Climate Realism Is a Delusion

"On Thursday, the Brazilian venue hosting the conference burst into flames from what was likely an electrical fire. In its 30 years, COP has frequently been a ritual in frustration and futility, ending with a set of pledges and promises that have rarely gone as far as scientists say they need to, followed by weeks of postmortem finger-pointing and self-flagellation. And yesterday, once again delegates landed on a heavily compromised text that does little to materially steer the planet off fossil fuels."

"Many of the fingers pointed toward an empty chair and the absence of the largest oil-and-gas producer on planet Earth (the United States). Meanwhile, delegates from drowning, subsistence-farming volcanic archipelagos in the South Pacific humbly pleaded with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia to pledge to someday stop pumping their oceans of oil, the most profitable commodity in the world. It didn't work."

"Every year, environmental NGOs, climate scientists, concerned citizens, and government ministers alike register confusion and despair over the fact that after so cycles of these meetings, industrial civilization erupts more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than ever before. This year, it reached a staggering new peak with 38.1 gigatons of the stuff-two orders of magnitude more than is put out by all of the volcanoes on Earth combined each year, and a pace that is virtually unprecedented in all of geological history."

The COP meeting burned metaphorically and literally as the Brazilian venue caught fire and delegates approved a compromised text that fails to steer the world off fossil fuels. Major fossil-fuel powers remained obstructive while vulnerable Pacific island delegations pleaded for reductions. Global CO₂ emissions soared to a new peak of 38.1 gigatons, far exceeding volcanic output and marking a pace nearly unprecedented in geological history. Even halting fossil-fuel emissions today would leave food-system emissions capable of pushing warming beyond 2°C, well above the 1.5°C aspiration.

Read at The Atlantic