Thread by @SteB777

Is there anything that better illustrates the incoherence of our leadership, than Alok Sharma conceding we're on the brink of climate catastrophe, whilst also licensing new gas and oil fields.
theguardian.com/environment/20…

This is madness. Only a rapid winding down of fossil fuel burning will save us from catastrophe. Our leadership has tied itself up in knots with its sophistry about continuing to open up new fossil fuel reserves, whilst supposedly moving towards fake Net Zero.

Fake Net Zero created by false accounting in which individual nations deny responsibility for vast carbon emissions. We cannot solve the climate and ecological crisis, through sophistry and fraud.

The problem is quite simple. Only massive system change can possibly address this crisis. Yet for the last 3 decades our governments have ploughed on with economic growth at all costs, whilst with magical thinking claiming they are going to address the crisis.

The time for change was over 25 years ago, when we should have been disengaging from the economic growth at all costs economic model. Instead our leadership just pushed the pedal to the metal going out for all out economic growth.

Our leadership has created an out of control monster, in which they have persuaded the public to fully engaging in this unsustainable life style, where the public mistakenly believed that our leadership must have known what they were doing.

Change is coming whether we like it or not. Either we rapidly wind down our economies to a sustenance model, or we risk the uncontrolled collapse of our economic system. There is no third option which allows us to continue with business as usual.

Sure we can continue with business as usual, but only for a limited time. As the more we go down this avenue, the more we damage our natural systems that sustain us, and the more likelihood of uncontrolled collapse.

The further we go down the rabbit hole the more difficult it becomes to reverse out of it. The 1992 Rio Earth Summit was supposed to be about transitioning to a sustainable economy. Instead our leadership made the economy even more unsustainable.
un.org/en/conferences…

I can only think the primary problem is the failure of our leadership to understand the problem, because of their complete lack of knowledge about natural systems. They have just arrogantly ignored the scientific warnings.

They concede the present extreme weather is the result of the climate crisis, but then bizarrely claim that their plan to reach fake Net Zero in 30 years time (2050) will somehow save us - when it will be much worse by then. Plus it is fake Net Zero and we can't fool nature.

Do they not understand that the climate crisis is a cumulative crisis, which will carry on getting worse and worse as we fail to significantly reduce our emissions? Some pie in the sky hope in 30 years time won't save us.

From where I am, it seems as if our leadership mistakenly think we are just going to transition to an adverse climate state, and that will be it, that then we can somehow just adapt to it. You cannot adapt to something getting cumulative worse and worse.

Even if we could adapt to things as they are, it is going to carry on getting much worse, and so we will not be adapted to the new worse reality. It is not a simple transition from one state to another. There won't be any stable new state to adapt to.