The Final Question in the Global Warming-Climate Crisis Discussion

Following the latest IPCC report, it all comes down to this.

Any reasonable conversation about fossil-fuels-driven global warming and climate change has now been whittled down to the piercing point of one last question:

Are you OK with profiting from the fossil fuels that will cause the untimely demise of your own and others’ children and grandchildren?

For the people who run fossil-fuels companies, their apologists and the politicians of both parties who enable them (i.e., the politicians they own through campaign contributions), it’s a literal question. Stated another way:

Will you continue to make a living – a killing – from what is literally destroying the habitats of all animals on earth, including human beings?

Don’t hold your breath for a coherent or logical response. Instead, these profiteers are experts at deflection, delay and distraction. And, unfortunately, many of our fellow citizens believe them.

A while back I was speaking to a person who I believe is smart and highly capable. Our conversation veered into climate change.

“The science on that is not conclusive,” he said.

Wow.

The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released last week, “Synthesis Report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report,” is quite clear. Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists contributed to the report, and dozens of them collaborated in writing it.

“Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850–1900 in 2011–2020. Global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase, with unequal historical and ongoing contributions arising from unsustainable energy use, land use and land-use change, lifestyles and patterns of consumption and production across regions, between and within countries, and among individuals (high confidence).”
Synthesis Report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), Summary for Policymakers – full report here.

“Unequivocally.”

“High confidence.”

The science most assuredly, definitively and without hesitation is conclusive.

“The science is not conclusive” has been the go-to dodge for climate-change deniers for a long, long time.

More recently they’ve started trying more subtle arguments, like, “Carbon storage and sequestration (CSS) must be part of the transition to a more sustainable energy system.” That humdinger is simply another delay that will allow them to continue pumping and digging poison out of the ground, profiting from it and blocking the transition to a truly sustainable energy system.

Fossil-fuels proponents and the politicians in their pockets use those and all kinds of other distracting arguments that don’t hold water:

CSS allows fossil-fuels companies to argue they’re reducing CO² emissions when exactly the opposite is true – CSS requires the burning of MORE fossil fuels, and, by the way, it has NEVER worked at scale.

They say what they call “natural gas” is renewable. The truth is, “natural gas” is actually “fossil gas” made up primarily of methane, which is worse than CO²in terms of trapping heat in our atmosphere.

Renewables are intermittent and unreliable, they say, but that is being addressed in a number of innovative ways.

We can’t afford to transition to renewables, they claim. Hmmmm…. Seems like we can’t afford not to do what is necessary for survival.

Not to put too fine a whittled-down point on it, but economic conditions no longer matter when you, your loved ones and everyone else is dead.

In the case of the IPCC, they’re saying scientists whose job it is to study these things don’t know what they’re talking about.

How can they be so obtuse? Why do they think they’re smarter than the people who dedicate their entire lives to studying and understanding climate and all things climate-related? And how is it that so many USA citizens believe them when they say we should ignore mathematical truths and the results of applying the scientific method?

No.

When the global community of climate scientists says, “Look. Here’s the deal. It’s based on our research and calculations. It’s real, and it’s really bad,” everyone needs to pay heed and act.

Climate scientists have been telling us what’s going to happen for more than 35 years. Now it is happening. And now they’re telling us what to expect if we don’t do what’s necessary:

“Adaptation options that are feasible and effective today will become constrained and less effective with increasing global warming. With increasing global warming, losses and damages will increase and additional human and natural systems will reach adaptation limits.”
Synthesis Report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), Summary for Policymakers – full report here. Emphasis is mine.

That’s a gentle way of stating that, under the intensity of rising global temperatures, the survival of the human race is no longer a given.

That’s it. All doubt laid to waste. There’s no longer room for discussion, except about how we’re going to deal with the hundreds if not thousands of interrelated problems their research and calculations ensure us are coming.

We need to do more of what a Las Angeles-based historian suggested back in 2020: “Stop asking (political) candidates if they ‘believe in’ climate change and start asking if they understand it. It’s science, not Santa Claus,” @TheValerierClark wrote on Twitter.

It’s science, not Santa Claus.

Tragically, when it comes the people who run fossil-fuels companies, their apologists and the politicians of both parties who sustain them…

It’s greed, not science.

That’s the only conclusion a reasonable person can come to, because the only other option is that these people are simply too stupid to know any better. And, seriously, how could anyone be that dumb?