🔥 It's Official: Political Arrangements Will Collapse.
Hothouse Earth has become the main scenario.
When I was a kid, I went through a phase of putting dominoes in a row, knocking the first one over, and then seeing them bang into each other and all fall over. It was great fun. But sometimes, the first one was not at the proper distance, and it just nudged the second into wobbling.
This year, the first domino has been pushed in such a way that all the dominoes will now fall over.
Those who have been watching will know that yearly average temperatures shot up to over 1.6°C, apparently because of the El Niño effect last year. However, it did not have a substantial impact, so it seemed something else was happening. Now that El Niño is gone, we have had a statistically significant number of monthly record temperature figures to conclusively show that we have jumped 0.2°C in a year and are now over 1.5°C.
This summer was 1.52°C above the pre-industrial baseline. That 0.2°C is the domino that triggers a cascade towards 2°C. Most tipping points will have been breached at that point, sending us into a Hothouse Earth. This is the main scenario because we finally have to accept the feedback loops from sea ice melting, forest fires, methane, the lag effect of carbon already emitted, and air pollution.
All this has been known for a long time, so the 0.2°C jump should come as no surprise. We are now definitely going over 2°C—not least because we have only 4-5 years at the present global emissions level before we run out of the "carbon budget" for 2°C. After 30 years of suicidal intent, the global political systems are self-evidently incapable of creating the cuts that are now objectively needed. Do you remember not so long ago when it was "Oh, we can stop 1.5°C"? They were so insistent, weren't they? It was easy to think maybe they were right. But then it happened. We passed 1.5°C. It will be the same with 2°C.
Sometimes, in life, it's just too late. You have to grow up and accept that it is just too late. This does not mean we are jumping into the other denial mode of foolish doom—inevitable extinction. What is inevitable is something a lot more concrete: social revolution. Then, we will see if humanity wants to survive—whether we opt for the mass death of fascism or pull ourselves together to survive.
One way or another, the near future will be nothing like the past.
Upcoming Events
- Oct 20 - Free as a Bird Prison Talk - Roger's next talk from prison.
As always, you can sign up for nonviolent civil resistance with Just Stop Oil in the UK or via the A22 Network internationally.
