Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued what Greenpeace International called the “final warning” in the global effort to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. After three decades of increasingly insistent wake-up calls, the Panel laid out the sobering reality: Meeting the temperature goal set by the global community in 2015 is impossible without an immediate response, “a quantum leap in climate action,” in the words of United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Without such action, the rise in temperature could surpass the 1.5 degree threshold before the release of the next assessment report.
Given humanity’s dismal track record in addressing the climate crisis, the prospects for mustering the needed response can only be described as quite poor. This is puzzling: We are not a suicidal species, and polls show that people generally want to protect the environment. What stands in the way of rapid, assertive action on climate and other sustainability issues? What is needed to turn the situation around?
In the Driver’s Seat
Perhaps the single largest obstacle to climate action is the political power of industries determined to perpetuate fossil fuel use. They wield influence through their funding of
— source steadystate.org | Gary Gardner | Mar 30, 2023