The Glasgow Follies or The Last-Chance Saloon?

 

If you're looking for salvation from the Glasgow climate summit, COP26, don't hold your breath.  The idea of some climate epiphany reverberating through the capitals of the world is a bit far fetched. Never say never but that would be an extreme long shot.

There is no "just add water and stir" solution. This global emergency does not lend itself to  "one size fits all" measures.

I can't think of a nation that is not already dealing with the impacts of climate change. That doesn't mean it's being experienced uniformly. Some nations are harder hit than others. That's often a latitudinal issue. The closer you are to the equator, the worse off you're apt to be. Tropical countries tend to be less developed, poorer and, hence, more vulnerable.  Compared to the latitudinally-advantaged countries, the wealthier, developed countries, the Third World occupies a lower tier.

Then there's the established, Industrial Revolution Club countries - Europe and America north of the Rio Grande. The climate emergency they experience is quite different from the others. We're looking at some controlled retreat from the sea, even some internally displaced populations but we're not threatened by climate collapse or mass migration. For example in the United States they're looking at some internal migration (by those who can afford it) out of the south and southwest offset by a Rust Belt renaissance. Gonna be a whole lotta money leaving them Slave States, the bastion of Republican redneckery. 

Every country will be dealing with climate change but there's no uniformity in their problems, their vulnerabilities and their means of coping and providing for their populations. This seems to invite regionalism. There has already been talk of a future division of the European Union into north and south. Sorry Greece, sorry Italy, sorry Spain.

Want something to keep you awake at night? Imagine Trump returning to the White House in 2024, Sharpie in hand. Lord, take me now.

I think these endless differences and conflicting interests are why Glasgow will be reduced to platitudes. It will focus on mitigation, cutting emissions, which is a bit like putting all your efforts into fighting a grease fire in the kitchen even as the rest of the house is consumed in flames.

To make our predicament murkier, what if we're chasing the wrong dog? What if we misapprehend this looming climate calamity?  George Monbiot deals with this in his latest column. 

Human civilisation relies on current equilibrium states. But, all over the world, crucial systems appear to be approaching their tipping points. If one system crashes, it is likely to drag others down, triggering a cascade of chaos known as systemic environmental collapse. This is what happened during previous mass extinctions.

Global circulation is already looking vulnerable. For example, the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which delivers heat from the tropics towards the poles, is being disrupted by the melting of Arctic ice, and has begun to weaken. Without it, the UK would have a climate similar to Siberia’s.

AMOC has two equilibrium states: on and off. It has been on for almost 12,000 years, following a devastating, thousand-year off state called the Younger Dryas (12,900 to 11,700 years ago), which caused a global spiral of environmental change. Everything we know and love depends on AMOC remaining in the on state.

Regardless of which complex system is being studied, there’s a way of telling whether it is approaching a tipping point. Its outputs begin to flicker. The closer to its critical threshold it comes, the wilder the fluctuations. What we’ve seen this year is a great global flickering, as Earth systems begin to break down. The heat domes over the western seaboard of North America; the massive fires there, in Siberia and around the Mediterranean; the lethal floods in Germany, Belgium, China, Sierra Leone – these are the signals that, in climatic morse code, spell “mayday”.

What if 'fifty by 2030, net zero by 2050' is missing the real target? What if our exclusive focus on mitigation is myopic? That's the problem with multiple existential threats - you have to deal with all of them or, in the end, you'll succeed at none.

Prince Charles is calling the Glasgow climate summit our Last-Chance Saloon. I hope in years to come we don't look back on it as the Glasgow Follies.