Second Opinion: On the climate crisis, delay has become the new form of denial (via latimesopinion)
the climate crisis as simply an “engineering problem.” If we can simply clean up our act down the road, why not continue to burn fossil fuels? This, too, is a delay tactic — one that buys time for polluters to continue to make billions in profits as we mortgage the future habitability of the planet.
And what about “carbon capture” and the promise of “net zero” emissions by mid-century? Reaching zero emissions by 2050 will indeedto avert catastrophic planetary warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. But it is hardly sufficient. We must also cut emissions in half by 2030 to hold warming below the danger limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Furthermore, understand that the “net” in “net zero” is doing quite a bit of work, for implicit in the word is the notion that we can continue to burn fossil fuels if we can find a way to remove them just as quickly. To quote Will Smith’s Genie in the movie “Aladdin,” there’s “a lot of gray area” in that word. It allows politicians to make vague promises of technological innovation, i.e.
It’s really easy to put carbon pollution into the atmosphere but really hard to take it back out and safely bury it for the long term. Nonetheless, the promise of carbon capture and net zero emissions decades from now allows politicians to kick the can so far down the road you can barely see it. That’s another masterful delay tactic.
Look no further than Australia, a country that deserves better than the feckless coalition government that currently reigns. The parties there
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