The world is on the brink of 'catastrophe,' leader of next UN climate talks warns.

CNN

Don't be lazy... work for your living, not live for your work!

I turn 70 this month, and have not ridden a bike in years. My wife is in a wheelchair and on oxygen. Our regular grocery store is 26 miles away, and there is no mass transit between. I think I will drive. I will be very glad when I have the option of driving an all electric car, but that day has not yet arrived.

^ yes but (not) driving a car isn't the only thing that matters. I'm not asking you to do so publicly, but maybe you should consider what else you can do to save the ecosphere. Just because you must drive car doesn't mean you're off the hook!

If you weren't dumb enough to need the dicktators, you elect?

This means you can't take care of yourselves, why would you a planet?

I'm sorry to include you all but it's we...

If nothing else it's all getting more news coverage. Definitely human exacerbated, the IPCC's report is particularly damming. Now... If politicians and big business would just start listening and focusing on getting a solution. NOW!

Play Bonny!

It's not just a technical issue. There are several political problems that have to be engaged with if we are going to have any hope of coming out of this alive.

1) If we try to discourage the waste of energy and the use of inappropriate fuels in the way we normally discourage bad behaviour (i.e. by making it more expensive), we are just going to penalise the poor. The rich will complain bitterly about the increased cost of flying abroad but will still go on foreign holidays, while the poor will have to choose between heating their homes with increasingly expensive electricity or putting food on the table. Long before we reach net zero, there will have been a violent social breakdown. To avoid that, we must arrange what is sometimes called a "just transition" in which the costs and benefits of going green are shared out equally.

2) The same thing applies between nations. The developing countries are simply not going to allow their development to be brought to a screeching halt long before they reach the comfortable lifestyle that we enjoy. Also some countries with a low per-capita emission of CO2 have a high total emission because they are so populous. This is particularly true of China and India. There is no justice whatever in asking them to reduce their energy usage when ours is proportionately so much higher, but if they don't, we are all heading for disaster because the planet is affected only by total greenhouse gas emissions and not per-capita ones.

Can anyone find an answer to either of these two points?

Very astute, hazel, and well stated. However it seems to me that abundant cheap energy would go a very long way to completely changing those socio-political situations and reactions. IMHO an important first step is possible by aggressively pursuing thorium salt nuclear power generation. The conundrum there is general public knee-jerk reaction from unjustified fear repels investors that could even consider investing in nuclear of any kind. The only solution is education which is obviously even more important since there are still so many that continue to argue whether or not human caused climate change even exists. Combine that with millions of fundamentalists who are willing to fight, murder and die over petty idealogy, many of whom are fully convinced we are "in End Times" and can only trust their unaided 5 senses... I am sincerely afraid things will have to get much worse before it can even begin to get better.

Side note:

Whereas I would admit to being a "Fundamentalist" although I wouldn't describe myself that way, and believe folks are blind if they don't see we are in the Last Days as described by Scripture, I am not willing to fight or die fighting over my ideology. We are and always were pacifists.

And no, short of Divine intervention I don't see a possible way out of today's mess without an awful lot of carnage. And that's only today's mess. The sad fact is that this forum reaches into the 1st world; Global Warming reaches into the 1st, 2nd, 3rd & 4th worlds.

While i have zero experience of "divine intervention" I am quite aware of how many "prophecies" for End Times have come and gone. Even if this time it is so, people can't live like that by expecting that not only their own but everyone's life is facing total apocalypse at any moment.

Some of you might be interested in reading this essay by Peter Brannen, from the March 2021 issue of The Atlantic: The Terrifying Warning Lurking in the Earth’s Ancient Rock Record - Our climate models could be missing something big.

Comfortable being the operative word, hazel.

What one person finds comfortable another might find intolerable.

I knew without asking that you were conservative in your lifestyle but considered it to be one of comfort.

I live comfortably on a limited income because I know how to budget and live within it.

However, it seems like it was monkey business after all with business_kid.

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Prophecies for different periods have come, been fulfilled, and gone. To give a sense of perspective, Jerusalem's destruction started to be foretold in the 8th century B.C. and was finally fulfilled in 607 BC. It's really fairly big headed to expect the whole shooting match to be wrapped up in my few years on the planet, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't live as if the end was imminent. Because either death or the Master's return will overtake me in any event. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage...25&version=NIV