Global warming – it’s time to choose: fight or sleepwalk

Today’s Independent carries a chillingly urgent opinion piece, which can be read as a follow-on from what I wrote about yesterday here, namely the notion that the climate change tipping point has been reached. Johann Hari almost hysterically writes (and I can understand why) that the most disastrous effects of climate change will not be felt first by generations to come, but by those of us living today, right now. A five degree increase in global temperatures…

The Guardian ran a fanciful article earlier in the week, I don’t have the URL to hand, sorry, in which we were all informed that with a five degree increase we in the UK can expect spring to arrive in January each year, and last longer. Foolish. If you want to know what will really happen as the Earth’s temperature increases, degree by degree, read Mark Lynas’ book Six Degrees.

The book stops at six degrees, though the world could of course get even hotter, and has in the past. It stops because, simply put, by the time it reaches six degrees above today’s temperature we, and most life on Earth bar the microbial, will be dead. This would not be a planet you’d want to spend any time on. No way. Even a one degree increase starts the processes of mass extinction and impacts on our weather systems severely.

Until very recently, a two degree increase was a conservative estimate of what we can expect if—and only if—we stop emitting greenhouse gases. Note I said stop, and not reduce. Now we’re looking at an increase of five degrees, with changes to our planet happening much, much faster than previously predicted. When the book stops at six because there’s no point going further, and we’re heading straight to number five at speed, that tells you all you need to know to either choose to become an activist, a campaigner, an agitator—or sleepwalk to extinction.

Frankly, if you want to sleepwalk then get the fuck out of my way.