“It’s easy to think that as a result of the extinction of the dodo, we are now sadder and wiser, but there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that we are merely sadder and better informed.” – Douglas Adams

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

This week has seen the latest round of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP27, this year in Egypt. Rather than being a celebration of the 27th anniversary of the success of COP1 in 1995 and the averting of the climate emergency, we shall instead see a round of talks similar to COP26 in Glasgow concluding in some promises that shuffle us closer to oblivion just a little slower than we would have otherwise.

COP21 in Paris in 2015 showed us what we need to do if we want to live in a world remotely resembling the one we’ve come to know. Global warming cannot now be averted entirely, we are decades too late for that and the impacts of our actions today will take decades more to play out in full, but we can limit the damage. Limiting global average temperature rise to less than 1.5C above our preindustrial average will mean that the damage is likely to not be too great and to be significantly easier to adapt to than otherwise. Paris also said that the absolute limit of +2.0C must not be breached else we shall face a world that is so different from today that it is unlikely that we will be able to adapt in full. Anything beyond +2.0C massively increases the risks of the world spiralling into uncontrollable feedback loops that are simply unprecedented in terms of anything we know about the history of this planet. The only events that have looked similar – massive volcanic events or asteroid impacts – have created layers of fossils of now extinct ecosystems for future palaeontologists to call “interesting”.

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