In terms of media reaction, the usual suspects say the usual things.
Big Think and
Rolling Stone go straight down the middle, admit the sitrep is dire, express doubts that we’ll doing anything about it even now.
David Suzuki— well, zero points for guessing where David Suzuki comes down. The Tech folks are talking about
geoengineering again.
The Guardiantalks about food. Over at
Medium, Daniel Estrada tries really hard to put a good spin on it, to work within the timeline of the IPCC Report and the US Election cycle to explore ways in which we might achieve the merely-disastrous Best Case— and then, halfway through, admits that he doesn’t really think any of it will happen, that this is merely a hopeful thought experiment, and in his heart of hearts he thinks we’re all well and truly fucked.
The dotted line is where we are now. Nowhere to go but up.
Over at the National Post— Canada’s answer to Fox News— some idiot named Kelly McParland
blames the activists for everything, because they hectored and warned and complained for so long that who could blame the rest of us for tuning out? But perhaps the most telling reaction from the right wing comes courtesy of petro-shill Anthony Watts, who— unable to deal with the actual science— simply ran a cartoon showing IPCC authors whining for more money, alongside a guest editorial suggesting that even if it is all true, it would be way cheaper to just give everyone air conditioners.
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Of course, none of these folks wield any actual power. What they think doesn’t matter. What about the people who actually call the shots? How have the World’s Leaders responded to this latest 10-alarm fire, to this 12-year deadline?
Brazil is two days away from electing a far-right reactionary who has promised to quit the Paris Accords once elected.
Germany— a world leader in environmental issues, not so long ago— reacted to the report with a profound “Meh”.
Australia‘s Energy Minister dismissed it as a distraction from the more-important goal of lowering energy prices for Australians. Back in August
France‘s Environment Minister resigned in disgust over his own government’s inaction on climate change; that was before the report’s release, but has Macron had a come-to-Jesus moment in the meantime? Here in Canada, provincial premiers are
taking the Feds to court over a measly carbon tax; the government itself permitted an “
emergency session” right after the report came out, a parliamentary debate which— as far as I’ve been able to tell— accomplished exactly
fuck-all beyond one side of the aisle yelling
Think of the Children! while the other yelled
Think of The Economy!
And these are the
progressive jurisdictions. I probably don’t have to tell you about Donald Trump’s hilarious “
Instinct for Science“, which apparently allows him to dismiss the IPCC’s findings as biased even as he makes clear that he
doesn’t actually know what the IPCC is.
And what about the world’s
real leaders, the 0.01% who actually hand out marching orders to these presidents and premiers and prime ministers? Turns out they’re
retaining consultants to advise them on how to prevent their personal security forces from killing them, once civilization has collapsed and their money’s no good any more. It seems to be a lot more than mere thought experiment to these people: global societal collapse seems to be their default scenario. They call it “The Event.”
Why, it’s almost as though they knew what was coming before the IPCC even tendered their report.
