For the longest time, the objective to avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change was to keep the earth’s average temperature from exceeding a 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Last year, in May, it was estimated by the UN that there was a 50-50 chance of the average global temperature reaching that 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels within the next five years. As bad as that might sound, we’re now acknowledging that temperatures have already risen between 1.1 and 1.3 degrees and with our current technology it might be impossible to bring them down again.
Worse yet, some people are predicting that we might well exceed the 1.5 degree mark in less than five years. So, what was the answer to that? In 2021, COP26 drafted an agreement to try and limit the warming to below 2 degrees Celsius.
And with all that you still have people who deny climate change or who give it lip service while continuing to push the use of fossil fuels. We’ve seen over the past several years some of the hottest summers and warmest winters in recorded history, and multiple incidents that are directly tied to climate change, such as disastrous forest fires in Canada that sent noxious clouds of smoke well down into the United States, floods, more severe tropical storms, and negative impacts on agricultural production around the world.
In the face of all this, you have to ask yourself, how can people who are educated and should know better be so blind to the obvious?
One key might be in the decision to let the United Arab Emirates (UAE) host the COP28 meeting, and its decision to appoint Sultan Al Jaber, head of its state-owned oil company, as the president of the meeting. Al Jaber is the same man who in November 2023 said “there is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C.’” He also claimed that phasing out fossil fuels would take the world back into caves.
It appears that the world is letting fossil fuel interests take charge of the climate change agenda and they’re shaping it to their own needs. And what are those needs? Money! An investigation by the UK’s Guardian revealed that the 20 largest fossil fuel companies were linked to a third of all greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, and in 2022, while many people around the world suffered to inflation, climate-caused disasters, and war, the top five western oil and gas companies raked in a combined $200 billion in profits.
When you add to that the acceptance of consumers of the fossil fuel industry propaganda that reduction in fossil fuel use will cause a drop in income and living standards, you have two of the main reasons that we’re unable to make progress in stemming the negative impacts of climate change: greed and selfishness.
The greed of the big corporations and their perpetual quest for bigger and bigger profits to feed the lust for money of their wealthy stockholders and the selfishness of people in wealthy countries who refuse to break their addiction to fuel-guzzling cars and an energy consuming life style, as if a slight and possible temporary reduction in an already lush standard of living would be fatal.
The World Bank estimates that up to twenty-five percent of the world lives in poverty. They’re not the ones contaminating the environment, but tend to be the ones who suffer the most from the harm inflicted by the better off.
Is there a cure for greed and selfishness? I wish I knew, but I do know this; if we don’t find it, there will come a time in the future when the impacts of climate change will begin to affect us all and no amount of wealth or power will protect us from those impacts.
Think about it just for a moment while there’s still time. | NWI
