"At least we had an asteroid. What's your excuse?"
-- Frankie the dinosaur
"So, a dinosaur goes into a room and starts babbling on about extinction," could be a good setup for a joke. How the story unfolds, however, really depends on the listener.
Imagine a scene reenacting the current UN climate conference, another annual meeting on which the world's humans have pinned their climate hopes for 26 years. Putting a representative dinosaur on this world stage is a last ditch, what-will-it-take scenario to get us to comprehend what we are facing, since dinosaurs know a thing or two about extinction. (To hear the dinosaur's speech, go to: Don'tChooseExtinction.com, a video by the U.N. Development Program.)
Surviving into our future can be somewhat calculated from the United Nations' Emissions Gap Report. This report keeps track of the pledges each country makes to reduce carbon emissions or to adapt to climate change impacts. The participating nations of the world update or change their goals from time to time, part of what's going on this week in Glasgow, Scotland.
The dinosaur in the room needs to be there to stare into our blank faces of denial because the global pledges up to this point in time will only take off 7.5% of predicted greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. At that rate, we're clearly not going to cut enough emissions to prevent exceeding a 1.5 degree Celsius temperature rise by 2030 nor meet the Paris Agreement goals. Instead, we might easily double the rise of global temperature this century, when what we need to do -- must do -- is cut it in half. We should also keep in mind that some nations' climate plans don't even start until after 2030.
"Catastrophic" is the word climate scientists utter as they shudder out these numbers. Stressing urgency, Inger Andersen of the UN Environmental Program says, "The world has to wake up to the imminent peril we face as a species. Nations need to put in place the policies to meet their new commitments, and start implementing them within months."
Notice his word is "months." We've had over 30 years to seriously address climate change. The luxury of time is now gone. If we do not implement more technical, social, behavioral, financial, medical and political policies centered on climate now, we're in deep trouble. We've blown through the cheap solution time and now face big bills because of inaction. The bills are going to just keep going up if we don't get real about every aspect of our planet's physical health because its health is our health. Frankly, we've been stupid, the definition of which, we all know, can be doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. We're now on No. 26 of repeat handwringing and reaping the same minor progress.
Congress has been raving on about the cost of the Build Back Better bill with financing of social, medical, educational and environmental programs to be spread out over a decade. Trimming trillions from these human needs has politicians perpetually moaning and groaning "How can we pay for it all?" Not once, not one single time, in all this beating of chests have I heard anyone mention how much we spend on killing instead of on living.
The military budget for 2022 is around $753 billion. In 10 years that's way over $7 trillion and change. This human needs bill that's been pecked to pieces has dedicated $555 billion to stretch over 10 years ($55 billion per year) for climate-related issues. These two budgets seem to be backwards if we're really going to solve anything. Our billions and trillions need to be spent preventing, not defending, catastrophe. And, oh yes, we also need to stop subsidizing fossil fuel industries!
The Department of Defense knows full well instability will result as climate continues to render countries unable to feed their populations. The UN Refugee Agency estimates currently 82.4 million people are displaced from their homes due to persecution, conflict, human rights, hunger, etc. Imagine millions more climate refugees migrating because they can no longer grow crops, find safe water, protect their homes or hold back the sea rising over coastal lands where 40% of the world's population lives. No military can hold back the sea nor a flood of humans who are just trying to survive.
This is no joke. We need to listen to the dinosaur. It's now or never.