No Time for Optimism

There may have been a time when it was appropriate to look on the sunny side of things. But it’s not now.

There’s a dumb old joke about an optimist who falls off a 40-storey building and is heard saying, as he passes the 20th floor, “Well, nothing bad has happened yet.” We have met the optimist, and he is us.

The optimist is, for example, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Policy, which this week issued a report to a world that has not yet begun to implement the agreed-upon changes needed to hold global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Two years after that target was set by 195 nations, after years of negotiations, at the Paris climate agreement, the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, the primary drivers of climate change, are still rising. There is no hope of limiting climate change to two degrees. But it would be so much nicer, says the IPCC now, to hold the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In other words: I started trying to lose 40 pounds a year ago, I haven’t lost any weight at all, so now I’ve decided to try to lose 50 pounds.

All it would take, says the IPCC cheerily, is a 45% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 — which is, as you may have noticed, just over 10 years away. Donald Trump will only be in his fourth term of office. Similarly, the only thing our falling optimist would have to do to save himself is order some silk and sew a parachute.

But wait there’s more. In addition, says the IPCC, carbon emissions would have to be reduced to zero by 2050. To do so would require immediate imposition of universal, Draconian restraints on energy consumption, requiring much smaller homes, little or no travel, changed diets, reduced air conditioning in summer and heating in winter, and so on. Either that, or we could all volunteer to transform our lives, tomorrow, to a state of monk-like austerity. Yeah, that could work.

For years and years, as the impacts of climate change have been widely understood to be rapidly getting worse in degree and closer in time, most articles and studies have begun and ended by saying, boy, it’s really going to be bad if we don’t act now. But the people who hold the power to act, the politicians,  have never had, and do not now have, any intention of requiring sacrifice of themselves or their constituents. It’s seen as a poor career move.

So it’s time –actually, long past time — for the scientists and the agencies such as the IPCC to drop the fake optimism, to quit saying these things are going to happen unless somebody does something. Nobody’s going to do anything. All these things are going to happen. Use the time you have left, you scientists and agencies, to define what’s going to happen as best you can, so those who have a chance to survive can make the best of it.

Even an optimist has to face the facts when he’s passing the 39th floor.

 

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9 Responses to No Time for Optimism

  1. William says:

    “All these things are going to happen.”

    The time has come for us to love our neighbor and the creation like there will be no tomorrow. A little activist Stoicism. There will be no reward but it is the right thing to do.

  2. Greg Knepp says:

    According to Allstate Insurance, there have been 26 five-hundred-year storms in the U.S. in the last decade – two of them in the quaint little Baltimore hamlet (well, just a few miles southwest of B-more) of Ellicott City. This was an old stomping ground of mine, and back in my day, such occurrences were unthinkable.

    Anyway, there were lots more idiots standing in the rain today…what with Michael and all.

  3. steve says:

    Yeah, I chuckled when I saw the 2030 IPCC deadline.
    i’ve been reading these reports since the Limits to Growth report to the Club of Rome, and yet onward we march. I have been shifting to adaptation mode physically ( you know, plan for the worst, hope for the best) for a few years now, but now I guess mentally I’m accepting that the die is cast, and we are in for a rough ride.

    I’ve seen a similar change in tone over at Albert Bates blog, and a couple other sites I used to check are now gone dark. They feel there is nothing more to say.

    Keep posting though! Bearing witness and calling out bullshit is still a needed avocation.

  4. Michael Hart says:

    Well stated. It might be worth noting that the IPCC predictions are and were missing some key ingredients; the impact of feedback loops and changes and selective data bias problems, so even the IPCC was way too opimistic (See ‘What Lies Beneath’ available via Climate Code Red for a thoughtful and accurate synopsis on this bad news). Summary – it is going to get worse and faster and more unpredictable as it goes on by the time the various climate models catch up it will be all over anyway. We will hang on to our delusions and stories of its all good until the excruciating end. Well as the late Professor Alf Bartlett was fond of saying; “So how we doin? Yep we are right on schedule”.

  5. Brutus says:

    The version of that old saw I heard has the jumper remarking as he falls “the view just keeps getting better and better” … until — splat. If, by analogy, the 10,000-year (or so) history of civilization were compressed into the time it takes to fall 40 storeys, I suppose we’re passing the top of the 1st storey (not the 39th) just about now, and golly the view is now so good we can even make out the texture of the concrete sidewalk.

    Knowing that, and further, knowing that what might have been done to forestall the worst was needed decades ago, the question in my mind is what sort of panic would ensue if the honest truth were told (by a believable authority, which scarcely exists anymore). Even this week, investors are being instructed not to panic in the face of potential financial collapse to keep a full-on dash to the exits from occurring. Couldn’t be clearer that even while a small subset of us want to see the end coming with some clarity, the masses really don’t wanna know. So forcing that knowledge on them strikes me a somewhere between foolhardy and cruel. The time to tell a kid that Santa isn’t for real is a growth moment; the time to tell an grown-up that our time is collectively up (or that god in his many instantiations, current and historical, is Santa for adults) is a dark night of the soul. Most of us simply aren’t equipped for it and will kill the messenger.

    • SomeoneInAsia says:

      If humanity’s existence is just a fall and a splat and God is just Santa for adults, why should you care about any foolhardiness or cruelty? Given your nihilistic vision, let’s all just eat, drink and make merry, for tomorrow we kick the bucket.

      Not that I’ve anything against that, given the sorry state of affairs we now all face. (Shrugs.)

      • Brutus says:

        Recognizing and acknowledging some dark truths about the lies we tell ourselves and the mistakes we’ve made along the way does not mean anyone immediately becomes amoral, nihilistic, or hedonistic. Is that how you think people act as death approaches? Checking off a couple bucket list items is a far cry different from running up the credit cards and burning down the house before checking out. Your question is a non sequitur.

        • SomeoneInAsia says:

          You clearly stated that humanity’s existence is just a fall and a splat, and that God is just Santa for adults. If that does not nullify all kinds of human purpose, then I frankly don’t know what does.

          Not that I care much anymore what others wish to believe, given the sorry state of affairs towards which we’re all headed.

          I’m not a Christian, by the way; there are many other ways of acknowledging the existence of a higher power besides what one finds in the Abrahamic religions.

  6. SomeoneInAsia says:

    QUOTE: ***So it’s time –- actually, long past time -— for the scientists and the agencies such as the IPCC to drop the fake optimism, to quit saying these things are going to happen unless somebody does something. Nobody’s going to do anything. All these things are going to happen.***

    Maybe the scientists and agencies do realize no one’s going to do anything and all these things are going to happen, so they’re thinking: Well, we might as well then play a game of pretending to ourselves that someone’s going to do something and there are grounds for optimism. Mind you, there are still people around who dream of the possibility of a greener world in which we leave our sorry ways behind, etc.

    How lovable. How idealistic. How naive. How…

    …dumb.