Surprise, surprise: everything climate scientists have been warning us about is coming back to bite us. And by us, of course, we mean all of humanity.
As reported by the Guardianscientists have just published a warning that the Earth is approaching a point of no return. A new study in the journal One World shows multiple climate systems — the Greenland ice sheet, the West Antarctic ice sheet, the boreal permafrost, the Amazon rainforest — are all much closer to collapse than previously thought.
“Research shows that several components of the Earth system may be closer to destabilizing than once thought,” the researchers urged. “While the exact risk is uncertain, it is clear that current climate commitments are not enough.”
The analysis is based on climate “tipping points”, i.e. a collapse of environmental systems that lead other climate systems beyond their own tipping points, creating a snowball scenario where the planet spirals into a worst-case scenario known as a “Warm Earth.” Under this scenario, the long-term temperature is projected to rise about 9 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial averages – which would really bad
“It even shares some of the [tipping point] limits could commit the planet to a greenhouse trajectory,” said Christopher Wolf, a scientist at the environmental group Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates. “Policymakers and the public remain largely unaware of the risks posed by what would effectively be a transition point of no return.”
What makes all this particularly insulting is the fact that the world’s poor people — those who will suffer the closest and most profound losses as a result of climate change — are powerless to stop these tipping points from closing. And not for lack of will: the global climate movement is steadily growing, as Americans have perhaps never been more aware that climate change will impact the world’s low-income people the most.
Unfortunately, the power to reverse these decisions does not belong to the people, but to a small cabal of the ultra rich. The future of the planet is so out of our control that some environmental experts argue that not even the world’s most powerful governments can stop the collapse.
As University of Manitoba professor David Camfield and author of the 2022 book “Future on Fire: Capitalism and the Politics of Climate Change” explained, the level of political power held by the ultra-rich and their corporations is so immense that even a government with popular support and a commitment to reducing emissions struggles under the weight of corporate investment strikes, pressure from a credit-age market and catastrophe.
“To weaken those political barriers enough for a government to begin a just transition, there will be massive pressure of the kind that only movements can unleash,” Camfield asserts.
Mathematics, in other words, is brutal. The logic of capitalism demands an endless accumulation of wealth, leading to a world in which corporations must grow or die, regardless of the consequences. Transitioning out of this mess would mean weakening the entire control of capital over power – something that has only ever been achieved when the great masses of people work together to demand a better world.
More on climate change: The richest 1 percent burned their entire carbon share for the year in just 10 days