A perfect (and perfectly scary) title from Jessica Wildfire (@jessicawildfire) —
"If a Cactus Can't Survive This, Neither Can You"
You might’ve seen recent headlines about saguaro cacti keeling over in Arizona after spending nearly a month above 110° Fahrenheit (43°C).
Not even a week later, The Washington Post ran this absurd story: “Your body can build up tolerance to heat. Here’s how.”
I’m not linking to it. That’s how bad it is.
It’s not just getting a little hotter. It’s getting so hot that saguaro cacti are deflating in the desert. They evolved roughly 20,000 years ago. They’ve spent millennia adapting to a hot desert environment. They live up to 200 years in the hottest, driest environments on the planet. These cactuses are saying, “I can’t take it anymore,” and sagging over dead.
And we’re being told we can adapt.
I got curious about what temperature the human body can actually withstand, and it’s somewhere around 108°F (42°C). That’s when your proteins start to denature. A wet bulb temperature beyond 95°F (35°C) can kill a person in about six hours. No amount of heat tolerance can save anyone from that.
It strikes me as just a little ridiculous that out here in reality, parts of the world are becoming absolutely uninhabitable, and wellness writers are just now telling us to start building up our heat tolerance.
It feels like we’re being prepared and conditioned to start blaming heat deaths on someone’s “low heat tolerance,” as if it’s just another precondition that helps them rationalize indifference in the face of mass death.
Scientists are now saying we are “out of time” to keep global heating at under 1.5°C. It’s simply too late. We’ve delayed any action far too long.
All our talk and meetings and phony “Net Zero” pledges don’t mean anything to an overstressed climate system that is rapidly breaking down.
You can’t fool Mother Nature.
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 despite months of record-breaking heat on land and sea.
“We’ve run out of time because change takes time,” said Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climatologist at Australia’s University of New South Wales.
As climate envoys from the two biggest greenhouse gas emitters prepare to meet next month, temperatures broke June records in the Chinese capital Beijing, and extreme heat waves have hit the United States.
Parts of North America were some 10C (18F) above the seasonal average this month, and smoke from forest fires blanketed Canada and the US East Coast in a hazardous haze, with carbon emissions estimated at a record 160 million tons.
In India, one of the most climate-vulnerable regions, deaths spiked as a result of sustained high temperatures, and extreme heat has been recorded in Spain, Iran, and Vietnam, raising fears that last year’s deadly summer could become routine.
Countries agreed in Paris in 2015 to try to keep long-term average temperature rises within 1.5C, but there is now a 66% likelihood the annual mean will cross the 1.5C threshold for at least one whole year between now and 2027, the World Meteorological Organization predicted in May.
Too many people, even here on Mastodon, seem to be in denial about how bad things are likely to get on our current path. I suppose I can understand how they might wish the situation was different, and perhaps some of them aren't psychologically or emotionally ready to handle an honest look at the dire future we face, so they simply avoid it.
But I worry that almost everyone will be unprepared for the collapse of our fragile modern society when it comes.
I’ll be blunt. We have no hope of averting climate chaos or preventing the catastrophic collapse of our modern society without SYSTEM CHANGE.
Keeping capitalism in charge means a death sentence for billions of humans — most of them poor and in the Global South — along with complete extinction for uncounted plant and animal species.
The fake “democracy” we have in the Global North is nothing but a game show owned and produced by oligarchs. As long as they remain in control of the system, nothing meaningful will change. How you vote doesn’t matter, because every important candidate is approved in advance, vetted and managed by those men behind the curtain.
Either capitalism dies or we die. It’s that simple.
The US government is pouring billions into this concept, not because they think it will ever work — they know it won't — but because it allows them to pretend they're doing something positive about the climate crisis, while in reality they're telling their fossil fuel buddies that Business As Usual is here to stay.
And it's working. Corporate news outlets are on board promoting the plan, and everyone is happy. 😃
Especially the oil industry!
Here's a quote from Vicki Hollub, CEO of Occidental Petroleum:
“We believe that our direct capture technology is going to be the technology that helps to preserve our industry over time. This gives our industry a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years that I think it’s going to be very much needed.”
For once, an oil executive is NOT lying. She's telling the truth, and that truth is going to kill us all.
In case you didn't already know, Net Zero is a scam promoted by the fossil fuel industry and their financiers to perpetuate Business As Usual for as long as possible...
"Why Net Zero is not enough"
More than 4,000 governments and companies around the world have pledged to go Net Zero. This includes more than one-third of the world’s largest publicly traded companies.
That sounds like a step in the right direction, right? If every organisation “stops emitting”, our world will be great again.
Well, not exactly…
If we continue to be in a collective delusion that Net Zero is the solution, we will be proved terribly wrong.
In "Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero is Not Enough", Holly Jean Buck discusses the implications of chasing Net Zero from various frames — looking at it not only through an environmental lens but a social justice perspective as well.
Instead of telling us to do better, this book provides different stakeholders concrete steps for planned phase-out on top of sound arguments and justification for it.
Simply put, the framework of Net Zero and its concentration on emissions diverts public and policy attention away from the fundamental task of ensuring effective and lasting climate change mitigation, which requires an unwavering end to the fossil fuel sector.
“British Petroleum, the second largest non-state owned oil company in the world, with 18,700 gas and service stations worldwide, hired the public relations professionals Ogilvy & Mather to promote the slant that climate change is not the fault of an oil giant, but that of individuals. It’s here that British Petroleum, or BP, first promoted and soon successfully popularized the term ‘carbon footprint’ in the early aughts.”
EDIT: After numerous comments, I realized that I should have been more specific about that. Because plenty of people DO care, but it seems our governments and the US corporate media do not.
This morning on a panel for Missouri State University related to #climatechange, food security & the future, I got a version of the same question I'm asked at every event:
"What can I do personally to make a meaningful difference?"
There are so many ways to answer this, but I thought it would be interesting to share the question on #Mastodon.
"At midday, more than 35 million people in southern #Texas, #Louisiana and #Florida were under excessive #heat warnings, watches and advisories extending through the three-day Juneteenth weekend, the National Weather Service said.
The growing frequency and intensity of severe weather across the U.S. is symptomatic of human-driven #ClimateChange, climate scientists say."
Is it possible that our super-advanced modern global civilization actually could collapse? Or is this just hyperbolic clickbait, intended for doom-scrolling?
Michael T. Klare is professor emeritus of peace and world-security studies at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Most recently, he is the author of "All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change."
In an essay published today, Professor Klare has a warning for us --
"We Are Witnessing the First Stages of Civilization’s Collapse"
It's wild to me that there's currently so much panic & fear about what #AImight do to "destroy" humanity, yet - at the same time - so little attention to the way that human behaviors are already, knowingly, putting billions of people & global biodiversity at tremendous risk. 🌍 #climatechange
Ah, #capitalism. Neoclasical (mainstream) economic theory tells us it ensures resources will be put to the best, most efficient use. However, ignores the obvious: wealth equals power, so that what is "best" for society is what the richest value.
Like chasing everlasting youth by getting weekly blood transfusions from your teenage son and $40,000 gym membership add-ons.
Damn, following that #climatechange hashtag changes your timeline a lot…
A record-breaking heatwave in Asia, an unprecedented marine heat wave, wildfires in Canada, a heatwave breaks the power grid in Texas, Antarctica melting faster than ever, the hottest June ever, the hottest seven days in the last 100.000 years, El Niño is here, flooding in New York state, a new heatwave in Europe, a coast-to-coast heat dome in the US, record monsoon rains in India…
and Hurricane season has only just begun.
Scientists: “Human activities are adding a tremendous amount of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, trapping heat & leading to #ClimateChange. That will lead to more extreme storms, flooding, drought, higher than average temperatures, the loss of biodiversity, wildfires and more.” 📣
Majority: 🥱🦗
2023
Earth experiences record breaking heat ☀️, intense flooding 🌊, wildfires & smoke 🔥 , coral bleaching 🪸, loss of biodiversity 🌍 *
Many believe a significant way to address #climatechange is to 'eat local,’ but that’s not always true. The impact all depends on the kind of #food + how & where it’s produced.
Some foods require fewer resources (water, energy) in some parts of the world. Season can be important. Overall, transportation has a much lower carbon footprint than land use change. And so on.
It's very clear how desperate green tech advocates are to paint the current developments as a win for the climate. But by doing so they only reinforce the status quo.
Lets get one thing clear about Hydrogen: The reason its being promoted is that its a method that could in theory allow us to decarbonize society, without transforming society.
Every other method of decarbonization will require us to abandon the "50s American style" of development (suburbs and cars for everyone), and a lot of people cant fathom that - so theyll hang on to the hope of Hydrogen redeeming their lifestyle, price be damned.
UK weather: hottest June since records began - Met Office (www.bbc.co.uk)
We seem to be breaking new records constantly at the moment....