The Era of Global Boiling?

Have you been wondering why my blog posts have been later in the day this summer? No? I'll do some 'splainin' anyway. We are early risers so we get out for a paddle or a cycle as early as we can. We enjoy the solitude and the birdsong, and this morning we communed with the green herons, the kingfishers, the turtles, and --wait for it -- a family of otters. 

We also head out at our version of the crack of dawn to beat the heat. As we slid into the Moira River at 7:30 it was a pleasant 21C but by this afternoon it will be 29C and feel closer to forty. That is still mild compared to many places on the planet where actual temperatures are exceeding 40C and some flirting with 50C. Even affluent people are becoming prisoners within their homes and air-conditioning while the poor and elderly are often succumbing to the deadly heat.

Earlier this week UN secretary general, António Guterres shared that scientists have confirmed that this July is on track to be the planet's hottest month on record. In fact, it is probably the hottest in 120,000 years. 

Guterres also pronounced that the era of global warming has ended and “the era of global boiling has arrived.”The term "global warming" can sound almost benign, incremental rather than catastrophic. There is no doubt about global boiling though. It immediately conjures up the image of the frog who stays in a pot of water with the temperature rising until it expires, except that we humans have are hands on the controls of the stove and are also in the saucepan. 

As huge swaths of our country and many others are consumed by wildfires and iconic tourist attractions are closed because of the heat risk I also think of a speech made in 2019 by a then 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, the Swedish cllmate activist whose solitary protest spawned a world-wide movement. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland she "spoke truth to power", beginning with the words; "our house is on fire, I am here to say, our house is on fire."

As with many truth-tellers and prophetis, including those from the bible, Greta Thunberg has been mocked and denigrated, dismissed as being a child who should be in school or delusional because of being on the autism spectrum. Among the truth-haters was the former president of the United States, the insurrectionist now being charged for obstruction of justice. 

We heard the frogs as well during our paddle this morning and this was heavenly music to our aging ears. They haven't reached the boiling point yet, even though Creation is in crisis. 

Creator God, open our eyes, our ears, our hearts to the truth about this wondrous world. 

At the risk of including too much in one blog entry, here is the entirety of Thunberg's address in Davos, her forceful and discomfiting call to action. 

Our house is on fire. I am here to say, our house is on fire.

According to the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], we are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes. In that time, unprecedented changes in all aspects of society need to have taken place, including a reduction of our CO₂ emissions by at least 50%.

And please note that those numbers do not include the aspect of equity, which is absolutely necessary to make the Paris agreement work on a global scale. Nor does it include tipping points or feedback loops like the extremely powerful methane gas being released from the thawing Arctic permafrost.

At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories. But their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag. And on climate change, we have to acknowledge we have failed. All political movements in their present form have done so, and the media has failed to create broad public awareness.

But Homo sapiens have not yet failed.

Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around. We can still fix this. We still have everything in our own hands. But unless we recognise the overall failures of our current systems, we most probably don’t stand a chance.

We are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people. And now is not the time for speaking politely or focusing on what we can or cannot say. Now is the time to speak clearly.

Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge that Homo sapiens have ever faced. The main solution, however, is so simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop our emissions of greenhouse gases.

Either we do that or we don’t.

You say nothing in life is black or white. But that is a lie. A very dangerous lie. Either we prevent 1.5 degree [Celsius] of warming or we don’t. Either we avoid setting off that irreversible chain reaction beyond human control or we don’t. Either we choose to go on as a civilisation or we don’t. That is as black or white as it gets. There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.

Now we all have a choice. We can create transformational action that will safeguard the future living conditions for humankind. Or we can continue with our business as usual and fail.

That is up to you and me.

Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?

Here in Davos – just like everywhere else – everyone is talking about money. It seems that money and growth are our only main concerns.

And since the climate crisis has never once been treated as a crisis, people are simply not aware of the full consequences on our everyday life. People are not aware that there is such a thing as a carbon budget, and just how incredibly small that remaining carbon budget is. And that needs to change today.

No other current challenge can match the importance of establishing a wide, public awareness and understanding of our rapidly disappearing carbon budget, that should and must become our new global currency and the very heart of future and present economics.

We are now at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the climate crisis that threatens our civilisation – and the entire biosphere – must speak out in clear language, no matter how uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be.

We must change almost everything in our current societies. The bigger your carbon footprint is, the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility.

Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.

I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire. Because it is.