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Op-Ed: Proven idiots to the rescue at COP26? Global warming could have been fixed by now.

A hideous future is staring humanity directly in the face. That future starts in 2050.

'Running out of time': Asia struggles to kick coal addiction
Smokestacks belch noxious fumes into the air from a massive coal-fired power plant on the Indonesian coast, a stark illustration of Asia's addiction to the fossil fuel which is threatening climate targets - Copyright AFP Michele Spatari
Smokestacks belch noxious fumes into the air from a massive coal-fired power plant on the Indonesian coast, a stark illustration of Asia's addiction to the fossil fuel which is threatening climate targets - Copyright AFP Michele Spatari

A hideous future is staring humanity directly in the face. That future starts in 2050. The date 2050 is sort of special. It’s either the date that emissions are finally curbed, or the date emissions go effectively beyond control.

It’s an arbitrary date, but it’s an appropriate date from this point in time. Almost 30 years ago, the world recognized it had a warming problem with emissions. The current annual Glasgow meeting is right in the middle of the start of attempted controls and the “use by” date of 2050.

In those 30 years, absolutely nothing has been done

The bottom line here is that emissions are continuing to rise and are worse than ever. At the moment, about 50 billion tons of emissions, about 6 tons per person, are being emitted every year. Never mind what’s being claimed to be done, nothing is actually stopping emissions.

Those thirty years were spent very counterproductively:

  • Pseudoscience was used ad nauseam to disprove proven facts.
  • Politicians were hired to deny anything and everything, and above all, to do nothing about the problem, which is exactly what they did.
  • Huge numbers of people died directly from pollution every year with a lot of collateral damage.
  • The Arctic ice sheet collapsed.
  • Siberia’s ancient permafrost thawed, releasing a lot more methane.
  • Long-predicted massive weather events, droughts, crop failures, and huge fires occurred around the world.

As is now traditional, “The experts explained, and nobody did a damn thing.” That would make a fitting epitaph on humanity’s grave.

COP 26 vs brattish outdated politics, an example

COP 26, (Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ‘UNFCCC’), is the decision-making body. It’s also the stage for a lot of utterly useless verbosity, “commitments” and similar do-nothing drivel.

My own country, Australia, is currently playing coy with the whole issue. This is partly thanks to a massively funded fossil fuel lobby, but largely due to incredible stupidity.

As an energy exporter, we haven’t thought much beyond export values. That’s not a good perspective. In the last decade, we’ve had the worst drought in history, gigantic fires, and water issues we really can’t afford to ignore.

…All of which are directly linked to new weather patterns caused by global warming. It’s exactly this lack of forward vision which is destroying the environment. These things are also eating up any number of billions of dollars, and nobody’s counting.

What isn’t Australia doing, you ask, no doubt enchanted by the seductive lure of reading about more idiocies?

Well:

  • Managing basic emissions obviously isn’t a talent of ours. Our net emissions are per capita as bad or worse than most countries.
  • Total failure to seriously manage obsolete emissions sources in the energy sector. (Are better filters or other cheap, simple fixes really too much to ask for? Why?)
  • Sabotaging shifting to green energy sources with idiotic totally unnecessary regulations. Like the US, we’re actually taxing people, or threatening to tax them, for using clean energy. Users sell power to the grid, too, making this idea even stupider than it seems. (This is also despite the fact our own energy companies are moving to alternative energy sources, of course.)
  • We’re doing absolutely nothing with our very high-value carbon except digging it up and selling it to someone else to sell back to us. Insane? Yep, and it’s never been anything but insane. This stuff is almost literally priceless if properly managed and marketed, and we, of course, aren’t doing anything of the sort.
  • No strategies of any sort are in place to systematically shut down our emissions to net zero or anything like.

In our own backward, always-a-generation-behind way, we’re a sort of working model of the global approach to managing global warming. Isn’t that adorable? About 70% of Australians say no, but who cares?

Consider:

  • Obsolete economics can be of no use in the future. (Certainly not in a future where something as basic as water supply may well be based on guesswork.)
  • Blocking alternative energy is very like refusing to invent the wheel – The better options are literally being obstructed by law.

 30 years wasted

All of this unholy mess, not just some of it, could have been under control 30 years ago. The infrastructural frameworks for managing emissions would be there. Conversion to clean energy would be way more advanced. The pollution would have been reduced significantly.

It didn’t happen, did it? Now, we’re expecting the “world leaders”, representatives of the same morons who prevented anything from happening to finally do something?

Why? How can these absurd skanks go against what made them what they are? They don’t have the spines, let alone the intellects, to do anything differently.

The global public needs to demand, and get, progress. This political freeloading at the expense of humanity has to be shut down permanently. Environmental regulation can go a long way. Forget fines, “comply or shut down, plus fines” has to be the mantra. (You wouldn’t need to do this with people who were ever actually educated, but meh…)

A future you’ll hate

It’s 2080. New York is in one of its regular stop/start food situations. Groceries are now what’s available. Unpredictable weather patterns and crop failures have raised the prices of food dramatically, again. The midsummer heat has been a balmy 120F for the last four days, ideal for frolicking amid the added costs of everything. The sky is a sort of yellow-brown some days.

Air conditioning breakdowns are now inevitably common. Demand for AC service is super-high and also expensive. Insulation is another cost base for those who can afford it. Older buildings, in particular, aren’t doing at all well. Ice storms and the Big Heat are basically expanding and contracting them to pieces.

The old infrastructure is in a shambles. The roads melt, freeze, and are too costly for the city to manage at all, let alone effectively. Rail tracks warp, further sabotaging transit. Private cars are even more expensive to run in ridiculously clogged commutes.

Heatwaves produce rolling shutdowns. It’s just too dangerous for people to commute, some of the time. Schools can’t open into well into August some years. This year, it might be September, as a gigantic high-pressure zone stays immovably over the old drought areas of the 2020s-30s.

The big investment on Wall Street? Ice. Lots of ice. Insane amounts of ice, in fact, as New Yorkers try to cool down. Ice baths are actually recycled and refrozen, using a DIY filter for reuse. Tens of millions of people are glued to their ice, which now costs $50 per bag, limit one bag per person per week.

Central Park, now called Central Desert, sits silently in the shadow of deserted towers. The rich have gone to the Antarctic for the summer. Some of the very poor are digging deep burrows in the park to avoid the worst of the heat. Nobody bothers to stop them; it’s too hot.

A smiling bronze statue of Donald Trump is in the park, absorbing and radiating heat. Even the pigeons won’t go anywhere near it.

Well, are we happy now?

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Written By

Editor-at-Large based in Sydney, Australia.

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