Links tagged “tipping point”

Fonda: “We’re very, very grateful for what he’s been doing. He’s done a lot of very good things. But not enough. Not bold enough. And not fast enough. We’re up against time. The scientists say we have less than nine years to cut our emissions in half." 

"Look at the big picture — we are barreling toward a true catastrophe, an existential catastrophe, which is the climate crisis. Climate scientists are universally telling us we have to cut our emissions in half and we can have absolutely no new development of fossil fuels. No new mining. No new fracking. No new drilling if we’re going to achieve this."

The COP26 conference hosted by the UK later this year is the world's "last, best opportunity to get real" on the climate, according to US envoy John Kerry.

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Flashback: Oh No, not again! CNN headline: US undermining ‘last chance’ climate talks — But every climate summit is hailed as the ‘last chance!’

Kerry said that as the dangers posed by climate change become more clear, the urgency of the problem means that countries must work together to confront it, or else face a “mutual suicide pact across the planet.”

Response to John Kerry: 

Earth ‘serially doomed’: The official history of climate ‘Tipping Points’ began in 1864

It’s difficult to keep up whether it is hours, days, months or 1000 years. Here are few recent examples of others predicting “tipping points” of various duration.

HOURS: Flashback March 2009: ‘We have hours’ to prevent climate disaster — Declares Elizabeth May of Canadian Green Party

Days: Flashback Oct. 2009: UK’s Gordon Brown warns of global warming ‘catastrophe’; Only ’50 days to save world’

Months: Prince Charles claimed a 96-month tipping point in July 2009

Years: 2009: NASA’s James Hansen Declared Obama Only First Term to Save The Planet! — ‘On Jan. 17, 2009 Hansen declared Obama only ‘has four years to save Earth’ or Flashback Oct .2009: WWF: ‘Five years to save world’

Decades: 1982: UN official Mostafa Tolba, executive director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), warned on May 11, 1982, the ‘world faces an ecological disaster as final as nuclear war within a couple of decades unless governments act now.’

Millennium: Flashback June 2010: 1000 years delay: Green Guru James Lovelock: Climate change may not happen as fast as we thought, and we may have 1,000 years to sort it out’

WaPo's Ishaan Tharoor: "Two years ago, the U.N. IPCC warned that without huge, unprecedented cuts to carbon emissions over the next decade, the world would place itself on the brink of climate disaster. Subsequent studies suggested that, even if the demands of climate activists were met, it would take decades to measure any discernible effects.

There are reasons for hope. Myriad governments have embraced ambitious plans to transition their economies toward being carbon neutral....The World Economic Forum - a bastion of optimism - foresees a future in 2030 in which urban centers are transformed into zones shaped by pedestrian activity, technology increasingly obviates the need to own cars, fewer people eat meat, people breathe cleaner air and renewable, clean energy dominates the energy sector."