Thread by @SteB777

Please listen to this very important explanation and spread it far and wide. @GeorgeMonbiot highlights the crucial obstacle to progress on addressing the climate crisis, and that is government reluctance to take any action which will alter business as usual. RT this

https://twitter.com/cameraZoe/status/1440591650250657793

I want to add to what @GeorgeMonbiot says, by explaining why I always highlight the ecological part of the climate and ecological emergency, such as the biodiversity crisis, and it is not just because this is where my interest lies.

"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 @IPCC_CH and @IPBES
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Politicians and billionaires prefer to highlight the climate part of the climate and ecological emergency, because at least in theory you can address the climate emergency, with techno-fixes. Ways of producing energy without emissions or even geo-engineering.

I say in theory because the feasibility and efficacy of these techno-fixes is very dubious i.e. they exist purely as hypotheses, not something that is actually likely to work.

However, let's imagine they were feasible. It really is imagination, fantasy, for a thought experiment.

Imagine we crack nuclear fusion and could produce unlimited amounts of energy, without any CO2 emissions, and we come up with magic technology that sucks all the excess CO2 out of the atmosphere.

We've solved the problem haven't we. Well actually no.

I highlighted that biodiversity loss, and the rest of the ecological crisis, is just as, perhaps more seriously than the climate crisis for a very good reason. Biodiversity loss and the rest of the ecological crisis is because of the business as usual economic model.

If we had unlimited "clean energy" and the ability to suck excess CO2 out of the atmosphere, we'd not only carry on with business as usual but the over-exploitation of the natural world and our natural systems would accelerate.

The Earth's biodiversity and our natural ecosystems would collapse as the economic growth model accelerated and consumption grew because of this surfeit of cheap none polluting energy.

You see, it is primarily the availability of cheap energy, which enabled the industrial over-exploitation of the natural world and natural systems. More of it, with the current business as usual economic growth model would accelerate it.

Far from fixing the problem, we'd only actually ensure our civilization's collapse because we are entirely reliant on the Earth's biodiversity and natural ecosystems we are destroying.

The economic growth model i.e. increasing consumption, and the business as usual model is the essential problem, not the climate emergency or biodiversity loss etc, as they are just the symptoms, not the cause.

@GretaThunberg @ClimateHuman @KateRaworth @ProfSteveKeen @GeorgeMonbiot

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