Month 11, Day 25: Curiouser and Curiouser

The Independent (UK) runs an article on the newly issued UN climate report. The comments are a huge pile of stupid.

When it comes to global climate change and the possibility of a genuinely robust treaty on carbon emissions, it is depressing to realize how hard we have to work to achieve — nothing. After months of international name-calling and internecine disputes, the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases seem locked in a Red Queen’s race in which any agreement will fall short of what is really needed. It’s easy to understand why; governments are set up to dampen the impulses of rapid change, since a society undergoing constant radical transformations would be difficult to live in. But climate change is different; what we hear from scientists is equivalent to a cardiologist’s unequivocal statement to a heart patient: change your habits immediately, or die. And from our climate negotiators? Denial and bargaining. Just as you can’t make a deal with coronary artery disease, there is no bargaining with the greenhouse effect.

Warren Senders