Thread by @SteB777

1) Since the 1990s I've been saying that unless a politician/government is willing to take significant, and not token action, in their current term of office, they/it should be seen as obstructing action to address the crisis.

https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1390352196504592386

2) We must stop dealing with the climate crisis as separate from the ecological crisis. It was a big mistake.

"We cannot solve the threats of human-induced climate change and loss of biodiversity in isolation. We either solve both or we solve neither."
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

3) Originally the climate crisis was separated from the general ecological/sustainability crisis, 30 years ago, in the hope of a quick agreement similar to the successful Montreal Protocol over CFCs and the hole in the ozone layer.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_…

4) With hindsight this was a massive mistake because the whole rationale of separating the climate crisis from the ecological crisis was this quick agreement. As soon as this failed to materialise, it should have been once again treated as a whole crisis, and not separate issues.

5) This treating the climate crisis as separate from the general ecological/sustainability crisis has created an entirely mistaken perception of the subject, and allowed governments/vested interests to perpetrate greenwash fraud. They were never separate.
sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/docume…

6) It was never envisaged that the climate crisis would be treated as separate as an entirely different problem from the general ecological/sustainability crisis. They were only separated to get this quick agreement, not because they're separate matters. They're highly connected.

7) Therefore from now on, the COP talks, perhaps with a different title should be entirely focused on holistic solutions to the whole crisis, not just the climate crisis (which is highly misleading and distorts perception).

8) If a political leader is not willing to take significant action on the whole problem in their current term of office, but just makes future pledges beyond their term of office, there is no realistic prospect of a future head of government carrying out their plan.

9) This is why all promises to start action beyond a government's current term of office should be seen as fraudulent greenwash. I'm not talking about continuing action beyond that term of office, I am talking about the start of radical action.

10) By radical action, I don't mean radical in any ideological way, I mean very significant action which will put the whole system on a different course to the present adverse and worsening trends.

11) There is far too much tokenism, in which politicians and governments announce action, but never at the scale which will make any real difference in the necessary time frame.

12) This is what it is all about, scale and time frame. None of the action in the last 30 years has been consistent with either. It's like a heavy smoker reducing the amount they smoke from say 40 to 37 a day, but successfully encouraging more people to smoke.

13) We always need to look at the overall big picture. We've have 30 years of governments pretending to be taking action, whilst both carbon emissions, fossil fuel use and biodiversity loss has massively grown and accelerated.

14) More than half of all anthropogenic carbon emissions in the whole of human history, have occurred since 1990, when governments around the world pledged to reduce carbon emissions. This is monumental fraud and dishonesty.
ieep.eu/news/more-than…

15) Governments have been misleading the public into believing that they were taking significant action on the climate and ecological crisis, whilst massively increasing and accelerating the problem.

16) In addition, the whole issue of national emissions levels as happens currently is highly misleading and needs to be completely scrapped. Rich nations have got away with pretending they have reduced their emissions in line with what is necessary, whilst doing nothing.

17) Levels of consumption, living standards, and carbon emissions were massively higher in a few wealthy developed countries. The only way countries containing most of the global population could catch up, is by increasing their industrialization and therefore carbon emissions*.

18) Time and time again we here cries of what about China, what about India. Completely ignoring the fact that these 2 countries have a population of 2.8 billion compared to less than 400 million in the US. These countries are merely trying to catch up with the US.

19) Just looking at national carbon emissions completely fails to acknowledge:

1) The population of that country.

2) Historical emissions.

3) The origin of goods being manufactured.

20) Overall, we need to completely re-write the way the problem is seen, and the means of addressing it. The original plans were sound but they have been perverted in a clever way by the powerful and rich to facilitate business as usual.

20a) *Let's be crystal clear about this. The huge increase in carbon emissions in developing countries has been driven by the high consumption lifestyles of a few wealth countries who developed his lifestyle through fossil fuel burning.

20b) Therefore it is absolutely absurd for the US, Europe etc, to try and pretend that the rapidly growing emissions in China, India etc, are nothing to do with them. Especially as a lot of it is manufacturing consumer goods for them. It's driven by these countries.

There is of course a massive amount I have not dealt with such as equity. But overall it needs to be about developing a realistic big picture. We must always look to the big picture of how all this adds up and the overall trends.