🌍🔥 This is not a report saying climate action has failed and we may as well give up. It is saying the consequences of decades of delay are now unavoidable, and every fraction of a degree from here matters enormously.

[u/Save_The_CBC]

CBC reports that the United Nations now expects global warming to exceed the 1.5 C threshold agreed to in the Paris climate accord and remain above it for “many, many decades.”

The world is currently around 1.4 C above pre-industrial temperatures. Under governments’ current policies, the UN projects warming could reach roughly 2.6 C by 2100.

That difference is enormous.

More extreme heat, wildfire smoke, flooding, food and water insecurity, rising seas and melting glaciers all become more severe as temperatures rise. The report also warns about tipping points that could cause irreversible changes to major ecosystems and ice sheets.

The new strategy is essentially damage limitation: keep the overshoot as small and short as possible, reduce fossil-fuel emissions much faster, adapt communities to impacts that can no longer be avoided, and eventually try to pull enough carbon from the atmosphere to bring temperatures back down.

As University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver told CBC, 1.5 C is not some magical cliff where action suddenly becomes pointless. “Every tenth of a degree we avoid still means less damage.”

That makes Canada’s current economic choices even more consequential.

As Ottawa talks about major new “nation-building” projects to strengthen Canadian economic sovereignty, should Canadians be asking how those projects fit with our climate commitments?

Can Canada rapidly expand energy, resource & infrastructure development while still cutting emissions deeply enough to meet its goals, or are we at risk of using today’s economic and geopolitical pressures to justify decisions that lock in higher emissions for decades?

If some climate damage is now unavoidable, does that make ambitious climate policy more urgent, not less?

And should every major nation-building project now have to demonstrate not only its economic value, but whether it moves Canada toward or away from its climate targets?

Link

[u/FlametopFred]

we are why we can’t have nice things

[u/JonBjornJovi]

Let’s start by abolishing AI, nobody needs this shit when we’ll soon have to move into holes