoot. Based upon their mission statement, 1.5 degrees C overshoot is preordained.

But honestly, isn’t this commission comparable to creating a commission to study what to do after the dam breaks? Why study an overshoot of 1.5C? Ecosystems throughout the planet are already nearly overshooting or maybe actually overshooting in some cases at only 1.2C above baseline. By the time 1.5C hits there may not be enough pieces left to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

The commission may have the wrong idea and wrong target. If the commission is going to tackle the manifold risks of climate change, they should focus on the root cause, not the after effects. Why should a commission spend time and energy trying to figure out how to handle a totally unprecedented blowup of the climate system, when they should focus on the root cause of global heat and try to stop it before exceeding 1.5C?

Excerpted: ‘The Overshoot Dilemma’.

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org