If we don’t make huge changes, and do it now, Earth Day will become our second Memorial Day. A blockbuster report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced by hundreds of leading scientists around the world has definitively linked this year’s meteorological disasters with the burning of fossil fuels by human civilization. It’s “Code Red,” they say, for civilization. And in the United States, we continue to do almost nothing.
This is our Nero moment: fiddling while the planet burns. All around the world the signs of catastrophic climate change are manifesting in visible and undeniable ways. In America, the Pacific Northwest had a heat wave that would have been appropriate for Saudi Arabia, not the temperate forests of Oregon and Washington. In the Philippines, a massive typhoon battered the coastline. In China, extreme rainfall. In Germany, the same.
The Earth has already surpassed 1 degree Celsius of warming relative to historic norms. With just that much warming, we’re seeing a maelstrom of extreme weather disrupt the earth’s systems and human civilization. The IPCC predicts that only the most aggressive measures could limit further warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and even the upper bound of manageable warming, 2 degrees, seems increasingly out of reach. Anything above 2 degrees would transform the Earth into a nightmare-world never before seen by modern humans.
And what are we doing about it? The news is not altogether horrible; at least the European Union has set more aggressive targets, and the Biden administration in the United States does what has pathetically become the bare minimum of acknowledging anthropogenic climate change as a force that exists and is happening. But look at the infrastructure bill making its way through Congress to the applause of Americans desperate for government to work. The plan, because it was negotiated with Republicans, contains almost nothing to expand clean energy or combat climate change. We are seeing the ravages of early climate catastrophe, and we can’t even pick the low-hanging fruit of zero-carbon power.
At this point, it will take mobilization on the level of World War II to avert what would solidify humankind’s legacy as a blight on our world. World War II killed 55 million people worldwide, to date the greatest disaster ever inflicted by humans upon each other. People across the Allied nations made life-changing sacrifices to save the world from fascism. People in every nation will have to make similar efforts if we are to save the world from ourselves.
Alexander Jones is an original contributor to PoliticsNC.
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