This graphic demonstrates why each COP must be evaluated relative to the task or effort required from that moment, NOT by a simple comparison to previous COPs.
And that is why it is ridiculous to listen to self-congratulations about the first admission of the need to transition from using fossil fuel in energy systems in the COP28 text.
Humanity has consistently failed to put in the effort to respond to climate change, thus what we have created is now a planetary crisis.
Today the response effort required of humanity is much greater – magnitudes greater (as indicated by the relative sizes of the red arrows) – than if we had genuinely begun responding after the first IPCC report was released in 1990 (left-most graphs) which underlined the global consequences of climate change and clarified our collective challenge, and it is significantly greater than at the time the Paris agreement (middle graphs) was struck to strive to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5C.
The delay has been in large part due to the fossil fuel industry always seeing those red arrows as too great a negative impact on their businesses so that the human beings having influence over their actions have used their accumulated privilege in society (through wealth and political connection) to delay and reduce the response effort enacted.
And that is the one thing that has not changed over these decades!
It is imperative that each of us see the situation for the way it is, not the way fossil fuel interests are paying a fortune in spin doctoring to have us see it.
It has been made especially clear in the past year that this industry will not act in the interests of humanity.
These holidays, when we spend time with those we love, and we reflect on all we have in our lives for which we are grateful, please spare a moment to deeply consider what it is we are leaving for those who must follow us, and make the decision to loudly express those concerns beginning in 2024 and beyond.
The power to lead really is within each of us!
Acknowledgements: Original graphs taken from the Copernicus global temperature trend monitor website.
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© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2023
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