Too Late! ... But Wait

Climate change is coming. The Earth is warming, now about 1.3 degrees C above late 19^th century average. It is getting closer to 2 degrees higher.

Scientists tell us we have to contain this warming, preferably below 1.5 degrees, certainly below 2 degrees.

Social and environmental collapse is predicted for later this century.

We have to do something.

The bad news is: It’s Too Late!

It all has to do with tipping points. A tipping point has been defined as when change in part of a system becomes self-perpetuating beyond a threshold, leading to substantial, widespread, frequently abrupt and often irreversible impacts.’

There are some keywords in that definition.

·       Self-perpetuating tells us that the process has become runaway, and runs now under its own steam, without need for external force.

·       Threshold tells us that there is a point at which a system changes from one state to another state.

·       Substantial, widespread tells us that the new system that follows the threshold is nothing like the system that preceded it.

·       Frequently Abrupt tells us that the change will be catastrophic and will happen very quickly.

·       Often Irreversible tells us that we cannot go back to the previous state, no matter how much we would wish that were possible.

The Earth systems that control, moderate, and form our climate have been studied for many years. Meteorologists, Earth and Climate Scientists now have a very good understanding of how these systems work, and how they interact. At least 25 tipping points in Earth systems have been identified, with 9 of these being especially crucial.

A recent report (December 2023) identifies a number of these tipping points as likely to tip within the near future. At high risk of tipping the report identifies the Greenland Ice Sheet, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the Amazon rainforest, low latitude coral reefs, Boreal permafrost, and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). All of these are likely to tip soon.

What makes things worse though, is that the Earth’s systems are inter-linked, so that if one point is tipped it is highly likely to trigger the tipping of other points – much like a row of dominoes.

However, climate it just one of Earth’s systems. The Stockholm Resilience Centre has been mapping what it has called “Planetary Boundaries” since 2009 (1). The Centre has identified nine of these – climate change being just one of them. In 2009 the Centre had assessed seven boundaries and found that three of them had been exceeded. Last year, the Centre released its latest report in which all nine boundaries had been assessed and found that six of the nine boundaries had been crossed.

None of this is good news.

It is too late to avert serious climate change. It is too late to pull back from social and environmental collapse.

The systems are now self-perpetuating (with or without human intervention), have exceeded some of the thresholds, and have become irreversible.

Too late, too late, too late!!!

But wait

It is not too late to act. Yes, it is too late to act to stop climate chaos and collapse. But it not too late to act in other ways. There is good news.

There is an old saying (it goes back to at least the early 1800s) and has been attributed to a variety of sources – Indian gurus, Chinese sages, the Roman poet Statius, and the French theologian Hyacinthe Loyson. No matter the sayings precise source, the sentiment expressed in it is of value to us at this time. The saying is often quoted thus:

‘Blessed is the person who plants trees under whose shade they will never sit.’

The nature of chaotic systems, tipping points, and social/environmental collapse is that we have no way of predicting the outcome ahead of time.

The best we can do going into the collapse is to plant the seeds for the trees that may be of use to any (if any) humans that get through to the other side of the collapse. Even though, we – acting today – will never experience the benefit of those trees.

We must be careful what trees we plant though. That means looking back over our history to identify the poisonous trees from which we have eaten, and not planning them. Rather we need to plant those trees that are healthy and provide good shelter.

Let me name some of these trees: kindness, compassion, love, sense of beauty, care, empathy, respect, connection, equity. These trees need to be made available to all humans. and to all the other creatures and plants that share this planet with us.

We must not plant the trees of: exploitation, hatred, narcissism, selfishness, hubris. Most of all we must not plant the tree of human exceptionalism.

Otherwise, any human society that does manage to get through to the other side of the collapse is doomed to simply repeat the same mistakes we made that have brought us to the point of social/environmental collapse.

Notes:

1. https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html  accessed 6 November 2024