Ch 3. We Are Running Out of Time
If you’re a fan of tennis, you probably follow the French Open closely. If you were watching last year, you bore witness to a chilling event.
A 22-year-old woman named Alizee (no one seems to know her surname or if she even goes by one) stormed the court and chained herself to the net by her neck. Her message was written on a plain white t-shirt with big black letters which read...
“We have 1028 days left.”
The date she alluded to was the same one contained in the UN’s climate report that indicates 2025 is a critical deadline for action. If we don’t take aggressive action to curtail green house gas emissions by then, it is predicted that we will reach a tipping point where global warming will cascade into potential ecological disaster.
Of course, in the year since that incident, the clock has kept on ticking. As of this writing, we have under 500 days remaining (less than two years) until the deadline the UN set. The sands of time are running out on humanity, and still, the debate rages on.
In 2022, there was more CO2 in the atmosphere than there had been at any time in recorded history (Bussewitz, 2023.) The CO2 in the atmosphere did decrease in the previous two years, but sadly not thanks to action against climate change. Rather, it was the Covid pandemic that cut down on travel, both international and domestic, that resulted in the decrease.
The UN’s most recent Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report as of this writing, in 2023, says that in order to stave off ecological disaster, we must cut global greenhouse emissions by 60% before 2035. The report says, “the choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts for thousands of years.”
That’s a lot of responsibility put on us to make a change.
In order to make the change, we must all accept that global warming and climate change are very real phenomena. Unfortunately, in the United States, climate change has become a partisan issue.
Conservatives are 67% more likely to say that climate change is not a problem for them personally, compared with 27% of liberals and progressives (Friedman, 2021.) Americans are also less likely overall to consider climate change an immediate problem compared to other developed nations.
Once again, it bears repeating that you can’t argue with facts. And the facts on climate change clearly show that it’s not only a real, existential threat, but it’s a threat that continues to grow.
In a later section, we dive deep into climate science, which will leave the reader with no doubt about the veracity of climate change as both real and dangerous.
For now, let’s establish two important things about climate change.
- We are running out of time to act. The UN’s grim forecast illustrates that perfectly, as does the evidence piling up all over the world that our time is nearly up.
- We can no longer treat climate change as an isolated phenomenon that does not affect our daily lives…or indeed, our very survival. This book will clearly lay out the connections between economic inequality, our failing energy system, and the ecological dangers of climate change. All of these phenomena have the same root cause. Spoiler alert: It’s the root of all evil.
Climate change needs action everywhere, all at once.
And we are running out of time to take action.
The next section will lay out why you, yes, you, the reader…need to take action. Because no superhero in brightly colored spandex is coming to save us.
Still grouping commas and “ands” I maybe too critical. Is this third chapter still an introduction? I ask because it prefixes what we will see in this book. Having said that. I believe that this is publish ready and again easy to read without any dry, boring, boorish language that often is buried in this type of read
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