U.N. says it's time to adapt to warming - Los Angeles Times

Link: U.N. says it's time to adapt to warming - Los Angeles Times.

The United Nations' Nobel Prize-winning panel on climate change approved the final installment of its landmark report on global warming on Friday, concluding that even the best efforts at reducing CO2 levels will not be enough and that the world must also focus on adapting to "abrupt and irreversible" climate changes.

New and stronger evidence developed in the last year also suggests that many of the risks cited in the panel's first three reports earlier this year will actually be larger than projected and will occur at lower temperatures, according to a draft of the so-called synthesis report.

I also blame climate change on blog decline here at I Cite. Several days ago, I spoke with a physicist about my worries about lacking the skills needed as society crumbles (and here I should note that I blame capitalist neoliberalism, and the neoliberals' occupation of government to treat the state strictly as a vehicle for their personal enrichment and a tool for oppressing and controlling the have nots for the current situation; the only way to cope adequately with climate change is a collectivist, statist, approach that installs strict regulations on corporations, moves the US away from cars and oil, caps salaries and bonuses, and undertakes large scale planning). The physicist told me not to worry at all--and not to worry about trying to be environmentally cautious. It's already too late. Over a decade ago he worked with a Nobel prize winner who at that point said the situation was hopeless--and his estimates were more conservative than the optimistic ones today. The physicist told me this is why he and his wife decided not to have kids.

I don't think that survival worries are well understood as simple fantasies, particularly as fantasies focused on survival inside corporations or in the neoliberal market. Or, maybe it's better to say that they seem to fill a gap left by the evacuation of collective thinking about large scale problems. Trust, survival, reliance all collapse into the singular point of the self--but, preoccupations with mental health and self-esteem (that is, strictly imaginary preoccupations) overburden the already fragile individual beyond its capacities.

Comments

[Rich Puchalsky]

I'm not sure whether I should attempt a comment-box sort-of-intervention or not, but here goes.

I've worked as an environmental activist around climate change issues for more than a decade. I generally agree with many of the things in this post: the conclusions of the IPCC; the basic reason why actions against climate change have not yet been taken; the need for a collectivist approach. Where I disagree is that this will lead to "society crumbling".

It takes a whole lot more disruption than climate change is likely to cause for society to crumble, at least for Western societies as opposed to, say, Bangladesh. The feeling that society is crumbling / might as well not have kids / focus on survival skills is indeed a sort of fantasy displacement.

Assuming that climate change does cause significant disruption, collectivist solutions are going to be used whether neoliberals want them to be or not, because nothing else is going to be available. The question is, of course, what kind of collectivist solutions. See, for instance, see Google search "khaki green Sterling" (can't embed links here, unfortunately).

There's a move -- see James Kunstler, say -- to assume that the effects of climate change (plus peak oil and whatever else) are going to lead to social collapse to the point where you might as well give up. Some people add the Kunstler-ish touch that the disruptions will magically take care of everything about society that they don't like. But really this is just neoliberalism writ large. "It's already too late" (for what??) is no different than "you must leave it to the market".

Concern about being personally "environmentally cautious" is misdirected, though. Don't worry about that. Your personal behavior consumption and disposal isn't going to make a difference large enough so that you should be too concerned with it.

[Pat]

Reports like this really show how imperative it is for change. There is an energy bill in congress right now that calls for renewable electricity sources and a fuel economy standard of 35 mpg by the year 2020. Both of these would be a great start in lessening our impact on the environment, but lobbyists are trying to have these provisions removed. I'm working with a group to try and convince congress to pass the strongest energy bill possible. There is a petition here http://www.energybill2007.us for anyone who wants to check it out

[patrick j. mullins]

'Concern about being personally "environmentally cautious" is misdirected, though. Don't worry about that. Your personal behavior consumption and disposal isn't going to make a difference large enough so that you should be too concerned with it'

That may or may not be true, I don't really buy it, however the rest of what Rich said in this comment is sound and people should be thinking more along these lines, and even the part I slightly object to is about halfway worth taking seriously.

[Rich Puchalsky]

People use the industrial infrastructure that's available to them. I'd guess that no one reading this now has an air conditioner that uses Freon. That's not because you were all so environmentally conscious that you carefully replaced all your air conditioners. It's because the government told businesses that make air conditioners not to make them to use Freon. Similarly, at some point the government is going to tell power companies not to use coal, car manufacturers not to use gasoline, etc. You don't really bring this any closer by worrying about your personal actions.

Well, let me qualify that. If you are going to be designing a power plant or a chemical manufacturing factory or a new car line, or something, then you should worry about the effects of your personal behavior quite a bit. Otherwise, not.

[Belfast Dave]

"No man made a greater mistake than he who did nothing, because he could only do a little." Edmund Burke.
Still true today.

[patrick j. mullins]

You shouldn't WORRY about any of it, Puchalsky. You should DO what you can, for chrissake. Agree with the Edmund Burke from Belfast Dave. It's not purely a matter of what materialisms then do ensue, the attitudes of individual people make some new ethos come into being.

[Rich Puchalsky]

There's no way you can read my comment as saying that you shouldn't do anything. But worrying about / being concerned with / optimizing your personal situation isn't really doing anything.

Mostly, people should do what they're best at, and figure out for themselves how that fits into activism.

[patrick j. mullins]

'Mostly, people should do what they're best at, and figure out for themselves how that fits into activism.'

Gripping! Last-wordish!

One knows how you debate--YEARS OF IT--and has not agreed that you may determine how it is done. You may give orders, but there is no way that you can enforce them.

[patrick j. mullins]

THE VALVE!!!

The TRUE Paper of Record!

[patrick j. mullins]

"being concerned with / optimizing your personal situation isn't really doing anything."

And anyway, that's TOTAL BULLSHIT. But DO give us all your reasons, I'm sure they will be as per usual. What one wants is just a little bit of EGO, please.

Proceed. I DEMAND it.

[sixfootsubwoofer]

"preoccupations with mental health and self-esteem (that is, strictly imaginary preoccupations) overburden the already fragile individual beyond its capacities."

According to these recent "it's too late" findings, it would seem that *all* personal preoccupations with reducing carbon emissions, etc, were "strictly imaginary"...the hybrid car, energy-saving light bulbs, the brick in the toilet, color-coded recycling bins, they're all so many lovingly arranged placebos adorning homes, obsessed-over objects laughing their pre-obsolescence at us with their price tags. These things are pampered and loved, these guilt-reducing objects that are paradoxically produced in order to erase their own cycle of having been produced. While all the while injecting hot fuel into *all* other cycles of production with the sheer audacity of their very existence. Why have children when you can have these things? They seem to be on the way toward erasing *our* cycle of production, our regeneration.

"Concern about being personally "environmentally cautious" is misdirected, though. Don't worry about that. Your personal behavior consumption and disposal isn't going to make a difference large enough so that you should be too concerned with it."

I would be great for him to privilege us with having the knowledge of what we *should* be concerned with, other than immediate safety and fashion, or the condemnations of such preoccupations.

No one can prove whether or not this statement is true. We're beyond any kind of scientific application to this question. No statistic, no study, no collectivist Armegeddon-(the movie)style "the world comes together as one" type undertaking will ever truly convince us of its truth or falsity.

The world is shocked at its own inability to refute or accept this claim. So it's business as usual.