Three Things We (Still in 2020) Don’t Understand About Climate Emergency

Thinking about climate change is not something that comes naturally to humans — or ‘consumers’ as we have called ourselves for decades. It is not only emotionally unpleasant but mentally extremely challenging.

I argue that most of us do not grasp how immediate this situation has become, how fast it is progressing and what the scale of change needed is to reach the stabilization targets of the Paris Agreement.

After individuals, nations, and corporations understand the urgency and the rate, they should take immediate collective action to avoid catastrophic and irreversible climate impacts and the degradation of the biosphere, and thus civilization.

The recent burning of boreal forests exceeds fire regime limits of the past 10,000 years https://bit.ly/2IW7ajj Siberian fires of 5th July 2018 (NASA Earth Observatory) https://go.nasa.gov/2IVvv8J

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Human society is deeply and permanently coupled to the Earth system. In the geological epoch, we have entered called the Anthropocene, that system is undergoing immediate, massive disruption. The previous period of Holocene gave us agriculture and settled living arrangements.

Since the onset of industrial production at an accelerating rate and scale, human society has had a deep and far-ranging influence on natural processes which it depends on. Climate breakdown is only one of the manifestations — there are multiple…