Essay by Eric Worrall
McKibben believes the reason the IPCC’s increasingly frantic climate warnings are being ignored is people don’t believe they can make a difference.
Climate change is the legacy of people over the age of 60. That’s why we must protest
Bill McKibben
Tue 28 Mar 2023 00.38 AEDTI’m proud to be part of Third Act, a climate activist organization for people over the age of 60
The brutal truth is that last week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report didn’t have the effect it should have had, or that its authors clearly intended. Produced by thousands of scientists who synthesized the work of tens of thousands of their peers over the last decade, and meticulously drafted by teams of careful communicators, it landed in the world with a gentle plop, not the resounding thud that’s required.
In China, the world’s biggest emitter, official attention was focused instead on Moscow, where Xi Jinping was off to do a little male bonding with fellow autocrat Vladimir Putin, incidentally the world’s second largest producer of hydrocarbons. In America, the historical emissions champ, we were riveted by the possibility that would-be autocrat Donald Trump might be indicted. In the New York Times, our planet’s closest thing to a paper of record, the IPCC report was the fourth story on the website.
The reason, I think, is a disconnect between the dire words of the report and the actions most people feel they can effectively take. If the world has begun to fall off a cliff – due, as the report says, to a lack of political commitment – then installing a heat pump in your basement seems like a useful gesture but also not enough. “The climate timebomb is ticking,” the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said. If a bomb is about to go off, you need to actually do something.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/27/older-people-climate-protest-banks-ipcc
“It landed in the world with a gentle plop” – I wish I’d thought of that line.
The problem is not the disconnect between the words of the report and the actions people feel they can take. The problem is the disconnect between the IPCC and their credibility.
For more than 30 years we’ve been listening to the United Nations and other tax money guzzling organisations try to scare us with imaginary climate hobgoblins, ozone holes, acid rain, it’s a long list of utter nonsense.
If the IPCC wants to make more than a “gentle plop” in the world with their apocalyptic but widely ignored pronouncements, they need to start getting some predictions right.
Results from a recent local poll –
“What’s the biggest issue in Wales right now?”
The NHS 42%
Cost of living 29%
Other 14%
Transport 8%
Climate change 4%
Housing 2%
Education 1%
Shows how deluded people are when anything is lower on the list than “climate change.”
a gentle plop huh?
hope they flushed
As an individual, I can’t change much. As a concerned citizen, I can promote the idea that nuclear fission is safe for by standers, not by industrial “safety features”, but by the fact accidents are pretty safe.
The worst is unlikely and even then it’s only an industrial/economic issue.
We need to advocate a rule: in case of accident, don’t move out of the region (unless you had to go there in the first place), don’t lock downs, don’t do stuff, don’t watch Russia Today.
Fix the plant and don’t issue public warnings.
That is, no warning except “don’t go near a melting reactor because hydrogen is dangerous”.
That is, don’t go where you wouldn’t go in the first place.
That is, don’t change anything.
It’s ridiculous that a Chernobyl is a unit of ultimate global ecological and health disaster.
Chernobyl is a local shock on nature and had huge health impact on some people who went to work over a minuscule area (that many people had to work there is another problem).
During the war on Ukraine we had a lot of propaganda by Ukrainians and notably insane Chernobyl propaganda that implies that there is a no go zone that kills people (Russian soldiers in that case).
It’s patently ridiculous. Many Russian soldiers died by nobody got sick “because Chernobyl”.
Yet nobody in mainstream Western media will touch that piece of Ukrainian propagandist garbage to refute it.
Russian Chernobyl propaganda is even more ridiculous: “Soviet heroes saved all Europe from the ultimate explosion” they say.
They did dig a trench for water, which was hard work, but those that did it were the least impacted from reactor 4 radiation (so in fact they had less health issues) and the trench was never used for anything.
There was exactly zero risk of any explosion wiping Europe.
Both Russian and Ukrainian propaganda make nuclear scary, we need to call out both.
Note: I don’t buy the idea that Ukrainian Chernobyl propaganda is war propaganda. Russian soldiers die every day and scary radiation isn’t what will prevent the Russian mothers of these young people from sleeping.
I think Ukraine is a Gazprom linked entity and needs to be called out as such.
As the West supports Ukraine, maybe we can make then retract one of their lies.
Another celebrity moron.