Action needed to avoid disastrous overshoot of climate targets, according to organisation’s environment body

Action needed to avoid disastrous overshoot of climate targets, according to organisation’s environment body

The world needs to cut carbon emissions by nearly a fifth in the next four years, and by close to half within a decade, to avoid overshooting climate targets by a disastrous margin.

Although the “window has closed” on holding temperature rises to 1.5C, in line with scientific advice, limiting the “overshoot” of that target is still possible, according to the UN Environment Programme (Unep).

But countries are failing to translate their long-term targets on reducing emissions into short-term actions, a report on the “emissions gap” between climate goals and policies has found.

  • wampus@lemmy.caEnglish
    21·
    2 days ago

    eh, we’re looking at a grim future either way at this point.

    Only way I can picture the world cutting by that amount, is if there’s a massive collapse of western civilization / the wealthy get purged, and technology goes backwards. We won’t do that willingly, so the world will instead continue its trajectory, with the worst of climate change impact hitting poor people – and rich people / wealthy people using their assets to eek out a mediocre lifestyle in the future. I doubt we’d totally die off, barring something truly cataclysmic.

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      I doubt Rosa Luxemburg was referring to climate collapse when she talked about the choice between socialism or barbarism, but here we are.

      • wampus@lemmy.caEnglish
        21·
        1 day ago

        Maybe. I’m not so sure socialism would really change anything though, on the aggregate in terms of climate collapses.

        Socialism isn’t by default Eco-friendly / Eco-conscientious. Capitalism tends to have all the benefits from climate destroying stuff go to a capitalist class – socialism could easily take the form of still pushing climate destroying stuff, but distributing the benefits to the masses. Depending on the scale of the change (which is likely to be massive), diversifying the benefits could result in no human surviving, rather than just a subset of the wealthy.

        For a random example to explain the thought, really ‘loose’ example admittedly. Under socialism, theoretically you’d have a fairer distribution of wealth so that housing would be more equitable – most people would get a simple starter-type home to live in. Rich person doomsday bunker type homes would be almost unheard of, as no individual would amass so much wealth that they could build em. In the socialist approach, each individual home has a smaller climate footprint, but the volume of homes built could have a similar net impact on the environment in the aggregate. So if it gets so bad that you need a bunker, humanity all dies together, equitably?