Strong words from climate scientist Peter Kalmus (@ClimateHuman)...
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There is now no conceivable way we can stay under 1.5°C of mean global heating. We probably still had that chance a few years ago, but it has been squandered out of political cowardice, media distraction, apathy, a steady diet of false hope and false solutions, and above all a continued stream of disinformation and legalized bribes from the fossil fuel industry.

The more fossil fuel we burn, the hotter the planet will get. This is basic, incontrovertible, unassailable physics. It's a dead certainty. And the people currently in charge are still doing everything they can to expand fossil fuels.

Just this year, for example, President Biden approved the Willow Project in Alaska and forced a construction restart on the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Appalachia. These two "carbon bomb" projects, and many, many others occurring all around the world, ensure a hotter, less habitable, and far more dangerous planet.

As a scientist studying extreme heat, I dread the first time we get a heat wave that kills more than a million people over the course of a few days, something I now feel is inevitable. But — if we continue to burn fossil fuels, it won't stop there.

If we continue burning more fossil fuels, it will get hotter, until at some point heat waves kill 2 million people, and then 3 million, and then 10 million. And that's just extreme heat. Wildfires, floods, migration, food system collapse — it's all driven by increasing global heat, so it will all get worse as well. All at the same time.

I don't know how to be any clearer: This is why we must get off this path as soon as we can. And because the fossil fuel industry is the cause of the global heating that's driving all this, the only real way to make a change is to ramp down and then end the fossil fuel industry.

We will not solve things by direct air capture, nuclear fusion, or any other whiz-bang technology. We must accept that these are distractions. We must directly confront this system of deeply inequitable and deadly fossil-fueled capitalism, which has become a planet-sized runaway diesel engine.

We are in a war. It's a real war, not a figurative one, although it's not like any other war in human history. People are dying, all over the world, because of decisions made by fossil fuel executives. And I can confidently state that many more people will die from climate impacts in the coming years.

Fossil fuel executives knew their decisions would lead to loss of habitability and death, but they made them anyway, and then colluded to block mitigating action and increase their profits. These "scorched earth" tactics are now leading to the collapse of ocean currents, the death of coral reefs and tropical forests, including the Amazon.

If allowed to continue, they will lead to uninhabitable tropics, mass migration, and more frequent and severe catastrophes all over the world. Meanwhile, governments are bringing harsher charges against climate activists. In some places, they are even being murdered. Against this backdrop, climate civil disobedience is perhaps the least we can do.

Once enough of us start to fight, we will win. The only question is how long it will take to get to that point, and how much we will irreversibly lose before we do.
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FULL ESSAY -- https://www.newsweek.com/sadly-its-not-just-another-summer-we-must-end-fossil-fuel-industry-opinion-1832188

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #ClimateAction

A perfect (and perfectly scary) title from Jessica Wildfire (@jessicawildfire) —

"If a Cactus Can't Survive This, Neither Can You"
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You might’ve seen recent headlines about saguaro cacti keeling over in Arizona after spending nearly a month above 110° Fahrenheit (43°C).

Not even a week later, The Washington Post ran this absurd story: “Your body can build up tolerance to heat. Here’s how.”

I’m not linking to it. That’s how bad it is.

It’s not just getting a little hotter. It’s getting so hot that saguaro cacti are deflating in the desert. They evolved roughly 20,000 years ago. They’ve spent millennia adapting to a hot desert environment. They live up to 200 years in the hottest, driest environments on the planet. These cactuses are saying, “I can’t take it anymore,” and sagging over dead.

And we’re being told we can adapt.

I got curious about what temperature the human body can actually withstand, and it’s somewhere around 108°F (42°C). That’s when your proteins start to denature. A wet bulb temperature beyond 95°F (35°C) can kill a person in about six hours. No amount of heat tolerance can save anyone from that.

It strikes me as just a little ridiculous that out here in reality, parts of the world are becoming absolutely uninhabitable, and wellness writers are just now telling us to start building up our heat tolerance.

It feels like we’re being prepared and conditioned to start blaming heat deaths on someone’s “low heat tolerance,” as if it’s just another precondition that helps them rationalize indifference in the face of mass death.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://jessicawildfire.substack.com/p/if-a-cactus-cant-survive-this-neither

#Arizona #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency