“Let’s try to keep global temperature rise below 2°C.” Some of the numbers being bandied about at the UN Climate Change conference are a little disturbing. This 2°C figure that resonates with politicians and policy makers is a dangerous thing to include in every day, roll-off-the-tongue rhetoric.
The ramifications of this 2°C fencepost are scary. By keeping global temperature rise to 2°C means that we have a 50% of avoiding what climatologists call “catastrophic climate change”. That’s a phrase that doesn’t roll off the tongues of politicians quite so easily.
And let’s pause for a moment to take a coin out of your pocket. Heads avoids disaster, tails means irreversible shifts in weather patterns that will totally alter billions of peoples’ way of life. Flip that coin. Half of the people reading this blog just ended up living a doomsday scenario. But the true fact is that it won’t be a matter of half of the world living with a climate catastrophe and the other half getting off scott free. It’s a matter of everybody trotting down a substantially more eco-friendly path, or everybody suffering the irreversible effects of climate change.
This might sound like an extreme example, but the 1 in 6 chances of Russian Roulette seem a whole lot better than the prospect of a 2°C temperature increase. Are we comfortable with shoving 2 extra bullets into our climate gun and spinning the cylinder? The fact is that we’ve already loaded our gun with at least one bullet, and unless something unprecedented happens in the next couple of years, we’ve committed to adding a second bullet to our 6 slots. A 2°C rise means that we’re happy with a third bullet in our climate gun, giving us a 50/50 chance.
I’m not a gambler, particulatly when it comes to the planet, and especially when we have the power to stack the deck in our favour. We have control over those bullets!
There’s no fun in playing Russian Roulette by yourself, and in this game, we’re the only ones in the room. Let’s be reasonable and take all the bullets out of this gun. We need to do more than talk seriously about drastic emissions cuts. We need to make drastic cuts. It’s scary that we’re still quibbling over numbers while the cylinder’s revolving. The only catch to this version of Russian Roulette is that we don’t pull the trigger. The planet takes care of that for us.
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I totally agree. Somehow we need to get those 2C people to understand that the nearly 390ppm we’ve already created is amazingly scary. They need to understand that we need to minimize risk, and that means 100% cuts ASAP globally. Even getting the CO2 concentration to 410-20ppm is extremely risky. I’m sure nobody wants to do just enough so that we can stay around 2C if it means heads or tails. Eventually, us youth will need to demand more than what current proposals offer.
if you’re going to play russian roulette make sure you use a revolver
There has been a shift from talking about the problem of global warming to talking about the solutions in the public debate. But I think that we have lost the sense of urgency. Your post was a shock when I read it. Even your choice of picture struck me, because so often we don’t come face to face with the realities of violence (in its many forms). While we pollsters tell us that we shouldn’t be doom-and-gloom (and I agree with that), a good bit of shock can prompt action when our solutions messaging doesn’t go all they way.
Violence is a reality that the majority of people in my country (US) try to make go away and try to forget about most of the time. Many people like to think it’s somebody else’s problem. But for those who face violence on a daily basis, it is chilling and at this point in my life I don’t understand what that’s like. Framing global warming as russian roulette, brings home the concept that our actions are just as much a case of self-destructive violence as chancing your life on an empty slot in your gun. Maybe as a culture we don’t like to think about suicide, brash recklessness or any of the other behaviors that lead to tragedy; maybe we have difficulty admitting when we have a problem. But recognizing the severity of our actions and behaviors is necessary if we are to change them to do what is necessary.