Questions for anyone who has gotten through enough of the book to respond:
Does this book change your own view of the climate future?
Are there measures they take to turn around the climate that are realistic, doable, politically? Technologically?
What in the story is most unrealistic to you?
What in the story is most likely to happen?
What do you see as the likely climate future?
@jeanne-mayell Great questions, Jeanne! Will have to review a few sections again to make notations (should have done that as I read along, sigh)... have a couple of memes popping up in my head... am going to have to mull it over and write out my response offline... will take awhile to create a cogent assessment (from my perspective).
Will break up my response by taking one question at a time... loved the book! Thanks!
It definitely changed my view of climate change. It made me realize that sea level rise is much more imminent, dangerous and closer than we realize. It made me feel like the only way we can reach the point where the planet takes it seriously is if we have a Children of Kali-like group. I also feel like it was the least believable aspect of the book. In this ultra-conservative country, a group like Kali would be deemed terrorists immediately and an enemy of the state. Hence, the media would blow them up and they'd be public enemy number 1. They'd never get away with it. It would just feed the conservative-brainwashing machine. Anyone with values that look even remotely liberal regarding concern for the environment would be called out like a witch in Salem. It would be the GW Bush years all over again with hysteria running high like after 9/11 but only much worse. The ultra-rich would start a campaign against anything environmentalist (I know I know... This is pretty much already the case)... I could imagine Guantanamo being reopened and people thrown in there without their rights being regarded. Thus, assassins of the environment would never work. And when the terrorists are caught and tortured to give up their sources, which the US is good at doing, then the UN would be forever stained and come crashing down. Thus, we'd fail to accomplish the one thing we're trying to accomplish. So, No, a Children of Kali would never work.
I think reality is going to set in pretty soon. I mean you can't ignore the fact that all time high temperature records are being broken this year in the most unlikely of places like the UK. Wells, aquifers, lakes and rivers are drying up. Great technological advancements and achievements are taking place which will one day provide people with alternatives to gas and oil. As much as people dislike Biden, would anyone else have been able to accomplish what he has? Sure, the world is in a terrible place right now, but that won't last forever. For instance the infrastructure bill will allow for America to one day have electric charging stations across the US. He has switched out gas powered vehicles with electric for federal vehicles, if I recall correctly. And all while keeping us out of WW3 with Russia which would end it all for us. We needed a president who would throw caution to the wind and make the changes necessary without worrying about his ratings and trying to win the next election. Because the reality is Time is not on our side at this point if we want to curb climate change beyond disastrous levels. My guess is, he realizes that at his advanced age he doesn't really care what people think of him anymore and realizes he's a one-term president, so he was going to do everything he could to set the stage for future generations. Oh and he got us back into the Paris Agreement. So I think we have just the right person for the job at this time. When we look back in 20 years, I think we will realize no one else could have accomplished what he did given the hand that he was dealt.
Something daunting I hadn't thought about before: That losing the world's coastal cities, which is inevitable without action, would mean chaos. Robinson's definition of chaos: when money no longer works as money.
I had assumed that losing the cities would just mean people would move away from them and locate further inland. But consider that you can't move 6 to 20 million people out of a city on short notice.
Consider that 37% of the world population is living in coastal cities.
The book also. provides some realistic solutions that give relief to the terrifying prospects of climate change.
So I'm seeing the climate changes with more nuanced eyes, both the daunting realities and the solutions that humanity will devise.
My biggest takeaway: We got through Covid. We got through Trump. We will get through the current SCOTUS decisions.
Our process is first to ignore what is coming because it hasn't happened yet. Then terrible things start happening as climate change begins to accelerate and millions die, as in the 22 million who die in a week in the book. We freak out with the enormity of the pain we see coming en masse if we don't turn it around. Then we leap into action and start turning it around. Overnight, a new paradigm is born. We get behind the curve of disaster and prevent the worst.
We are now at the bottom of a mountain looking up at a hard trek. Or perhaps it's not a mountain but a tsunami that is coming and only climate experts and intuitive people see it on the horizon. If it's like a tsnumani, once it is overhead, it will crash down no matter what we do.
It's going to be a more expanded version of Covid which I felt back then was a dress rehearsal for climate change. Read what happened in northern Italy when Covid hit, and unbelievable stupidly and greed caused a massive spread and soaring deaths there. We are approaching that point now with climate change.
Like Covid, we will suffer unimaginable losses due to climate devastation, and, like Covid, we will spring into action to prevent the biggest losses yet to come.
The only part of the book I can't imagine happening is the violent take-down of climate deniers, oil and gas promoters. But I want it to happen. Climate activist Bill McKibben called the oil industry the Darth Vaders of our times. They and their political sycophants have to be disempowered, stripped of funds, jailed, marginalized, removed from the mainland, sent to a far away island, without electronics or visitors, no voice, no access to media. As stated in the book, they are serial killers of unimaginable proportions. Once there is unimaginable death in our backyards from climate change, I think the Darth Vaders will be neutralized.
Since it will take centuries to bring down atmospheric carbon naturally, I think they will try to pump water from below the glaciers to prevent them from sliding into the sea as is currently happening at a rapid pace. This action will save the coastal cities. I also think that shooting aerosols into the atmosphere will happen and will help cool the planet.
@unk-p, @chromosomexy @lovendures @freya
For two years When friends complained about the disruption caused by Covid… I told them the same thing that you have Jeanne… Covid is practice for climate change. If I said it once I’ve said it 100 times… Even my friends who know climate change is real… Are now suddenly shocked at the temperatures showing up around the world… The book is painfully correct… But “My sense” is we will not have to have the children of KAli kill off the idiots at the top of the food chain…
In the US, my sense is that the GOP is gonna be shocked at how angry citizens are when fish lips and his cohorts are kicked to the curb. I think we will move quickly… We will begin taking action within the next four years at a rapid pace. Mitigation will become “fashionable”… we CHOOSE. That’s a big theme in the book… Getting off your duff and never giving up…
Going back to my point about Biden being the right president for the job at this time, it looks like he is just about ready to declare a climate crisis emergency and start using his pen to sign executive orders regarding climate change.
TFG was a bad guy and a terrible president but as is always the case, within the darkness there's always seeds of light that are planted... For example, because all of America suffered through the trauma of 4 years of his presidency, many more people now understand the tricks that psychopaths use against their victims. We are becoming a much more enlightened culture as a result of his abuse of power. My thought is it will be because of what we've gone through with TFG, that we will begin to see through the lies and manipulation more easily of the psychopaths and narcissists running big corporations and working against our interests and working against our understanding the threat of climate change. When the populace understands more fully how we have been duped and tricked into believing these lies, we can begin to undo the brainwashing.
@jeanne-mayell this week I week I took a course through one river institute connecting our mn educators w those in LA and we had a geologist explain his billion dollar projects to restore the coast in NOLA. The bottom line was that a massive percentage of our GDP is connected to the shipping that comes and goes through that port area - I’m sure the east coast and west coast have similar considerations- but the country simply cannot stay afloat without these shipping ports being open. He reminded us that post Katrina gas prices surged higher than even today and that was bc of the immediate shut down. It brought home how important this turn around is and also how expensive the work is. Much of this money is coming from the oil spill settlement but what was overwhelmingly clear was it will be much cheaper and easier in us all if we prevent catastrophe than if we try to clean it up afterwards.
I hope his projects anticipate the impact of what the new coast line will look like with sea foot rise, especially in that area.
New technology that is expected in the next decade. Carbon capture trains with solar panels to suck CO² out of the air.
The Daily Beast: Startup CO2Rail Is Building Trains That Capture Carbon Dioxide Out of the Air to Fight Climate Change.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/startup-co2rail-is-building-trains-that-capture-carbon-dioxide-out-of-the-air-to-fight-climate-change
I'm very excited and hopeful because everyday I'm reading articles about new technologies that are in the works to help the climate crisis.
Jeanne, can we start a new post to talk about these new technologies?
The crew of Grain de Sail, a sailboat carrying a load of French biodynamic wines—without the carbon emissions of a cargo ship—hoists the mainsail and floats into town.