The target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) is moving out of reach, climate experts say, with nations failing to set more ambitious goals.
The target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) is moving out of reach, climate experts say, with nations failing to set more ambitious goals.
I hate this so much, too. We keep seeing these pushes for individuals to reduce their carbon footprint, but it’s not the individuals who are responsible for climate change; it’s the corporations who continuously skirt emissions laws and lobby for looser regulations on their industries who are polluting the planet en masse. We could all bike to work for a year, and it wouldn’t even make a dent to offset the environmental damage caused by a single luxury cruise ship in that same span of time.
This isn’t my area of expertise, but as I understand the present climate crisis, it’s actually misleading to say we’re “nearing the point of no return” as so many of these kinds of articles do.
Every single day we pass a brand new point of no return because every day we keep pumping fuel into positive feedback loops that are already in motion. Not only will biking to work not do shit; but even if humans just went extinct right now and all industry/pollution/etc came to a 100% stop, the climate will still continue to (albeit more slowly) spiral into new extremes. What we’re feeling today is the ‘find out’ stage of climate inaction decades ago; and the damage we’re doing today won’t be be tangible for decades to come.
Best case scenario is the coolest of an array of hellscapes - we’re in damage control mode. Rather, we should be in damage control mode; what we’re actually in is grind-away-at-our-9-to-5-while-we-watch-oligarchs-consume-our-planet mode.