Climate Prospects

The New Climate Priority

What’s our current climate goal? It appears to be “Delaying disaster, a little.” Very little. Why such lack of ambition? For effective climate action, what is now an appropriate goal?

Cutting our emissions of fossil fuel CO2 in half tomorrow would not reduce our short- to medium-term climate problems. The old prescriptions are now painfully inadequate; they omit any notion of climate repair which would allow us to retreat from the looming climate chaos. We are simply slowing our approach to chaos a little, leaving our children on a trip straight to Hell....

We need to back out of climate’s danger zone, quickly— a cool-down to save our children and ourselves via repairing climate during the next twenty years, then regulating global temperature thereafter in the manner of a thermostat, giving us time to implement sustainability. MORE...

The brown canvas drape was presumably meant to reduce further erosion from surface flooding into the sinkhole as heavy rains continued. But the underlying problem was a surging underground river that eroded its ceiling, allowing collapse. Over the centuries, London has covered over a number of tributaries of the Thames; such tunnels may need major reinforcement in our 21st-century climate where bad weather often stalls instead of continuing eastward the next day.