{"id":191890,"date":"2021-08-16T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2021-08-16T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=191890"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:08:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:08:35","slug":"capitalism-is-whats-burning-the-planet-not-average-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/08\/capitalism-is-whats-burning-the-planet-not-average-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitalism Is What\u2019s Burning the Planet, Not Average People"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Not all humans are equally culpable in the climate chaos outlined in the 9 Aug\u00a0 IPCC report. Identifying the rich and powerful as the principal culprits is key to stopping further destruction.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Wildfires raged through Turkey’s Mediterranean region in July and August 2021.
(Felton Davis \/ Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

11 Aug 2021 – <\/em>Every seven or eight years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes its latest report reviewing the available science assessing the state of climate change. The most recent, the Sixth Assessment Report<\/a>, was published this week in the midst of a summer of extreme heat<\/a> and devastating flooding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These reports feel like landmark moments in the history of climate change. While politicians, corporations, and activists make little to no progress endlessly arguing, scientists cut through the bullshit with a sober and objective picture of where we\u2019re at and what more there is still to do.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
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What\u2019s New?<\/h3>\n

So, what new information does the latest IPCC report give us to aid in the fight against climate change? On a fundamental level, not much. Emissions are still rising, and the planet is still heating. We still need to decarbonize the economy as a matter of urgency.<\/p>\n

The Sixth Assessment Report\u2019s headlines<\/a> tend to focus on the widely vaunted target to limit global average temperature rises to 1.5o<\/sup>C. This target was the cornerstone of the Paris Agreement and is upheld by climate wonks as the limit past which warming becomes unsafe. In reality, the target is crude: we have already reached 1.1 or 1.2o<\/sup>C of warming<\/a>, and our current climate can hardly be described as safe.<\/p>\n

Regardless, the international community has cohered around 1.5o<\/sup>C as a collective ambition, for better or worse. Among the most striking headlines of the IPCC report was that, in all scenarios modeled, we will hit that level by 2040<\/a>. That point will come much sooner (around a decade from now) if we don\u2019t start bringing emissions down fast.<\/p>\n

At 1.5o<\/sup>C, we will see sea level rises of between two and three meters. Instances of extreme heat<\/a> will be around four times more likely. Heavy rainfall<\/a> will be around 10 percent wetter and 1.5 times more likely to occur. The question, then, is how soon.<\/p>\n