![\"Greta](\"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/planet4-international-stateless\/2019\/01\/d2bec1e8-gp0stssz5_medium_res-1.jpg\" "\\"Greta")
<\/p>\nGreta Thunberg at COP24 in Poland \u00a9 Greenpeace<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The world\u2019s youth have finally seen and heard enough from the deplorable political process, from compromised delegates, corrupted political appointees, and criminal corporations who sabotage these critical international discussions.<\/p>\n
The truth of our ecological crisis is not difficult to see. Fragile ecosystems are unraveling all around us. We have been warned by scientists for two centuries: by the 1972 \u201cLimits to Growth\u201d study, William Catton\u2019s 1980 book \u201cOvershoot,\u201d by reliable scientists, and by millions of ecology activists. We were warned by the 2009,\u00a0Nature<\/em>article, \u201cPlanetary Boundaries\u201d showing that humanity has breached seven critical tipping points; and by the 2012,\u00a0Nature<\/em>\u00a0article, \u201cApproaching a State Shift in Earth\u2019s Biosphere<\/a>,\u201d by 22 international scientists warning of an \u201cirreversible\u201d planetary-scale transition, \u201cunknown in human experience.\u201d<\/p>\n And yet, politicians and delegates travel around the world, stay in luxury hotels, and dither about our children\u2019s future, as carbon emissions rise, species blink from existence, rivers run dry, and ancient forests burn. It is no wonder, and a welcome sight, that the world\u2019s youth have seen enough and are not impressed.<\/p>\n COP 24 UN Climate Conference, Poland \u00a9 from wikicommons<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Thirty years of pep talks<\/strong><\/p>\n On 12, December 2018, at the COP 24 UN climate conference in Katowice, Poland, Swedish student Greta Thunberg finally said what the politicized delegates have failed to say. Thunberg is a direct descendant of Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius, who predicted global heating from carbon emissions in 1896.<\/p>\n During this year\u2019s heat wave and wildfires in Sweden, Thunberg gained world attention by staging a school strike outside the Swedish Riksdag, holding a sign that read, \u201cSkolstrejk f\u00f6r klimatet\u201d (school strike for climate). She demanded that the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions. Her actions inspired student strikes in over 270 cities around the world.<\/p>\n Speaking on behalf of Climate Justice Now, Thunberg chastised the delegates and member nations for failing to take action appropriate to the climate crisis: \u201cUntil you start focusing on what needs to be done rather than what is politically possible, there is no hope. We can\u2019t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. We need to keep the fossil fuels in the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n Thunberg pointed out that \u201cif solutions within the system are so impossible to find, maybe we should change the system itself,\u201d and she spoke directly to the errors and injustice of our economic system. \u201cOur biosphere is being sacrificed so that rich people in countries like mine can live in luxury. It is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of the few.\u201d<\/p>\n She exposed the errors of convenient but false solutions that have displaced the genuine solutions to climate change and ecological collapse. \u201cYou only speak of green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular,\u201d she said. \u201cYou only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had thirty years of pep-talking and selling positive ideas,\u201d she said in Stockholm prior to departing for Poland, \u201cAnd I\u2019m sorry, but it doesn\u2019t work. Because if it would have, the emissions would have gone down by now \u2014 they haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, outside the conference, 330 organizations from 129 countries presented six \u201cPeople\u2019s Demands for Climate Justice,\u201d beginning with \u201cKeep fossil fuels in the ground and end subsidies to fossil fuel industry\u201d.<\/p>\n The youth leaders urged nations to \u201creject false solutions\u201d \u2014 techno-fixes and offsetting schemes \u2014 in favour of \u201creal solutions that are just, feasible, and essential.\u201d \u00a0They particularly called out corporations and rich nations, who use the excuse of carbon sinks to seize indigenous land.<\/p>\n They called on the rich nations, whose historical carbon emissions have caused the climate crisis, to accept their fair share of climate reparation costs by honouring their Green Climate Fund obligations.<\/p>\n Finally, the coalition demanded that UN conferences end \u201ccorporate interference\u201d and sabotage of the climate talks. Extraction corporations \u201chave been getting massively wealthy,\u201d said Sriram Madhusoodanan from Corporate Accountability. \u201cThey\u2019re in these talks, blocking real solutions and advancing false solutions that will continue to propagate their business model.\u201d<\/p>\n Why Thunberg is correct<\/strong><\/p>\n Thunberg is correct about years, decades, of pep-talks and positive ideas that have failed to reduce carbon emissions. Scientists have known about the threat of global heating since Thunberg\u2019s ancestor, Arrhenius calculated the impact in the nineteenth century. The modern world has been meeting about the crisis for almost forty years, since the first World Climate Conference in Geneva in 1979. Since then, human carbon emissions have doubled from about 5 gigatonnes of carbon per year (GtC\/yr) to 2018\u2019s record-breaking 10.88 GtC\/yr. Meanwhile, CO2\u00a0<\/sub>concentration in the atmosphere has grown by 22%, from 337 parts per million (ppm) in 1979 to over 412 ppm today. These results represent an enormous failure on the part of world governments.<\/p>\n Laser Projection on the COP24 Venue in Poland \u00a9 Konrad Konstantynowicz \/ Greenpeace<\/p>\n<\/div>\n She is also correct about the unfulfilled promise of \u201cgreen growth,\u201d a notion made popular in 2012, at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, by the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, both dedicated to industrial growth.<\/p>\n However, recent studies show that \u201cgreen\u201d or \u201csustainable\u201d growth are delusions. In 2018, anthropologist Jason Hickel reviewed recent data and wrote in\u00a0Foreign Policy<\/a>that \u201cgreen growth .. is based more on wishful thinking than on evidence.\u201d A 2012 study by German resource economist Monika Dittrich and colleagues showed that even under optimum conditions, decoupling economic growth from resource use has not occurred. The United Nations Environment Programme came to similar conclusions in\u00a02016<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a02017<\/a>\u00a0studies. They predicted \u00a0that by 2050, with continued growth, resource use would double to 180 billion metric tons per year (Gt\/y). Ecological footprint data shows that a sustainable level of resource use is about 50 Gt\/y, a limit breached in 2000.<\/p>\n Studies have consistently and rigidly linked economic growth to energy. In a 2012paper<\/a>, \u201cNo way out? The double-bind in seeking global prosperity alongside mitigated climate change\u201d, T. J. Garrett, at the University of Utah, performed the calculations and determined that every single dollar (US dollar, 1990) of global economic growth in recent decades required approximately 9.7 milliwatts of energy. \u201cGlobal CO2<\/sub>\u00a0emission rates\u201d wrote Garrett, \u201ccannot be decoupled from wealth through efficiency gains.\u201d<\/p>\n Wealthy nations, such as the UK and US, have claimed to \u201cdecouple\u201d energy use from GDP, but only because they have exported energy-intensive industries and now import finished goods \u2014 cars, computers, trinkets \u2014 which represent massive embedded energy.<\/p>\n Based on recent data, Thunberg is entirely correct that \u201cgreen growth\u201d is a delusion.<\/p>\n Pull the Break<\/strong><\/p>\n Finally, Thunberg is correct that the only paths out of our predicament require that we \u201cchange the system itself.\u201d Global heating, biodiversity loss, environmental toxins, nutrient cycle disruption, and all other ecological challenges arise as symptoms of a single, larger biophysical reality. Humanity is in a state of ecological overshoot. There is no way to grow out of overshoot. All genuine solutions to overshoot require that the species contract, not grow. As Thunberg says, it is time to face these facts, to slow down, and to \u201cpull the emergency brake\u201d on economic growth.<\/p>\n NowWeHaveTo \u2013 Climate March in Helsinki \u00a9 Jonne Sippola \/ Greenpeace<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is the reality that the climate conference delegates are too scared to voice. Our status quo economic system \u2014 industrial capitalism \u2014 requires growth to survive. Without endless economic growth, the $250 trillion global debt to bankers and investors cannot be paid. As Thunberg says, \u201cOur biosphere is being sacrificed so that rich people .. can live in luxury.\u201d The biosphere is being sacrificed so bankers can receive their interest payments, to keep stock prices up, and to avoid facing reality.<\/p>\n The current system is biased for the rich to get richer, as multitudes suffer, as the ecosystem collapses, and as other species disappear. Economist Jeremy Grantham concurs in \u201cThe Race for our Lives<\/a>,\u201d when he states that \u201ccapitalism and mainstream economics simply cannot deal with these problems.\u201d \u00a0Corporate sabotage of the climate talks is not new. In the 1920s and 30s, Standard Oil, General Motors, and Firestone Tires acquired and\u00a0sabotaged public transportation<\/a>\u00a0throughout North America for the purpose of replacing efficient public transport with gas-guzzling cars. Today in Nigeria, Ecuador, Canada, in the Arctic, around the world, and at these UN conferences, oil companies are still sabotaging the public interest for profits.<\/p>\n It gives us some measure of hope that young leaders appear to be among the few who have the courage and insight to speak the truth. Greta Thunberg closed her short talk by announcing, \u201cWe have not come here to beg world leaders to care\u2026 We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n Her speech stands as one of the most hopeful moments for ecological realism in recent years.<\/p>\n References and Links<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Greta Thunberg\u2019s COP24 speech, 12, December 2018,\u00a0Lifegate<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cYoung Activists offer their climate demands at COP24,\u201d Kate Wheeling,\u00a0Pacific Standard<\/a>, 5 Dec. 2018.<\/p>\n Johan Rockstr\u00f6m, et. al., Planetary Boundaries, \u201cA safe operating space for humanity,\u201dNature<\/a>, 2009.<\/p>\n Anthony D. Barnosky, et. al., \u201cApproaching a state shift in Earth\u2019s biosphere,\u201d\u00a0Nature<\/a>, v. 486, June 7, 2012.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy Growth Can\u2019t Be Green,\u201d Jason Hickel, Sept. 12, 2018,\u00a0Foreign Policy<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cGreen economies around the World? Implications of resource use for development and the environment,\u201d Dittrich, M., Giljum, S., Lutter, S., Polzin, C. ifeu, Institut f\u00fcr Energie- und Umweltforschung, Heidelberg, 2012.<\/p>\n \u201cDecoupling energy use and economic growth: Counter evidence from structural effects and embodied energy in trade,\u201d Vincent Moreau,\u00a0Applied Energy<\/a>, 1 April 2018.<\/p>\n \u201cResource use expected to double by 2050,\u201d\u00a0UNEP<\/a>, United Nations Environment Programme, 2017. 2012 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 .. \u00a0\u00a070 billion metric tons \/ year<\/strong>, 2050 \u00a0.. 180 billion metric tons \/ year,\u00a0sustainable level of resource use<\/strong>\u00a0.. \u00a0~ 50 b metric tons \/ yr,\u00a0boundary breached<\/strong>\u00a0in 2000.<\/p>\n \u201cNo way out? The double-bind in seeking global prosperity alongside mitigated climate change,\u201d T. J. Garrett,\u00a0Earth Systems Dynamics<\/a>, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Utah, 2012.<\/p>\n \u201cGlobal Material Flows and Resource Productivity; Schandel, H., et al.;\u00a0UNEP\/IRP<\/a>(2016).<\/p>\n \u201cThe Race for our Lives,\u201d Jeremy Grantham,\u00a0GMO Quarterly<\/a>, 2013.<\/p>\n Earth Overshoot Day: \u201cHumans have depleted the Earth\u2019s natural resources with five months still to go in 2018\u201d, Michael Coren,\u00a0Global Footprint Network<\/a>, August 1, 2018. Global Footprint Data:\u00a0GFN data<\/a><\/p>\n![\"COP](\"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/planet4-international-stateless\/2019\/01\/9d3b73ed-president_rumen_radev_attends_the_un_climate_change_conference_in_katowice_poland_02.jpg\" "\\"COP")
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