We are heading for a four degree world

Earlier this year a Melbourne auditorium was nearly filled for the launch of the book, “Four Degrees of Global Warming: Australia in a Hot World”.

The book, edited by Dr Peter Christoff, who teaches and researches climate politics and policy in the Department of Resource Management and Geography at the University of Melbourne, discussed the possibility of Australia’s temperature increasing by four degrees.

A show of hands illustrated that most in the auditorium agreed that Australia was heading to a four degree increase.

And now The Guardian has written a story headed: “World on track to be 4C warmer by 2100 because ofmissed carbon targets” that explains why such an increase will become a reality.

The Guardian wrote: “Global ambitions to reduce emissions are becoming a bit like the resolutions we make to give something up at new year: the intention is sincere, but we don’t always deliver”.

Humanity scrambles to maintain its foothold on the planet



There appears consensus that this
 is where we are headed -
 Four Degrees or More?

Maintaining a foothold on earth has long been a challenge for humanity, but with exponential growth in numbers and the blunt refusal to abandon practices that have left all aspects of our environment in serious disrepair; the few existing solutions are quickly closing down.

Beyond that, the Huffington Post notes in a story headed: “Climate change report predicts warming will only make human ills worse” that the many ills of the modern world – starvation, poverty, flooding, heatwaves, droughts, war and disease - will only worsen.

Increase in global temperatures are locked in - as 2° degree over pre-industrial levels cannot be avoided and it was at the launch of the book “Four Degrees of Global Warming: Australia in a Hot World” in Melbourne recently there appeared consensus that such an outcome was unavoidable.

“Business as usual” is the obvious cause of global warming, along with the exponential growth in population, but it is certain that humanity has not the courage or the intellectual athleticism needed to shift to a world in which climate change mitigation is prioritized ahead of maintaining our financial wealth.

Humanity it lost at sea, its pockets burdened with gold coin, the markets for a life jacket and its last hope for rescue is with business as usual.

Its preservation begins with abandoning the gold coin, freeing itself from the market paradigm and realising that business as usual is not in the rescue business – humanity will have to save itself from itself.

Putting adaptation and mitigation together to tackle climate change

Adaptation and mitigation are rarely considered together when people discuss a response to climate change.

Learn about life in Australia
 in a four degree world.

However, they are in fact complementary, one and the same thing for if you apply mitigation processes correctly adaptation will follow.

Human-induced climate change has arisen, primarily, because humanity discovered fossil fuels and worked out a ways to employ them for humanity’s benefit, but failed to recognize that in the burning they would be dumping inordinate amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Initially all was well for there were relatively few people on the earth (about one billion in 1800) and aided by the fossil fuels that brought the agricultural and industrial revolutions, along with marked increases in public health, we began to live longer and healthier lives.

Being better fed and educated, along with becoming much smarter, we learned how to exploit those fossil fuels and in making life far more comfortable, our numbers began to expand and in the past 40 years our population has more than tripled to an alarming seven billion plus.

However, those who study such things argue population growth is slowing and although there are more people living on the earth now than in the whole of human history, we will see fewer than 10 billion people on earth by the end of this century.

Of course, the numbers are in a sense irrelevant to how we adapt to a mitigate climate change.

The die, it is important to note, is already cast.

The amount of carbon dioxide dumped into out atmosphere as an unaccounted for externality is such that what is now a nearly one degree increase in the earth’s surface temperatures above pre-industrial times will soon become two degrees.

Writing in the 2013 book, “Four Degrees of Global Warming: Australia in a Hot World”, there was consensus among the many authors, the Australians would need to learn to adapt to living all the shortcomings and difficulties associated with a four degree increase in temperature.

The two degree increase is unavoidable and roaring down the pipe toward us is a four degree increase and so we need not just adaptation, but mitigation if we are to have any serious likelihood of surviving these quite different circumstances.

People need to educate themselves, read the literature and learn about what is ahead.

Population numbers have soared, but are
expected to plateau at less than 10 billion.

What we are facing is so different from what has existed that it escapes the comprehension of most and the outcome is of such complexity, that to attempt an explanation here would do a disservice to all, short to say that the world of tomorrow will be different, damnably difficult and effectively a step into the unknown.

Let’s talk about adaptation and mitigation – first we must throw off the human created economic shackles and create a new life that is people focussed rather than one the emphasises that human-created construct of money.

Work, a process that enslaves many and benefits just a few, needs to be relegated to a position of lesser importance and so rather than be “working for the man”, we need to be in a position of working for the greater wellbeing of all.

Subsequently a four-hour work day would still see us produce more than enough to ensure our comfortable survival and yet allow each of us sufficient time in which to work with and for our respective communities.

An inherent part of such an approach would see us all poorer, in brutal economic terms, and so less able to consume “stuff” and so society’s use of and consumption of fossil fuel-powered energy would drop dramatically.

Freed from the “need” to work most of our waking hours, each of us would be in a position to use that time, energy and skill to help make our neighbourhoods, communities, towns and cities better places in which to live.

Places that because of the work/life balance would be less energy intensive, more resilient in a changing world and a way of life that would be more adaptive to the emerging difficulties associated with climate change and actually mitigate the cause of our declining atmospheric conditions.

Australia and Japan taking us off track in climate struggle

Australia and Japan have been credited with playing a significant role in taking global efforts to combat climate change off track.

A Reuters story published in The Huffington Post headed: “Climate change fight getting off track after major global setbacks in Japan and Australia, study finds”.

The Reuters story argued that negatives behaviour in both Australia and Japan offset the positive outcomes in both the U.S. and China.

Climate Action Tracker had found, the story said, that the world was headed for a temperature rise this century of nearly four degrees compared to an earlier prediction of just over three degrees, if governments stuck to promised greenhouse gas emissions.