Thread by @evanlweber

The past few weeks have brought more & more evidence that we are in a drastic, catastrophic, & urgent #ClimateEmergency.

It’s also more clear than ever that most US politicians, yes even @TheDemocrats, are in complete denial about the scale & speed with which we must act.

A 🧵:

Let’s start with the problem.

Last week, a new report came out in one of the world’s top scientific journals showing that we are at extreme risk of hurdling past dangerous “climate tipping points” in the coming years.

We may have already past them:
nature.com/articles/d4158…

What does this mean?

Basically there are set of things in our planetary system—the thawing of ice caps, deforestation, ocean circulation—that, if they reach a certain point, could set off a series of chain reactions that would spin warming into free fall. wired.com/story/climate-…

This would be bad. Very bad.

And as the authors state, “the intervention time left to prevent tipping could already have shrunk towards zero, whereas the reaction time to achieve net zero emissions is 30 years at best.” cnn.com/2019/11/28/hea…

Terrified yet? There’s more.

Also last week, the United Nations released a report examining the world’s “emissions gap”: the distance we have between the path that we are collectively on and the actual efforts to keep warming below catastrophic levels. unenvironment.org/resources/emis…

Their findings? You might not be surprised to hear that we are not on track to preserve a stable climate.

But it is shocking—numbing and infuriating all at once—just how far off track we are.

Read this article: washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…

Emissions need to be falling every year at a rate that the world has never seen.

The UN conservatively estimates that emissions must fall 7.6% annually over the next decade.

To reach that target globally, the US would need to move even quicker. washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…

Instead, global emissions continue to climb 1-2% every year, breaking new records.

And under the Trump administration, US emissions (once plateaued and falling) are now rising again. Last year they increased by 2.8%, and they may increase again this year. public.wmo.int/en/media/press…

So things are bad. Car-hanging-off-the-edge-of-the-cliff bad. But instead of slamming the vehicle into the reverse, we’ve got our foot on the accelerator.

Fucking yikes.

Is anyone gonna bring a crane and yank us the hell out of here?

Obviously the @GOP & @realDonaldTrump are not going to be of any help. They are fully committed to accelerating us over that cliff as long as it means perpetuating the get-rich-and-stay-in-power scheme they’ve orchestrated with their fossil fuel cronies.

People have called @realDonaldTrump & @GOP “climate science deniers,” but I don’t think that’s fair.

I don’t think they deny the science. I think most of them accept the science as real and willfully lie to the public.

Let’s just call them something simpler: liars & murderers.

Rather than the @GOP, I think it’s the majority of @TheDemocrats who are the “climate science deniers.”

They claim to “accept” the science, but refuse to put forward solutions in line with what really grappling with it would truly mean.

Just a yr ago, we begged @SpeakerPelosi & the leadership of the Democratic Party to grapple with what the science was really saying.

With the proposed Select Committee on a #GreenNewDeal, we even offered them a plan to develop solutions in line with it. vox.com/energy-and-env…

But they denied it. Because grappling with the reality of the science is uncomfortable. It might even be politically inconvenient.

Hell, the change the science is demanding might not even be technologically achievable!

But we know for certain that it won’t be politically or technologically achievable if we are in denial about the urgency and the goal.

So @TheDemocrats, by trying to water down the severity of the science, setting goals way off the mark, & proposing half-measures—are dooming us.

As much as I want to be encouraged that mainstream Dems are putting forward bills to decarbonize the economy, these bills are out of line with the urgency scientists are telling us we need to have globally, let alone here in the US.

So, we are in denial. thehill.com/policy/energy-…

So in summary:

We’re bolting towards catastrophe.
The @GOP are murderers with their foot on the accelerator.
@TheDemocrats are in denial about how fast we’re headed off a cliff, & have their pinky toe on the reverse pedal, trying to tell us & themselves it’s enough.

What to do?

In short, we need to be fearless, relentless truth-tellers, and we need to raise hell.

We need to be unafraid to demand the radical, impossible transformation required to save humanity.

We need to disrupt business as usual until the establishment reckons with reality.

The next 12 months are the most pivotal of our lives. The next congress & administration might be our last, best chance to salvage what is left of this beautiful planet and prevent us from going over the edge.

Together, we can try.

Join us this Friday:
sunrisemovement.org/climatestrike