OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #155, NOVEMBER 27, 2023 Compiled by Dick Bennett.
Continued: What’s stopping USA from reversing rising
temperature, or at least from slowing it down?
People who whitewash and delay consensus and public
education of the UN IPCC Reports by recommending additional study of the
Assessments. Example:
Steven Koonin. Unsettled? What
Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. BenBella, 2021. IPCC Assessments report the conclusions of
thousands of scientists in peer reviewed publications; these conclusions are then
reviewed by governments and corporations, which can alter the Assessment reports
in “Summaries.” Koonin admits that “the IPCC’s ‘Summaries for
Policymakers’ are heavily influenced, if not written, by governments that have
interests in promoting particular policies” (200); still, he argues, since the science is not always entirely settled in
the Assessments, additional reviews of IPCC reports should be made.
But
the Koonins are being overcome by the dependability of the IPCC Assessments themselves
and by the world’s vision demanding a habitable and just world. We know that climate change is happening, we
know why, and we know how to reduce or stop it.
How to reduce or stop warming. The following essays critical of fossil
fuels appeared in one number of The Progressive (July-August 2014).
Bill McKibben. “Why Universities Will
Divest.”
Graham Provost. “Our Surprise Victory at
Stanford.” Divesting from coal.
Nick Surgey. “How ALEC Fronts for Fossil
Fuels.” Exposes the secret organization that promotes C02 in state legislatures.
David Helvarg, “A City [Richmond] Beats Back Chevron.”
Also in this no. of The Progressive thrivemany critiques of the
Koch brothers: Lisa Graves. “The Koch Cartel”;
Jim Hightower, “Populists Crash the Koch Lobby”; and five other articles
denounce them briefly.
A humanist vision of a world to be achieved
strong enough to stop rising temperatures and build a new society is being
embraced by more and more people. Here
is one of many books reporting that hope.
Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams. Creating
an Ecological Society: Toward Revolutionary Transformation. Their
conclusion: “The struggle is really about the need to change the balance of forces,
to educate others and ourselves about what is needed and what is possible. The ultimate goal is to replace the system of
capital [based on class, inequality, racism, sexism, war, competition, and
greed] with an economic-political-social system designed for the purpose of
enabling all people to reach their full human potential in ways that respect
and preserve a healthy stable biosphere.” Part One, the present dominant economics has
created a planetary emergency. Part Two,
an ecological society is possible. Part
Three, learning from Nature, Part Four,
a new—ecological-- society, examples.