COVID-19 climate lessons

Pandemics and climate disruption are catastrophic, and potentially existential, risks.

Climate disruption now manifests as an emergency because the climate system is close to tipping points that could drive it to a “point of no return”, where further warming would become self-sustaining. 

Existential threats require a particular approach to risk management.

The COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to understand the world’s preparedness for such a risk, and how and why the world’s response, by and large, was grossly inadequate.

This failure has important lessons for the preparedness of human society to respond to the much greater threat posed by human-induced climate disruption.

There are also important, positive lessons in the pandemic response about the capacity of society to move quickly into emergency mode.

Read the Breakthrough discussion paper by David Spratt and Alia Armistead - “COVID-19 climate lessons”.

'Reverse course or face extinction' - California Governor, Jerry Brown

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alifornia Governor Jerry Brown, in an ominous appeal on climate change, says that the world may already have "gone over the edge" on global warming and that humanity must reverse course or face extinction.

"We don't even know how far we've gone, or if we've gone over the edge," Brown said on Tuesday (local time) at a climate summit at the Vatican. "There are tipping points, feedback loops - this is not some linear set of problems that we can predict. We have to take measures against an uncertain future which may well be something no one ever wants. We are talking about extinction. We are talking about climate regimes that have not been seen for tens of millions of years. We're not there yet, but we're on our way."

Brown, addressing dozens of mayors and other local government officials from around the world, issued his typical criticism of Republican politicians and business interests skeptical of climate change, calling them "troglodytes" to applause.

Brown went beyond his partisan rabble-rousing, however, quoting balefully from St. Paul's biblical message to the Galatians.

"God is not mocked," Brown said, "for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Read the Stuff.co.nz story - “California governor's climate warning: 'We are talking about extinction’”.

Global climate pledges buy as just eight months of 'safety'

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ew global pledges to cut greenhouse gases have delayed by just eight months the moment when the world is expected to breach a threshold that keeps global warming at safer levels, the world's leading energy agency has found.

In a new report the International Energy Agency has warned collective emissions targets, along with the energy plans in those countries yet to set out new goals, puts the world on track by 2040 to release more than the total greenhouse gases than can be allowed and still have a strong chance of keeping global warming below two degrees - a threshold known as the carbon budget.

That is just eight months later than previous forecast, despite a new spate of targets and plans currently being pledged by countries, the agency said on Monday morning.

Countries have agreed to keeping global warming below two degrees through the United Nations. It is a goal that many scientists say would stave off the worst impacts of climate change, such as ever worsening droughts, floods and sea-level rise.

Read Tom Arup’s Sydney Morning Herald story - “New climate pledges only buy eight more months before climate tipping point”.

Tipping points - frequenlty mentioned, rarely understood

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ipping points are frequently mentioned during climate change discussions, but no one is able to accurately say “this is what will happen”.

The Saiga - dying in droves,
 climate change tipping
point or something else?

Will it be instantaneous; bringing massive changes to the world’s weather or will be it something subtle and seemingly unimportant in the greater scheme of things, having no noticeable impact on the world’s market system?

Should the latter be the case, then except for those immediately impacted, the event will pass largely unnoticed and the world community will continue on with its business as usual ways, unaware that a tipping point has been passed.

Half the world’s Saiga population has died in less than a month and so is that evidence of a climate change tipping point or is it something else?

These bizarre looking Ice Age antelopes once roamed Central Asia in the millions are now listed as critically endangered and although there is still uncertainty why they are dying at such an alarming rate, some believe it is because of differences in the Saiga’s living conditions brought upon by climate change.

Read the Mongabay.com story - “120,000 dead: half of the world's Saiga die in less than a month”.