Earth is rapidly being transformed into a desert planet with catastrophic consequences for most living things.
[THREAD]
4 - 5 billion people, most of them already living in poverty, will see their habitats undergo an acutely challenging transformation as we head rapidly to an extremely dangerous 2.5°C world of year long droughts and food shortages due to locked in warming and climate feedbacks.
Desertification - the greatest threat.
Land degradation of dry lands:
North and southern Africa, western North America, Australia, the Middle East & Central Asia. Drylands are home to 2.7 billion people – 90% of whom live in developing countries'carbonbrief.org/explainer-dese…
Aridification will emerge over ~25% of Earth's land surface.
Areas most affected: SE Asia, S. Europe, S. Africa, Central America and Southern Australia - home to more than 1.5 billion people. Areas would become more arid; droughts & wildfires widespread. dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ar…
We're hurtling into 'climate states without societal precedent, challenging adaptation', a world where 'climates like those of the Pliocene will prevail as soon as 2030'.
2. 5°C by 2030: to a climate 'outside the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity'?
Surviving decently (or at all) in a world of rapidly escalating extreme water stress/scarcity & mega-drought food shortages is quickly going to become exceedingly difficult for billions of people.
* hard/impossible to survive
* hard/impossible to prevent
* likely by 2069-2092
* plausible by 2045
* just one of many existential threats that mean a total rethink of economic growth is mandatory to protect species and everyone
Journalists:
Capitalism has set up the early deaths of billions of people.
Has capitalism left it too late to avoid unsurvivable 2/2.5°C of global warming and rising?
Yes.
Has the scientific community issued major consensus reports indicating only political-economic systems changes may end biodiversity destruction and limit abrupt climate chaos?
The factory food, fossil fuel, and arms industries are all thriving. Cement, plastics, steel.. This capitalist Extinction Economy is the worst-case scenario. It won't stop emissions. It has condemned us to essentially unsurvivable warming at 1.9-2°C and rising by 2029-41. 🧵
1. Mass media journalists are silent on 2°C by 2032-41 as warming hits 1.38-1.5C increasing by 0.35-0.45C per decade.
'12 months after the peak of the El Niño event and global temperatures are still exceptionally high'
BREAKING: World Meteorological Organization issues Red Alert to humanity as accelerating global warming of 1.4-1.7°C and rising heralds essentially unsurvivable conditions within years not decades 🧵
1. The January –September 2024 global mean surface air temperature was 1.54°C (with a margin of uncertainty of ±0.13°C) above the pre-industrial average boosted by a warming El Niño event according to an analysis of six international datasets used by WMO.
BREAKING: scientists hold back tears and shake their heads sadly as they explain utterly compromised COP29 climate conference was meant to be the last chance to organise rapid and deep emissions cuts for any chance of staying well below essentially unsurvivable 2°C 🧵
1. Time has run out to avoid 1.5°C (now sure to hit in the 2020s) and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. 1.75°C will be exceeded soon after with dire 2°C expected by 2030-2050
2. Abrupt climate change is just one compounding factor in extinction catastrophe.
Biodiversity destruction is a core part of the reality of industrial capitalism.
Change this Doom Economy now while it's still too late to protect species and everyone.🧵⬇️