Ist Suzuki richtig, dass es „zu spät“ ist? Wir sind in einer Zeit gleichzeitiger Siege und Verluste
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2025/07/11/opinion/suzuki-right-its-too-late-we-are-era-simultaneous-wins-losses
Ist Suzuki richtig, dass es „zu spät“ ist? Wir sind in einer Zeit gleichzeitiger Siege und Verluste
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2025/07/11/opinion/suzuki-right-its-too-late-we-are-era-simultaneous-wins-losses
6 Kommentare
It was too late decades ago when we decided that our existence revolves around cars. We were probably never going to get climate change under control. Feckless self destruction is humanity’s Great Filter.
We are for sure getting very bad impacts from warming, that’s already locked in, but on the other hand I’m quite optimistic about the scale and pace of the global clean energy transition (largely thanks to improvements in, and deployment of, solar + batteries)
It is absolutely too late to do anything to stop climate change. The best we can hope for is lessening the impact by focusing on water management, food sovereignty, and energy infrastructure. Build up your local community.
„I Want a Better Catastrophe“ is a great read.
>Yes, we need to be eyes wide open to the devastating extreme events now underway. But we also need to be alive to the hopeful trends: China looks to have peaked its GHG emissions, years ahead of schedule; Europe is driving down emissions much faster than Canada; in Norway, 97 per cent of new vehicle sales are now zero-emission; in the UK, emissions are now lower than at any time since the start of the industrial revolution in the late 1800’s; and around the world, the adoption of renewable energy is exploding. The point being, the struggle to tackle the climate emergency is a steep climb down, not a cliff.
Not to be a downer or anything, but it goes to show how far off we are from meaningful solutions that this is the paragraph of „good news“. I think it also belies a fundamental misunderstanding people have in terms of what progress on climate change actually means. Cutting emissions is all well and good, but it’s not actually *progress*: progress would mean negative emissions. If I’m on the operating table and I’m losing gallons of blood because my surgeon nicked an artery I’m not going to be fucking enthused if he tells me it’s progress that they’ve stopped the rate of increase of my blood loss. If I’m falling out of an airplane without a parachute hitting terminal velocity is not progress just because I’m not accelerating anymore.
Yes, I know, you’re going to say „but you have to reduce emissions before you get to neutral or negative emissions.“ Yes, I suppose. But we’re so far away from that (let alone the very immense problems in ever actually realizing it) that treating a decrease in the rate emissions are increasing as a win feels just so immensely hollow.
The political will isn’t there because the average person doesn’t care enough yet to change their lifestyle.
Put a sweater on in January? Nope.
Fresh fruit from the farthest corners of the world? Yes please!
Tropical vacations from across Canada by millions of people every winter? Wouldn’t miss it!
Ozone depletion? Get rid of CFCs, easy, no lifestyle changes
Acid rain? Remove sulfur from fuel, relatively easy, no lifestyle changes
Reduce CO2? Massive, globally expensive changes with massive lifestyle changes
It’s already set to happen and it’s not going to stop
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The goal isn’t to completely stop climate change. Climate Change is already here, and even under the most realistic optimistic scenario we are due for 2ish degrees above pre-industrial times. It already is bad, and it is already going to much worse. However you know what’s worse than 2 degrees of warming? 3 degrees! Or 4 degrees, or 5-6 like we were heading for maybe just 10-15 years ago.
Every last bit of carbon emitted makes the problem worse. So every policy win or choice made makes the incoming problem less bad.