This Is Our Civilization At 1.5 Degrees

Take a Hard Look at How Things Are Breaking Down. And Then Ask How Much More Is on the Way

Image Credit: Channel 4

History’s a strange thing. A day went by recently that it’ll remember. But we scarcely noticed at all. Merely a whisper was felt.

We’re now crossing the last thresholds. Of climate change. Of extinction. 

There is a 66% chance global temperatures will cross the critical climate threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels at least once between now and 2027, the United Nations’ weather agency warned in its annual report. The forecast, if realized, would mark the first time humanity has crossed the 1.5C threshold.

You can feel it. But I’ll come to that. Let me put this in context first. We’re living through the single greatest event in human history. Only five previous events in all of history, the history of life, have compared, across eons, hundreds of millions of years. Just five. We just crossed the final threshold — 1.5 degrees of warming. The jargon and statistics just mean…that. It’s not, after all, as if carbon’s going to magically fly away to heaven, and so here we are, at 1.5 degrees.

And our civilization barely noticed. Barely an eye was blinked. Scarcely any words were said. It wasn’t the subject of dinner table conservation. It barely made the headlines. Ask the average person, and they’ll give you a baffled look. They have no idea. It’s not that they could care less — plenty do. But here we are. Crossing the last thresholds of the greatest event in human history, and it barely makes the news.

There’s something very, very wrong with that, and I’m going to explain why, though I’m sure you already know.

You can already feel it. Just a taste of it. Why don’t we want to cross these last thresholds? Let me first put them in perspective. 1.5 degrees is our last chance, more or less, to stop an era of runaway climate change, of rapid, apocalyptic heating. That’s because somewhere between 2 and 3 degrees — we don’t know exactly where, and it’s all but impossible to pin down the precise phase changes and equilibria of a system as complex as a planet — tipping points are hit. That’ll accelerate heating faster and further. Then we’re at 3.5 degrees, maybe 4. And that planet? It’s not livable — at least not for our civilization.

We are playing with extinction. And that, my friends, many civilizations can assure you — in far less perilous positions than ours, who faced the axe anyways — is a bad, bad bet.

You can already…feel it. Not just the climate change. Not just the 1.5 degrees. The tipping points.

Take a look at Canada’s boreal forests. It’s barely even summer, and they’re already on fire. Mega-fire. Flames are ripping through Alberta and British Columbia. The temperature’s off the charts of normal. 

Andreanne Doyon, an assistant professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University, said the current temperature trends are very concerning…“We are not supposed to have heat like 10 to 15 degrees hotter than average in May. 

“Heat waves are sometimes referred to as the deadliest of natural disasters — because they are something that people don’t focus on,” she said. “With the wildfires that B.C. and Alberta are experiencing right now, the photos are very extreme, and it’s really tragic where we haven’t been able to communicate the severity of heat waves and those impacts in the same way.”