10 August 2021. Climate change | Twice
Yes, it’s getting worse; We need to understand how to deal with discontinuity
Welcome to Just Two Things, which I try to publish daily, five days a week. Some links may also appear on my blog from time to time. Links to the main articles are in cross-heads as well as the story.
#1: Yes, it’s getting worse
There’s only really one story today. Ian Christie sent out a useful summary of notes and headlines on the IPCC report to the university research network CUSP, and with his permission I have adapted that for Just Two Things this morning.
‘Changing’ by the artist Alisa Singer
Ian Christie writes:
Some headlines from the IPCC report:
“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.
The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years.
Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).
Global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered. Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.
Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level.”
As well as the full report (almost four thousand pages of it), there is a Summary for Policymakers and Headlines for Policymakers as well as assorted other resources.
Here’s a useful digest of key messages from the report, at Climate Home.
And here’s a summary in Nature journal.
“The report warns that some of the most severe impacts of climate — such as ice-sheet collapse, massive forest loss or an abrupt change in ocean circulation — cannot be ruled out, particularly in scenarios with high emissions and significant warming towards the end of the century. But it notes the biggest uncertainty in all climate-change projections is how humans will act.”
Summaries and responses
Here’s a useful digest of key messages from the report, at Climate Home.
And here’s a summary in Nature journal.
“The report warns that some of the most severe impacts of climate — such as ice-sheet collapse, massive forest loss or an abrupt change in ocean circulation — cannot be ruled out, particularly in scenarios with high emissions and significant warming towards the end of the century. But it notes the biggest uncertainty in all climate-change projections is how humans will act.”
And some responses:
Here is the UK Government’s response to the IPCC report: From PM Boris Johnson:
“We know what must be done to limit global warming – consign coal to history and shift to clean energy sources, protect nature and provide climate finance for countries on the frontline.”
Here’s the response from CUSP partner the Aldersgate Group:
“To keep the 1.5C target alive and adapt to a changing climate, governments around the world must provide unequivocally clear policy signals to significantly accelerate the investment that is urgently needed in ultra-low carbon infrastructure and nature-based solutions.”
Here’s a comment from Lorraine Whitmarsh, director of the ESRC CAST Centre.
”Although it is not too late to act, we now only have a slim chance of keeping to our international target of 1.5 degrees C and avoiding the most deadly impacts. To achieve this we need radical, immediate and wide-ranging change in lifestyles as well as in technologies."
#2: It’s about understanding discontinuity
So what can we do?
Alex Steffen has a long post, ‘Discontinuity is the Job’ that lists 12 ways to think about how we need to respond the climate crisis. It’s a rich piece and almost impossible to summarise, so I’m going to pull out his headings here, with a little more information where it helps.
This is how he opens.
After 30 years doing this work, foresight is a skill I do possess, but even there, I find simple, concrete suggestions uncomfortable. I just don’t trust that any specific recommendations I offer can work in the ways we thought they did in previous decades. (“I want to say one word to you, just one word. Are you listening? Plastics.”)
And, if we’re being honest, no one else should have that confidence either. That’s because we’re in the midst of an all-encompassing discontinuity, and no one knows anything for sure about what’s coming. Predictability is extinct.
(Public domain image via Piqsels)
Anyway, here are his 12 things.
1. THE PLANETARY CRISIS IS NOT AN ISSUE, BUT A CHANGE IN ERA
When we smashed an unsustainable economy into an immovable planetary reality, we broke our continuity with the past...
2. THE PLANETARY CRISIS TAKES PLACE IN INSTITUTIONS
As I’ve written about before, the planetary crisis is, at its core, a professional crisis. It is a crisis in how our most important institutions are led, advised and managed. The big decisions—the ones that make our world more (or less) sustainable, that prepare us for the coming disasters (or leave us brittle and vulnerable), that ready our institutions and communities for unprecedented transformations (or that harden institutions into resistance to change)—are almost all made by people whose job it is to make them...
3. SUCCESS IS A BYPRODUCT OF ACCELERATION
When it comes to the planetary crisis, speed is everything. The degree to which those attempting to build new systems in new ways succeed will likely decide how fast society recognizes the realities of this discontinuous new era. That in turn will govern how quickly we see the wide uptake of needed solutions to our ecological and economic challenges...
But it’s worth noting that this point is not about things speeding us (that old cliche), but about the speed of our response
4. DISCONTINUITY IS THE JOB
Being ready when the big shifts come—and they soon will—involves being able to work successfully in unprecedented situations...
5. STEEPENING CURVES DEFINE THE SPEED OF NEEDED CHANGE
It would be great if we lived in a time whose problems could be solved slowly, thoughtfully and gently. We do not.
The planetary crisis writhes with steepening problems—problems that not only get worse as we fail to solve them, but get worse at an increasing rate...
6. ACUMEN COMES FROM CENTERING WHAT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED
When we think about how much change lies ahead, it’s easy to underestimate. In fact, we do it all the time in our public debate. We constantly fail to take the planetary crisis seriously enough...
7. THE POLITICS OF TEMPO LIMIT THE SPEED OF CHANGE
Most informed people, at this point, get what Paul Hawken meant when he said, “We have an economy that steals the future, sells it in the present, and calls it GDP.”
Fewer of us grasp that this theft is no longer limited to the future. Unmet threats undermine people’s lives, now. Unacknowledged risks erode their security, now...
8. TORQUE IS INCREASING; DELAY MAKES IT STRONGER
We are deluded by the sad state of our political sphere into believing that action is uncertain: We might act; we might not. This is simply untrue. Action is not a matter of whether, but when.
In fact, this supposed uncertainty of action is a major predatory delay propaganda point. It’s spin. It is continuity propaganda...
9. THE EXPERTISE BUBBLE
The desire to understand discontinuity and prepare to play a successful role in disruptive change has been met with major, prepared opposition. New acumen is a threat, and treated as such...
10. TRIANGULATION PROTECTS SLOW STRATEGIES
Climate and sustainability professionals should be at the very epicenter of innovation and strategic learning within institutions, businesses and communities. They rarely are. That’s because in most settings, climate and sustainability professionals are not getting paid to change important things, they’re getting paid to protect important things from change...
11. THIS IS A DANGEROUS MOMENT
It is pretty hard to learn how to do the real work, right now.
Unfortunately, many professionals who think they’re preparing themselves for emerging realities by going to trainings and degree programs are only learning about old systems and outdated bolt-on ideas and solutions.
This leads to a weird paradox, which is that being newly trained into the field doesn’t mean you have the latest skills or tools for understanding.
12. START NOW
If we want to succeed in these times ahead, we need to create opportunities for self-education.
Notes from readers:
Thanks to Nick Wray, who sent me some fascinating resources about nuclear tests after yesterday’s post. I didn’t know that Las Vegas used to host ‘nuclear test tourism,’ for example (Smithsonian video, 1.30). Nick also reminds me that it’s “worth remembering a lot of test footage is 'overcranked' for analytical reasons so we have got used to seeing explosions slower than a real impact would be.” It’s hard to tell how accurate the version in Terminator 2 is, but it does look pretty terrifying.
Nick also shared a 90-minute documentary about post-war nuclear tests which looks fascinating.
j2t#146
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