“You can never really see the future, only imagine it, then try to make sense of the new world when it arrives.
Just a few years ago, climate projections for this century looked quite apocalyptic, with most scientists warning that continuing “business as usual” would bring the world four or even five degrees Celsius of warming — a change disruptive enough to call forth not only predictions of food crises and heat stress, state conflict and economic strife, but, from some corners, warnings of civilizational collapse and even a sort of human endgame. (Perhaps you’ve had nightmares about each of these and seen premonitions of them in your newsfeed.)
Now, with the world already 1.2 degrees hotter, scientists believe that warming this century will most likely fall between two or three degrees. (A United Nations report released this week ahead of the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, confirmed that range.) A little lower is possible, with much more concerted action; a little higher, too, with slower action and bad climate luck. Those numbers may sound abstract, but what they suggest is this: Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years.
…Conventional wisdom has dictated that meeting the most ambitious goals of the Paris agreement by limiting warming to 1.5 degrees could allow for some continuing normal, but failing to take rapid action on emissions, and allowing warming above three or even four degrees, spelled doom.
Neither of those futures looks all that likely now, with the most terrifying predictions made improbable by decarbonization and the most hopeful ones practically foreclosed by tragic delay. The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse.
Over the last several months, I’ve had dozens of conversations — with climate scientists and economists and policymakers, advocates and activists and novelists and philosophers — about that new world and the ways we might conceptualize it. Perhaps the most capacious and galvanizing account is one I heard from Kate Marvel of NASA, a lead chapter author on the fifth National Climate Assessment: “The world will be what we make it.” Personally, I find myself returning to three sets of guideposts, which help map the landscape of possibility.
First, worst-case temperature scenarios that recently seemed plausible now look much less so, which is inarguably good news and, in a time of climate panic and despair, a truly underappreciated sign of genuine and world-shaping progress...
[I cut number two for being focused on negatives. This is a reasons for hope blog.]
Third, humanity retains an enormous amount of control — over just how hot it will get and how much we will do to protect one another through those assaults and disruptions. Acknowledging that truly apocalyptic warming now looks considerably less likely than it did just a few years ago pulls the future out of the realm of myth and returns it to the plane of history: contested, combative, combining suffering and flourishing — though not in equal measure for every group…
“We live in a terrible world, and we live in a wonderful world,” Marvel says. “It’s a terrible world that’s more than a degree Celsius warmer. But also a wonderful world in which we have so many ways to generate electricity that are cheaper and more cost-effective and easier to deploy than I would’ve ever imagined. People are writing credible papers in scientific journals making the case that switching rapidly to renewable energy isn’t a net cost; it will be a net financial benefit,” she says with a head-shake of near-disbelief. “If you had told me five years ago that that would be the case, I would’ve thought, wow, that’s a miracle.””
-via The New York Times Magazine, October 26, 2022a
Tuira Kayapó brandished her machete in the face of a government official who was trying to convince indigenous leaders to accept a mega-dam project in the Amazon, 1989
“Electricity won’t give us food. We need the rivers to flow freely. Don’t talk to us about relieving our ‘poverty’ – we are the richest people in Brazil. We are Indians.”
part of kayapó’s speech during this event
also! she’s still alive! that sort of thing is always worth pointing out to show that we really aren’t too far removed from events like this! here’s a 2019 photo of her:
“Oppenheimer should at least represent Japanese voices” actual Japanese filmmakers have made dozens of movies about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including at least two anime films off the top of my head, that you would’ve bothered to watch if you actually cared about this beyond winning discourse points. Not to mention all the Japanese science fiction that is obviously inspired in some way by trauma over the bombing, including the entire genre of kaiju films. Do you really think there’s anything those works haven’t said that Christopher Nolan would add? Or maybe, in fact, the lack of focus there in Oppenheimer is The Point, since the real-life Manhattan Project (which the film is critical of) certainly wasn’t consulting “Japanese voices”? Anyway, In This Corner of the World is a great film about the life of a young woman from Hiroshima in the waning days of WWII that you can currently rent for $1.99 on Amazon Prime. It’s animated by the same studio that did Yuri!!! on Ice and it’s based on a 3-volume manga that is also terrific and available both physically and digitally in English. If you actually want fiction that depicts “Japanese voices on the atomic bomb” I would start there. If you actually care about diverse perspectives in media you’d also care about the people making that media and look to what actual Japanese people are saying about this rather than expecting American and British creators to spoon-feed it to you.
we justifiably give Biden a lot of shit but I think “at least 3” is the funniest possible response to some right wing dipshit asking you how many genders there are
