A few years ago, David Wallace-Wells warned that climate change risked making a huge chunk of the planet literally uninhabitable. One of the mechanisms for this is the combination of heat and humidity, which if high enough can kill people outside of air-conditioned spaces. How bad does warming have to be for this to happen? Unfortunately, it looks like just 1.5 degrees will be enough to cook most of the tropics:
The climate crisis is pushing the planet’s tropical regions towards the limits of human livability, with rising heat and humidity threatening to plunge much of the world’s population into potentially lethal conditions, new research has found.Should governments fail to curb global heating to 1.5C above the pre-industrial era, areas in the tropical band that stretches either side of the equator risk changing into a new environment that will hit “the limit of human adaptation”, the study warns.
[…]
The research team looked at various historical data and simulations to determine how wet-bulb temperature extremes will change as the planet continues to heat up, discovering that these extremes in the tropics increase at around the same rate as the tropical mean temperature.
This means that the world’s temperature increase will need to be limited to 1.5C to avoid risking areas of the tropics exceeding 35C in wet-bulb temperature…
40% of the world’s population lives in the tropical belt, including pretty much all of Central America and south-east Asia, and most of Africa, India and Brazil. Closer to home, the area includes most of our Pacific neighbours: Samoa, Tonga, Tokelau, Niue, and most of the Cook Islands. For these countries, stopping climate change is literally a matter of national survival. And if we don’t stop emissions, we are basicly murdering them.
Scotty from marketings been told central Oz is just about there now with remote communities.
But he's busy elsewhere. Another coal mine anybody ?
Get used to it. Mankind under money systems are incapable of any sort of change, let alone climate change. The masters of money do not care for future generations, even for their own future offspring who will fry along with the poorest poverty stricken offspring.
A system of a world without money could help alleviate the futre of pain, but it would have to start pretty soon. A World without money. Byd0nz.com, free download.
How would a world 'without money actually work? I am sincerely interested in your views!
I have outlined a point of view in my free download that could be expanded on, but it is always a young people's world and I look to them, in that one day they will take the reigns and unite in a planetary way.
we can see that young people from primary up are becoming aware of the problems they will inherit, and hopefully they can build on an idea of a future system not based on money but equality for all things. Cheers
Thanks Byd0nz, your ideas of a world without money invite us to get real & cultivate long-term thinking/planning. They are likely too radical for many mired in money.
Yeah a cynic might suspect climate change as an inconvenient convenience for those white supremacist types who still hide in plain sight in finance and politics. Why do you think some of us just couldn't sleep with Trump in charge. He deliberately did nothing about the virus when the stats came in – kills mostly blacks and the poor – how is that bad in his sick fucking head.
Just to do nothing (pandemic, and climate) is to create conditions for mass exterminations. Then, as the borders/resources get pushed – for they absolutely will be – use fear to rekindle (like it ever left US) fascism.
Cept it wont be an imaginary threat this time, but an actual flood of desperate humanity.
Disaster capitalists on their big white horse – to the rescue. We got bombs – What? You need food and safety? We got rockets. We got electric fencing, heat seeking robots, we got infra-red scopes for that personal touch, c'mon!
New Zealand must become a leader
New Zealand emits 0.2% of the world's carbon pollution burden.
Because of this….
Professor Gluckman (no less) when he was the chief science adviser to Prime Minister John Key wrote on the government climate website, New Zealand's greatest contribution to fighting global climate change must be to become an example to the world. (ie become a leader on climate change)
Famously John Key disagreed with his science adviser, and said instead New Zealand should be a "Fast Follower" on climate change.
So what will it be?
Fast follower, or leader?
Surrendering to John Key
To avoid the worst affects of climate change the United Nations has set a target for the globe to be carbon neutral by 2050
If we are to be a leader on climate change, 2050 cannot be New Zealand's cut off target date to become carbon neutral.
Any governmentmental body or organisation, (including the Climate Change Commission itself), that have 2050 as their cut off target date to achieve carbon neutrality are a surrender to the fast following doctrine of John Key.
Simple as that.
New Zealand's position in relation to other nations efforts to reduce climate-changing activities should be sufficient for us tobe seen to be doing our share. But more importantly on the home front we need to be preparing for the now-inevitable changes that will occur. Many NIWA reports highlight the expected changes to NZ's climate as the century wears on. Top of the list is the virtual dessication of most of the North Island and of eastern South Island. In this context we must be active in preparing reliable water supplies to those places where such supplies can be assured under the expected future scenarios, and planning for the abandonment of places where long term secure water supplies cannot be provided economically or practically. Impacted activities will include farming (of course) as well as industry and domestic neighbourhoods. Towns and cities may well have to be left to the great dry. Careful decisions will have to be made on the allocation of increasingly scarce economic, energy and social resources to ensure that as many of us as possible have a decent place to live by 2100. Our grandchildren are watching, and will justifiably judge us harshly if we do not make prudent preparations for a known unhappy future.