Why Our Civilization Is in a Climate Crisis

Why We Can’t Kick Our Fossil Fuel Habit — Even When It’s Costing Us Everything

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Welcome, friends, to another…Extinction Summer. It’s going to be the hottest year…on record. And already, the signs are…ominous. Global temperatures have suddenly spiked. Ocean temperatures are…leaping off the charts. Meanwhile, the polar ice is melting so fast scientists are shocked. And carbon emissions just hit record highs.

Don’t take it from me. 

In a widely shared tweet, Brian McNoldy, senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science, called rising ocean and air temperatures “totally bonkers.” He added, “people who look at this stuff routinely can’t believe their eyes. Something very weird is happening.

Uh oh.

Meanwhile:

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday that countries must start phasing out oil, coal and gas — not just emissions — and demanded fossil fuel companies “cease and desist” measures that aim to “knee-cap” climate progress. “The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions. It’s fossil fuels — period,” Guterres told reporters. “The solution is clear: The world must phase out fossil fuels in a just and equitable way — moving to leave oil, coal and gas in the ground.

There are moments in history — and this was one. A landmark speech, by one of the world’s leaders — at precisely the moment scientists “can’t believe their eyes,” the week after the skies over Manhattan turned Extinction Orange.

He’s not mincing words. What else did he have to say? 

He said limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is still possible but will require a 45 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.

However, current policies will lead to a 2.8°C temperature rise by the end of the century, which “spells catastrophe”.

He called for immediate global action toward net-zero emissions, which “must start with the polluted heart of the climate crisis: the fossil fuel industry.”

Whew. And you think I go for the jugular. Guterres is lobbing truth bombs at the heart of the world’s political establishment. But is anyone listening?

Should we phase out fossil fuels? It becomes, immediately, an emotional, divisive topic. Is the world, the average person ready to…give up their air conditioning…car…creature comforts…for ten years, twenty…a generation or two? Until, at last, there’s a source of clean energy — and until then, we just don’t keep on emitting carbon — and turning the skies orange? Somehow, I doubt it. Hence, the maelstrom of emotion and controversy surrounding the question.

So in a sense, this is the wrong way to think about the question. Here’s a better way. Could we phase out fossil fuels?

The answer to that question is chilling, instructive — and paints an eerily clear picture of where our civilization’s headed. How are we to answer that question? Let’s think about the sources of carbon emissions — most people even at this juncture, the horizon of the Age of Extinction, don’t know this, and yet it’s the most basic fact of all about everything right now, from economics to politics to money and finance to society.