This is a very good overview by @fionaharvey.bsky.social, but this whole campaign against Net Zero, on the basis of economics and jobs, demonstrates just how confused the thinking has become over climate change. There is a complete lack of joined up thinking necessary for us to understand it. 1/🧵
Why Andy Burnham must push harder for greening the UK economy: business, jobs, investment and electoral calculation all demand it: theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com
As climate scientists such as Professor Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social have made clear, repeatedly, current Net Zero policy of governments, including our own, won't reach anything like real Net Zero, he calls it Not Zero. This is how confused everything has become. 2/ That there is a backlash against even inadequate measures to address climate change, not merely from the usual suspects, but unions, and potentially the next leader of the Labour Party - in the middle of a climate change driven heat wave. The thinking is so confused. 3/ The thinking is even more confused, as the climate crisis is actually only one small part of a far bigger ecological crisis, and you can't even start to understand the almost certain severe impacts of climate change, without factoring in ecological impacts, which is how we will experience it. 4/ I can't believe I'm having to explain this, given the effort I've put into trying to get this across from the time of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. The direct physical impacts of climate change, like we're experiencing with this European heat wave, are a misleading way to look at the climate crisis. 5/ Yes, these big direct physical effects, like heatwaves, extreme rain, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, AMOC collapse etc, are very real and serious. But it distracts from the almost invisible to most, elephant in the room, the ecological impacts. This is real, not an ecologist's perspective. 6/ You see, the big factor of all ecosystems, their components, biodiversity, the species that compose it, are adaptation to climate. The reason species are found where they are, ecosystem types, are where they are, the type of regional farming, the characteristics of nations - is climate. 7/ The reason the British countryside isn't the same as it is in southern Europe, Africa, Asia, etc, is down to climate. If the climate changes in a major way, all species distributions, ecosystems, regional farming traditions, economies, industries, governments, will all be seriously out of kilter. 8/ This is why it is naive in the extreme, mindless and stupid, to argue that Net Zero is the enemy of job creation, economic growth etc - because climate change and the strongly related ecological crisis, will have a much greater impact on jobs and the economy, than policy to address it. 9/ This is thinking in a bubble, to an absurd delusional degree, completely failing to see the wider consequences, where there won't be any jobs or economy on a dead planet, where we have destroyed the Earth's natural life support systems, that keep us alive, that maintain the economy and jobs. 10/ There was recently a national security review, by the intelligence services no less, of the likely impacts of biodiversity loss and ecological collapse, on the UK, in the context of national security. It painted a horrific picture. It was from this year. gov.uk 11/
www.gov.uk
But It's already been forgotten, was never acknowledged by most mainstream politicians, even though as @rupertread.bsky.social and others pointed out, that it had been redacted, to remove most of the alarming impacts. As I pointed out, no one understands this in a joined up way. 12/ There is not a single field of science, no university department, no institute, no research project, attempting to understand the resilience of our civilization, to climate and ecological impacts. No one is studying it at all. Don't take my word for it. pnas.org 13/
www.pnas.org
To be fair, no one is studying it, because it's so complex, that it is beyond anything our academic system has ever studied, by many orders of magnitude. But herein lies the problem. We've created a hugely complicated economy, civilization, society, and no one has ever looked at its viability. 14/ The reason no one looked at whether the current economy is viable i.e. whether it will just implode and collapse in the near future, because it is systematically destroying the natural systems that support it - is that it is so obviously doomed in its present form. 15/ It's not that humanity is inherently doomed, but the modern economic model is, because it's bleeding obvious you can't have infinite growth, in a finite system. However, to just say we won't look at that, because it's too complex, is recklessness beyond belief. I mean it is delusional madness. 16/ Again, I am not floating some radical plan, some convoluted ideology, I'm simply asking, excuse me, could someone have a look at the viability of what we are doing, and where we are heading. No one created the modern capitalist economy, it was just allowed to develop, with no proper oversight. 17/ We should really be very worried that no one connected to any form of government, has got any sort of realistic insight, into the basic viability of the economic system that they are imposing on us. 18/ @georgemonbiot.bsky.social @zackpolanski.bsky.social @dpcarrington.bsky.social @naomiaklein.bsky.social @nataliegreenpeer.bsky.social @greenjennyjones.bsky.social