David Roberts puts his view on 'the climate thing'

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riting in Grist about a literary fiction author - “Jonathan Franzen is confused about climate change, but then, lots of people are” – David Roberts makes this observation.

His thoughts resonate and would be understood by most who care about the damage we are casing to the world’s climate system.

 

“Shouldn’t our responsibility to other people, both living and not yet born, compel us to take radical action on climate change? The problem here is that it makes no difference to the climate whether any individual, myself included, drives to work or rides a bike. The scale of greenhouse-gas emissions is so vast, the mechanisms by which these emissions affect the climate so nonlinear, and the effects so widely dispersed in time and space that no specific instance of harm could ever be traced back to my 0.0000001-per-cent contribution to emissions. I may abstractly fault myself for emitting way more than the global per-capita average. But if I calculate the average annual quota required to limit global warming to two degrees this century I find that simply maintaining a typical American single-family home exceeds it in two weeks. Absent any indication of direct harm, what makes intuitive moral sense is to live the life I was given, be a good citizen, be kind to the people near me, and conserve as well as I reasonably can.”

-      David Roberts.

“Research” - another term for doing nothing

“Research” is just another term for doing nothing, procrastination.

Climate change is moving faster than predicted and we simply don’t have time to procrastinate, that is do more research.

Writing on ‘Grist”, David Roberts says “In my experience, conversations about geoengineering always go the same way. One side says, “That shit’s crazy!” and the other side says, ‘Yes, but we should still research it.’”

In his piece: “More research” into geoengineering is not such a hot idea” Roberts writes: “There are many reasons it is mad, but the main one is simple: Once you start modifying albedo, you can’t stop, ever, without disastrous consequences.”

We need something better than a 'war-like footing'

Many argue that to effectively address the dilemmas of climate change the world needs to put itself on a “war-like footing”.

Such a metaphor is accurate in terms of the urgency the world faces, but for many it conjures images that are distasteful and so disengage many from the actions they need to take.

The need for a more universally accepted term that represents the level of significance that 'wartime like scale and speed' does is presently being much discussed by members of the Victorian Climate Action Network (VCAN).

Member, Luke Taylor recently said that there is still a big prize out there for anyone who can come up with a more universally accepted term that represents the level of significance that “wartime like scale and speed”.

Considering that a story on Grist by David Roberts headed: “What would ‘wartime mobilization’to fight climate change look like?” seems relevant.