Thread by @SteB777

I have been outspoken in my criticism of our political leaders, essentially all of them, for the last 33 years, who made big pledges at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

I want to briefly explain my hypothesis about this.

1/🧵un.org/en/conferences…

Before going on, I want to make it clear that my claim that our political leaders lied, and have made one broken promise after another on climate change, isn't just my opinion. This is what @antonioguterres the UN Secretary General also says.

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In simple terms, this was what happened. The public were very concerned about climate change, and other environmental matters in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and politicians feared the public would stop voting for them, and turn to green parties.

3/wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.100…

This is not my opinion, this is what political analysts said at the time. Party insiders told them this. They were essentially saying to the public, there is no need to vote for green parties, because we will address this crisis i.e. they were pushed into it, by fear.
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With hindsight, it is clear that leading politicians then and now, never intended to make the changes to our system, that they agreed to at the time. They were hoping some techno-fixes, would come along, and they would be able to carry on with business as usual BaU.
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Clearly, politicians believed this then, because they still believe it now. This was very naive and stupid of politicians.

1) Climate techno-fixes, won't fix the ecological crisis.

2) These hoped for techno-fixes will not work at the necessary scale.
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This belief in techno-fixes, seems to have been peddled by the fossil fuel industry and other corporate interests, so they could carry on with BaU for as long as possible. But none of these techno-fixes, are feasible at the necessary scale.
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So for example, it is obviously possible to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, because plants, natural vegetation does it. But not at the scale that allows us to carry on burning 100s of millions of years of accumulated plant capture (fossil fuels).
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Just because a lot of the theoretical, technological solutions, work at some level, does not mean that they would ever work at the scale necessary to remove the massive amounts of CO2 we've released from FF burning and still are.
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However, a much bigger reality problems, is that almost all mooted techno-fixes for the climate problem, would make the ecological/biodiversity crisis, much worse.
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So-called clean energy, isn't green or clean, at all - that's greenwash. What has destroyed biodiversity, to the point that only 4% of the biomass of mammals are wild mammals (the rest are humans and their livestock), is cheap, portable energy.

11/ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-b…

Cheap, freely available, so-called clean energy, would in the present system, just result in the ongoing, massive destruction of biodiversity and natural habitat. Only totally changing the system, would change that. In which case, the climate crisis would be solved.
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The biodiversity crisis alone, is as big a threat to our civilization, as the climate crisis, and if not addressed, it will result in the collapse of our civilization. This can only be addressed by system change, not techno-fixes.

13/theguardian.com/environment/20…

Politicians, economists, oligarchs, corporate interests, and even some climate scientists, who naively think we will be saved by techno-fixes, without major system change, to address the ecological crisis, simply don't understand biodiversity and ecology.
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This is a belief based on ignorance of the natural systems, which keeps us alive.

"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

15/theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Sir Robert Watson who wrote the above, is not just a leading climate scientist, but the former chair of the @IPCC_CH and @IBES. He was basing what he said, on the largest scientific study of the Earth's biodiversity ever. It wasn't speculation.

16/ipbes.net/global-assessm…

Luckily, most climate scientists, who don't actually study biodiversity and ecology, take notice of the experts studying biodiversity and ecology. But some, only look at the physical part of the problem, climate change, and know nothing about biodiversity.
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This leads a minority of climate scientists, who only look at the physical part of the Earth, to mistakenly believe that the problem can be addressed via techno-fixes, because they are not looking at the whole problem (techno-optimists - I mean you).
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The problem is, the whole Earth system, the climate system, and other physical systems, and the living part, biodiversity and ecology, are massively complex. Hardly anyone is looking at the whole big picture. There is no field of science that studies it.
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Scientists like @jrockstrom have done great work, with their planetary boundaries concept, which shows humanity has crossed, 6 of the 9 "known" (assessed) planetary boundaries. I highlighted "known" because we don't know all the planetary boundaries.

20/stockholmresilience.org/research/plane…

For instance, as I have been pointing out for decades, no one has any idea, at what point the impacts of climate change, and biodiversity collapse, will collapse our civilization, because absolutely no one is studying it.

21/pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

You will note, I use impeccable references, not crank opinions. There is no scientific, evidence based view, which contradicts anything I say. Just people with opinions, who are not looking at the evidence of the whole big picture. They cherry-pick, and turn a blind-eye.
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I only have these views, because I don't turn a blind-eye to inconvenient evidence, like techno-optimists do. Of course, I don't know everything, I am not claiming to. However, at least I'm not turning a blind-eye to the biodiversity/ecological crisis, like techno-optimists.
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This is my big challenge to those who claim unchecked climate change won't be catastrophic.

What about the biodiversity/ecological crisis? How are you going to fix that, and stop it collapsing our civilization?

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https://x.com/andrewp109/status/1927279644752941114

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