Here's a startling fact: the first "global stocktake" on climate change just happened, and its conclusions are chilling.
Our planet? Off track. We're headed for a temperature rise of up to 2.6°C. A century's progress? Reversing. The age we're entering? Unimaginable to many. 1/7
Think 2.6°C isn't alarming? Brace yourself. As the planet warms beyond 1.5°C, massive parts will face lethal heatwaves. Healthy individuals could die within hours, leading to mass fatalities, especially where air conditioning is a luxury. 2/7
The world's temperature rose about 1.2°C in 2022. At times, it was 1.5°C. Now, picture this summer's catastrophes – coast-to-coast megafires, extreme floods, droughts, plummeting air quality. Now DOUBLE those calamities. Because 2.6°C is double our current rise. 3/7
Last summer? Half the world's population faced intense heat for at least a month. More than 3.8 billion were exposed to extreme, human-caused heat. If we're heading to 2.6°C, expect the unimaginable – impacts that are non-linear. Meaning? More than twice the current damage. 4/7
The UN's Secretary-General recently spoke of our planet undergoing its hottest summer. This climate catastrophe isn't just an arithmetic progression. It's exponential. Twice the heat doesn't mean twice the damage. It's MUCH more. 5/7
Climate tipping points-–those critical thresholds that drastically change our environment. At 2.6°C, almost all known tipping points are activated. Ice sheets melting, rainforests dying, weather patterns shifting. Essentially, our world won't stop at 2.6°C; it races beyond. 6/7
Bottom line? At 2°C, 25% of the world might become uninhabitable. Where living becomes a gamble with death. This isn't dystopian fiction. It's the reality we're hurtling toward. Read, understand, and let's change course while we can. 7/7. theissue.io/untitled-3/
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Hawaii in flames, 100 dead and counting. Thousands evacuated in Spain. Thousands of hectares of Portugal, on fire. The blazes in Canada? So far, they’ve destroyed an area the size of… Greece. Oh, and Greece? It’s on fire, too.
We're surrounded by megafailure. 1/7
How did we end up in this mess? A cascade of failures.
Extremism is on the rise, right-wing specifically. A failure of the right to rein in its worst, to offer less extreme views, to advance the wise. Conservatives' failure is the tip of the iceberg. 2/7
Liberals aren't blameless, sorry to say. There's an ongoing failure to develop new leaders, propose a new social contract. Society doesn't just break from within. It breaks when no alternative is offered. And here, liberals have failed, stunningly, for decades. 3/7
See that chart? That's the US suicide rate--and it's on a steep, steep rise.
Suicides in the U.S. are more common now than at any time since World War II. The growing despair of American life. Stressors are hitting from every angle, and we're only beginning to understand it. 1/6
Loneliness. The biggest predictor of suicide and a growing epidemic. Americans are incredibly isolated and it's only worsening.
Nearly half of all Americans report having fewer than three close friends. The erosion of social bonds and ties is a slow, ongoing catastrophe. 2/6
American stresses include financial strains like no other in the developed world.
60-80% live paycheck to paycheck. The cost of living's outpaced median income. Lose your job, lose your healthcare, lose your savings. It's traumatic to feel so constantly under threat. 3/6
Wildfires are wreaking havoc through Hawaii. Billowing clouds of smoke and ash. People yelling "go, go, we can't do anything for her!" Others left for dead. People, jumping into the ocean to survive.
Climate change is a civilizational emergency. 1/8
A shockwave is racing around the globe. Is this really happening? So hard, this fast? People sense something’s changed this summer. A phase shift. Not "a" heatwave, or "a" fire. We're talking continental, hemispheric, global scales. It's climatic future shock. 2/8
We resist the understanding that we’re entering an Age of Extinction. We haven't experienced anything like this before. And we don't have time. Our planet will never be the same again.
There are three things every sensible person should do right now: Learn, think, and act. 3/8
Our civilization has a Reality Problem. The right denies empirical facts; the center and left ignore historical truths. We say “climate change” instead of “global warming.” “Fake news” instead of “propaganda."
What happens when a society lies to itself? It can't function. 1/6
Not "propaganda" but "fake news." Not "fascism" but "nationalism." We refuse to call things what they are. Our language becomes stunted, self-coined, meaningless. It doesn't just hide the truth; it replaces it with illusion. It subtracts from reality. What can that lead to? 2/6
Look at our history. Societies that lie to themselves don't just fall; they implode. The Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Imperial Rome – all lost contact with reality. That's what's at stake. 3/6
Remember when Covid hit, and “we were all in it together"?
Now? Covid isn't gone. But if you do take precautions, people will insult, mock, even harass you.
We learned something grim from the pandemic: People won't change a thing about their lives, even for their own good. 1/6
It took us millennia to discover scientific miracles like vaccines, masks, and sanitizers. Now we’re not using a single one. Meanwhile, Covid rages on — yet another wave’s arriving. The elderly, ill, frail, immunocompromised are... sacrificed to it. 2/6
We learned something from the pandemic. And it isn’t a good something. We learned that people appear incapable of changing, even a tiny bit, for the common good. That they appear truculently indifferent, selfish, and worse, if you point any of that out, you’re the bad guy. 3/6
Imagine a decade ago I told you, "Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Climate change will accelerate, fascism will rise again. The economy will stagnate. A pandemic is coming. Oh and—have you heard of wet bulb temperature?"
You'd have laughed at me.
But here we are. 1/6
Our world economy, based on predatory capitalism, is an abject failure at this juncture in human history. Did it make us rich? Hardly.
America and China, the Great Consumer and Producer, face despair. The real beneficiaries? The ultra-rich, as the planet melts down to boot. 2/6
Think about how perverse our choices have been. A global economy that didn’t make us rich and caused global boiling.
This is more than a climate crisis; it’s an economic, social, political, ecological polycrisis. The cause? Our institutions and systems are savagely broken. 3/6