This is it: the world is dangerously close to irreversible devastation from climate change according to a harrowing new UN report that says the climate crisis has reached an unavoidable “really bleak moment”. Meanwhile, global emissions are still rising and aren’t expected to peak until at leak 2025, and the world’s seven biggest oil companies have doubled their profits in 2022. Help.
Professor Johan Rockström said in the report the world was coming “very, very close to irreversible changes” and “time is really running out very, very fast”.
Scientists have long agreed that global temperature rises needed to be limited to 1.5C to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. 194 countries committed to this target by signing the Paris Agreement. But to achieve it, global emissions need to fall by half by 2030, which is looking decreasingly likely given emissions are still rising.
The UN report concluded that given the “woefully inadequate” progress made on emissions reductions in recent years, there was now “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place”. This means that even if all countries meet their 2030 targets, global temperatures will still likely rise to about 2.5C by the end of the century which would, quite literally, condemn the world to a complete breakdown.
The only way out of this unavoidable climate change trajedy is to ramp up emissions reduction targets immediately and actually get this shit moving today.
The UN report said given we’re not on track to deliver on the Paris or Glasgow climate agreements, avoiding catastrophe would require the “rapid transformation of societies”.
But is this going to happen? Of course not.
The world’s seven biggest oil companies’ profits have risen to more than $270 billion AUD so far this year thanks to rising energy prices amid the Russian war in Ukraine.
Shell and TotalEnergies both literally doubled their profits in the July to September quarter to about $10 billion each. In three months. My eyes are watering.
The global energy industry is expected to amass $4 trillion USD this year, so remind me again why we don’t have a carbon tax?
And more depressing still, Labor’s first Federal Budget dropped on Tuesday and it committed approximately not fucking enough to tackling the climate crisis. There were a few small sums allocated to environmental initiatives and regenerating the Great Barrier Reef, but all of that is going to count for nothing unless we stop funding *new* fossil fuel projects for a start.
If anyone needs me I’ll be living in the wilderness.
