“So we’re screwed then”,
is a comment I keep hearing. Not a lot, but when it pops out, it accompanies a sad resignation and indictment of the world we live in and the generation that has failed it.
Maybe it’s because I tend to hang out with people who really care about the planet and the legacy we are leaving behind. No longer are we custodians or guardians, more like users and abusers.
Maybe it’s too harsh, maybe it’s too negative but sometimes it just has to be said.
We’re always being told that to say such things turns people off, that we need to stress the positives that a low carbon transition would bring, but frankly that approach just ain’t working.
The UN climate talks in Durban are winding their inevitable way to a pointless conclusion.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN climate convention, said that whatever governments decide will not be enough to bridge the gap between the emission cuts governments have pledged, and the cuts necessary to keep the global average temperature rise below 2C from pre-industrial times.
So we’re screwed then.
Not necessarily us, if you’re over 50 you can probably relax in the knowledge that it’s your children and grandchildren who will be lumped with all problems.
So how bad can it get? Who can predict the future?
Well at risk of being labelled ‘alarmist’, I’ll have a stab at it. But only because I believe we need a wake up call, we are sleep walking into disaster and because we are intrinsically selfish animals, we don’t seem to care.
Well some of us do, in fact a lot of us do but the Power and the Money doesn’t and that’s ruling the day.
So here are my predictions for 40-80 years time:
We are currently doing worse than the IPCC’s worst case scenario.
2 degs of warming will arrive sooner than expected.
Positive feed-backs and the cumulative build up of CO2 will make it very difficult to prevent further warming.
At 2 degs, most species will be struggling to adapt. Already there is an extinction event happening, this will accelerate.
The US mid-west bread-basket will turn into a dust bowl.
Enlarging weather cells will bring floods to new places, droughts to others.
The glacier fed water supplies to the Indian sub-continent will dwindle.
Sea level rises will start to affect low lying islands, cities and countries such as Bangladesh leading to mass migrations and millions of displaced people, many armed.
Food shortages. Water shortages. Harvest failures.
Ocean acidification. The Great Barrier Reef dies.
The Amazon suffers years of drought, it dries out – one spark……
To cope with emergency measures and economic meltdown, democracy is universally suspended.
And then things really start to go downhill.