The COP26 Summit, like other climate initiatives will be remembered as yet another paving stone laid on the path of collective good intentions by the nations of the world (excluding Russia and China…).

“GLASGOW, Scotland — Climate activist Greta Thunbergsaid Friday that the COP26 climate summit is a failure, lambasting the U.N.-brokered talks for turning into a public relations exercise.

“It is not a secret that COP26 is a failure. It should be obvious that we cannot solve the crisis with the same methods that got us into it in the first place,” Thunberg said.

“The COP has turned into a PR event, where leaders are giving beautiful speeches and announcing fancy commitments and targets, while behind the curtains governments of the Global North countries are still refusing to take any drastic climate action.”

Well, there looks to be a little substance behind all of the green washing:

“Here’s a reminder of what has been happening today at COP26 – where there has been a focus on energy.

  • More than 40 countries agreed a pledge to shift away from coal but some of the world’s major coal burners, including the US and China, did not sign up
  • Critics said that because of that, the announcement fell short of what is needed
  • However the US, Canada and the UK were among the signatories to a joint statement on ending international public financing for fossil fuels
  • COP26 president Alok Sharma said coal was “no longer king” but admitted more needed to be done
  • The influential International Energy Agency said that promises made at the conference would keep the world to a 1.8C degree rise in temperatures
  • However that would depend on all promises being kept and delivered – which experts say is far from certain”

Glad to see all those promises being rolled out.  I think that a lukewarm response is justified as such promises, once they hit the reality of country’s national politics and ‘interests’ will be quickly ignored and the business will return to usual.

 

I think many, including myself, are now entertaining their own Dr.Strangelove moment.  Presently, renamed to How I Stopped Worrying and Love the Climate-Change.

The forthcoming changes to our way of lives will simply happen.

We will have arable farmland until after the nth season of drought, thenwe will not.

We will have polar vortex events consistently through Canada’s winter at a great pace.

We will have affordable energy and energy infrastructure, until well, we don’t.

 

Various climate switches are being, and have been thrown, across the world.  For instance in the US the involuntary test and stress of its resiliency is already happening –

“Trevor Riggen, the head of the American Red Cross’s domestic disaster program, said the agency is “testing the limits” of its network. This week alone, more than 2,000 staff and volunteers have deployed across 10 states. Many of them are on their second or third crisis of the summer.

“It’s no longer, ‘We have a big event and then there’s time to recover,’” Riggen said. “Disaster has become a chronic condition.”

But the extent of damage wrought by climate change will be determined by how the nation plans for it, and how the communities rebuild.

Almost half of public roadways are currently in poor or mediocre condition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers — making events like the deadly collapse of a Mississippi highway during Hurricane Ida more likely. The location and condition of some 10,000 miles of levees in the United States are unknown. Chronically underfunded storm water systems are unable to cope with record rainfall. Many electric utilities have not taken steps to ensure the grid keeps functioning amid worsening hurricanes and wildfires.

Communities need to start preparing for the unprecedented, Fugate said. Coastal cities should develop alternative evacuation plans to avoid getting caught off-guard by rapidly intensifying storms — for example, building comfortable, well-equipped shelters for people who don’t have time to flee. Levees and storm-water systems must be built to withstand floods that would have been impossible in a cooler world. Amid unstoppable wildfires, homes at the edge of forests can be made safer with flameproof building materials.

Social systems are also in need of repair, said Arcaya. During heat waves, early warning systems and check-ins from neighbors have been proved to save hundreds of lives. After hurricanes, research shows, people with strong connections to their neighbors experience less trauma and are better able to get back on their feet.

The country will need a robust support system to help thousands of displaced people navigate the bureaucracy required to obtain federal assistance, Arcaya said. And since disasters often destroy affordable housing, the nation will need to invest in building more places for people to live.

These changes will be expensive, Fugate acknowledged. But the cost of responding to disasters already totals more than $81 billion per year. “It’s a choice between spending now or spending more in the future.”

   I’m not going to go out on a limb here and state that we are going to choose to spend now aaaand spend more in the future as we try to correct the fuck ups of the present day.

   The saving grace of the entire situation is that when the truly calamitous events start, I most likely will be dead.   Strangely reassuring I suppose, but honestly, I think it’s the only way the exploitation driven economic system we have ends.  When it starts fucking over the ‘important’ people – then and only then – will we move as a collective to ‘save the earth’.  Vastly too little too late, but at least the effort will be genuine then.