Thread by @SteB777

1) What this is illustrates is how accurate my previous thread was about the primary obstacle to a realistic agreement to address the climate crisis is. It's just crude self-interest. Countries which can profit from fossil fuels don't want to give them up.
independent.co.uk/climate-change…

2) Here's my other thread. Whilst it was focused on personal wealth and privilege, the ability to profit from fossil fuel extraction, ultimately comes down to the same thing. Individuals personally benefiting from what is driving the crisis.

https://twitter.com/SteB777/status/1458254105080696837

3) Just think about the countries constantly obstructing progress. The most notorious is oil rich Saudi Arabia, then we have Australia with it's massive coal resources, Russia with it's oil and gas reserves, and the list goes on.

4) The US and Canada with their fossil fuel reserves, the UK with North Sea oil and gas, along with Norway. Basically, if you find a country objecting to ending fossil fuel use, you find a country with a vested interest in not ending fossil fuel use.

5) As I explained with my other thread, the people negotiating at COP26, are nearly all in the richest 1%, who according to Johan Rockstrom in his presentation at COP26, need to reduce their emissions by a factor of 30 times.

6) This need for the 1% to reduce their emissions by a factor of 30 times within the next decade fully explains why politicians, bureaucrats, vested interests, look to everything else, but the bleeding obvious solutions of the rich having to drastically cut back their lifestyles.

7) In other words, the whole obstacle to reaching realistic plans to seriously reduce emissions in the next few years to stay within the Paris 1.5C figure, is the vested interests of individuals, countries and companies, who hold the levers of power.

https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1458125928933040134

8) Virtually every individual with any real power or influence in our societies, who could make a decision to change things, is in this "high-socioeconomic status" group, the 1%, who needs to make drastic changes to their lifestyle.
nature.com/articles/s4156…

9) If you have a society where every person in an influential decision making, powerful, or influential position, is in the demographic that needs to make the biggest changes to their lifestyles, they're bound to drag their feet and to look elsewhere, just out of vested interest.

10) In every other sphere of life involving decision making, whether it's in courts in the legal system, in formal inquiries, bureaucracy, any influential person in that system, has to recuse themselves, if they are not impartial and are compromised.
dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/eng…

11) Yet here we are with climate talks, that determine the fate of our civilization, the whole of humanity, much life on Earth, where all the major participants have a vested interest in maintaining business as usual, the status quo, actually driving the climate crisis.

12) It is the richest 1% or 10% who have to make the biggest cuts to their lifestyles within the next decade, for us to having any chance of staying under 1.5C of warming, the Paris target and they have complete control over these negotiations.

13) It's no coincidence at all, that in the very apt words of @GretaThunberg COP26 has turned into a "Global North greenwash festival", when those in control of COP26 have got the biggest motivation to sabotage and stop the obvious solution to the problem.

https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1456295342253740037

14) For clarity again, in the words of @jrockstrom "the richest 1% must reduce emissions by a factor of 30, whilst the poorest 50% can increase their emissions by a factor of 3".

15) That's crystal clear isn't it? To meet the Paris 1.5C target, this must be in the next few years, within the next decade. What plan or proposal is there to address this? Not one. No one is even talking about it, and the media haven't even reported what @jrockstrom said. Why?

16) It is pretty bleeding obvious, those who control the media from editors, to senior journalists to media executives, politicians, senior bureaucrats, CEOs, they are all in the gang of the 1% who need to make these drastic cuts to their lifestyles to reduce emissions by 30x.

17) So guess what, they talk about everything else, but the crucial part of what is necessary to keep under 1.5C, because it threatens their privilege, their luxury lifestyles.

@GeorgeMonbiot @ClimateHuman @JKSteinberger @KevinClimate @GretaThunberg

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