So, there was a 10-minute discussion on @BBCRadio4#TheWorldThisWeekend between three eminent foreign policy commentators & Ed Stourton on Biden and the world, and unless it was very brief and coincided with a moment of distraction there was no mention at all of #climate change
This seems a serious omission on the part of Mr Stourton and his producers, what with climate change being a critical issue and one in which the USA has fallen profoundly out of step.
Their decision to run the discussion as one that could be arranged on a regional basis may perhaps have made it hard to slot climate change in.
That, though, is an argument against the regionalisation approach much more than it is an excuse for ignoring a global subject that was an important part of Mr Biden's campaign.
What is really striking though is that t three noted foreign-policy experts-- Rana Mitter of @ox_chinacentre, @MacaesBruno or @KimGhattas of the Carnegie Endowment--did not bring the subject up unprompted when discussing, say, relations with China or relations with the EU.
Technology standards yes; climate change no.
This reinforces the baleful impression that in either the foreign-policy establishment, the foreign policy commentariat or both climate change is just another issue, and not a particularly important one.
If a Biden presidency changes something big about the world, I hope that is it.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
The #IPCC#SR15 report says very little about solar #geoengineering, which is the main, but not only subject, of my book #ThePlanetRemade beyond saying that there is high agreement that a particular form of it could keep temperatures below 1.5C (Cross chapter box 10 in Chapter 4)
If the IPCC not going into this more seems an odd omission, given the topic, I think it is because a) the scientific understanding on solar #geoengineering, which obviously will never be complete, is still pretty sketchy in many respects (though not as sketchy as some may think)
b) the structure that the IPCC chose for the report (which was forced on it in part by the UNFCCC's mandate to it) did not allow it o assess solar #geoengineering's potential contribution in any of its scenarios
Dr Hare tells @LeoHickman that, “along with...most physicists who have looked at” solar geoengineering, he thinks it is “a very dangerous technology”. There are forms of solar #geoengineering which could indeed be very dangerous. Two points to make about this: 2/
One: as @jack_stilgoe, @rose_cairns, Steve Rayner and others point out, geoengineering is not yet a technology; it is poorly defined conceptual space where a technology might be – a “technological imaginary”, as social scientists sometimes say 3/