David Spratt on the climate crisis and barriers to its resolution

[John Nissen]

Hi David and everyone,

David, you wrote a very good piece in "Pearls and Irritations", which we should read [1].  It is aimed at an Australian audience, but relevant to us all.

I have long been a devotee of Jared Diamond, especially after reading his book on how civilisation can collapse: we tick 14 out of15 of the boxes!  But Jared has a more recent book which I've not read; and David quotes from it:

This leaves Australians ill-prepared for what is to come. In his book, Upheaval, geographer and anthropologist Jarod Diamond concluded that the key predictors of success in responding to crisis and change are “acknowledgment rather than denial of a crisis’s reality; acceptance of responsibility to take action; and honest self-appraisal”, plus the “presence or absence of a shared national identity”, which can help a nation’s people recognise shared self-interest and unite in overcoming a crisis.

For the immediate climate crisis, there is no acknowledgement of the crisis's reality: the tipping processes in the Arctic are about to reach a point of no return, when even the most powerful cooling technology cannot stop the downward slide towards catastrophic climate change (including AMOC collapse) and many metres of sea level rise (there's enough GHG in the atmosphere to melt the poles and raise the sea level by 60 metres of so).

Even if this immediate climate crisis were recognised, there might not be anyone willing to take up responsibility for the necessary cooling intervention, such is the antagonism to SRM and SAI in particular.  And there's no money in it.

Even if one country took on responsibility, it would need to collaborate with others on the basis of protecting the world: the presence of the "global village" identity is essential.  We are all in it together.  The US government is a thorn in the flesh; other countries will have to unite for the necessary action, once the necessity for that action is recognised.  

My hope is for a movement for climate reality: recognising the immediate crisis as a time bomb in the Arctic.  The time bomb has to be defused ASAP.  This can only be done by lowering the Arctic temperature sufficiently to halt the several tipping processes which threaten catastrophic climate change and sea level rise.  Only SAI has that cooling power.

 

Cheers, John