Thread by @SteB777

1) It should now be obvious, absolutely crystal clear that the general policy being pursued by every government in the world is fundamentally inconsistent with adequately addressing the climate and ecological emergency. This can only be addressed with huge system change.

https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1366684554203922433

2) However, it is now crystal clear that the one thing nearly every political party likely to win power in every country in the world is totally committed to, is avoiding any major system change and maintaining the business as usual economic model, inconsistent with the crisis.

3) We need to urgently start open dialogue about this i.e. how all measures being suggested to address the climate and ecological emergency are fundamentally inconsistent with achieving their stated goals. They are token gestures, nowhere near at the scale necessary to succeed.

4) To use @GretaThunberg's the house is on fire metaphor, it is like sending the Fire Brigade to a house fire with only 5 buckets of water and expecting them to put the fire out. Yes, water can put fires out, but not at this scale.

5) The huge problem, a massive obstacle, is that no body, no scientific discipline, no study I am aware of, has ever set out to determine what degree of action and change is necessary to actually address the climate and ecological emergency.

6) The failure to define what degree of action is necessary to actually address the crisis successfully i.e. what degree of change is necessary, allows politicians and governments to get away with promising totally inadequate measures to address the problem.

7) Going back to my analogy of being expected to put out a house fire with 5 buckets of water. Most people would immediately recognise this as being a totally inadequate token gesture. However, the problem is no one can see this as regards the climate and ecological emergency.

8) Therefore, politicians and their ilk, can get away with promising totally inadequate action to address the climate and ecological emergency, simply because there is no template of what adequate action looks like, to prove their measures are inadequate.

9) Subsequently, I am suggesting with some urgency that we need to set up an inter-disciplinary body to ascertain what degree of action and change is necessary to actually successfully address the climate and ecological emergency.

10) In other words a panel of experts from every field of relevant expertise who are up to date with the state of knowledge in their field and latest research, and who can inform the panel of what this is.

11) That this panel should produce a simplified summary of what sort of action i.e. the bear minimum necessary to actually successfully address the climate and ecological emergence. This should not pull its punches, and needs to be brutally honest.

12) By what sort of action, I am not talking about a plan or a particular methodology, but an overall assessment of what degree of action is necessary. It is vital that it be done in a joined up way, to address the whole climate and ecological emergency, not just part of it.

13) For instance, most of the action being mooted to address the climate crisis, will do absolutely nothing to address the biodiversity crisis, which is just as serious, and in fact might create increased biodiversity loss.

14) This assessment should not be ideological i.e. to set out what flavour of change is necessary, but rather just what degree of change from the current business as usual economic model is necessary.

15) Once again, it is a huge obstacle and problem, that currently we have no way of comparing the action promised, with what is necessary to actually avert a planetary catastrophe.

16) All along it is assumed that if governments/politicians promise action to address the impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, plastic pollution, soil loss, etc, etc, that this action will be adequate, when the scale is inadequate.

17) However, going back to the house on fire analogy. Everyone knows dousing a fire with water is a way of putting it out. However, the success of putting out a house fire with water, depends on how much water you use, in what time frame, and where that water is directed.

18) It is exactly the same with the climate and ecological emergency. The action governments are offering to take maybe consistent with addressing the crisis, but not at scale and measure they are offering it at. It is totally inadequate, by many orders of magnitude.

19) You see, I fear what our governments are doing is merely offering 5 buckets of water to put out a large house fire. The public is being seriously misled that the action being offered is adequate for the problem in hand, and I say it is not.

20) During the last 30 years governments have made a big fuss of engaging in action to address the climate crisis. Yet during this period emissions have risen by around 60% and half of all the emission in the whole of human history have been emitted since.

https://twitter.com/neilrkaye/status/1365247133507604486

21) Clearly illustrating that the measures offered are nowhere near adequate to even make a difference, let alone save us from dangerous climate change, which may result in the collapse of our civilization.

22) My big question is why hasn't anyone being assessing how much action, how much system change we need, in a joined up way to address the whole climate and ecological emergency? After all we are not going to succeed by addressing just one bit of the overall crisis.

23) "We cannot solve the threats of human-induced climate change and loss of biodiversity in isolation. We either solve both or we solve neither."

Sir Robert Watson, former chair of @IPBES
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

24) We either address the climate and ecological emergency, or we don't. If we don't, we face the collapse of our civilization, and all that will entail. It is an avoidable catastrophe, but it is only avoidable if we make the necessary change and action to address the crisis.

@GretaThunberg @GeorgeMonbiot @KevinClimate @NaomiAKlein @NaomiOreskes @KateRaworth @ProfSteveKeen @XRebellionUK @ChrisGPackham @IPBES