What Lies Ahead

I watched a little bit of the COP26 speech presentations and I must say, I am NOT the least bit impressed. China didn’t even bother showing up and neither did Russia – the two largest nations on the planet. Most countries, including the United States are pretending that they can make “cuts” by 2030 to one degree or another, but I already know this is far too little, far too late. Millions of us will be long dead by then from exactly what they’re claiming they can prevent – dangerous planetary heating.

They’re all lying of course. They ALL lie about this topic, even the scientists. When it comes to climate, bring your rubber boots and your bullshit shovels, because the bullshit is going to be mighty deep.

Many numbers are swirling around the climate negotiations at the UN climate summit in Glasgow, COP26. These include global warming targets of 1.5°C and 2.0°C, recent warming of 1.1°C, remaining CO₂ budget of 400 billion tonnes, or current atmospheric CO₂ of 415 parts per million.

Humans Have Compressed Millions of Years of Natural Change Into Mere Centuries

What do you call a “target” that is already in the rear-view mirror? Lost “opportunity”? This isn’t a shooting range where you can get a “do-over” if you miss the bullseye. You don’t get to reload or adjust your sights or pretend that this isn’t deadly serious, because it is. But when leaders and scientists all keep pretending that there are “targets” still ahead, or “budgets” to still allow emissions – you know you’re being fed a load of utter bullshit.

Did you know that NOBODY has demonstrated that a carbon “budget” even exists except as a foolish paper exercise? It’s a complete scam, often used to lull the world into thinking that there is still “room” for our destructive civilization to go on polluting and poisoning the world while making enormous profits for the planet-wasters wreaking our only home. These people, these “leaders” are not serious about saving the future – you only have to look at what they DO to fully understand that fact.

Words are cheap, empty, meaningless and easily swapped around whenever convenient (or profitable). So look beyond all the mere words and empty promises. Look at all the delayed actions and constant growth. Look at the escalating resource destruction and endless waste streams of pollution being created. None of their words mean a damned thing (and never have).

Some words are useful, such as the words that described what the Earth was actually like back in 1992 when world leaders thought they could easily handle climate change. Fast-forward 30 years and listen to the SAME words being used by the same government and institutions and realize that they are STILL LYING while the world is significantly worse off now.

COP26 – that alone should tell anyone everything that they need to know about global leadership and the staggering failure of countless nations to reign in their emissions. Hasn’t happened yet – because it will never happen. Not as long as this civilization continues to exist. There will be no “net zero”, “carbon free” or “zero carbon” economy, ever. There never was any such thing as a “carbon budget” either. We know that humans have been changing the chemistry of the atmosphere for thousands of years, but things got REALLY bad with the discovery of oil and the explosion of global populations and industry that followed.

Humanity is now completely and hopelessly addicted to the black death that powers every aspect of our civilization, including all of the “renewable” energy sources. There’s no getting around this dilemma. If we hope to maintain a developed civilization – it’s going to require fossil fuels, and that the end of the story. So when world leaders mouth platitudes and pretend that their countries will be “carbon free” at some always future date, they’re lying to us all. This civilization as we know it today will never, ever be carbon free, or net zero. It will always be a heat engine producing a enormous waste stream of pollutants toxic to the environment and health of all living beings on Earth.

This is the Faustian bargain we brought upon ourselves. Poison the world while enriching our material lives with many humans becoming exceedingly rich in the process. Nobody bothered to check back then what this might actually do to Earth’s habitability, the very notion that we would run out of oil or poison the atmosphere or even dangerously heat up the planet beyond survivability never crossed their minds – at first. But within a few years there were some scientists and researchers who warned us exactly about these very things. They were ignored.

And now that day has arrived. The resources to power our civilization are becoming increasingly difficult to find and very expensive to produce. The Earth’s atmospheric envelope is thoroughly saturated and poisoned with the emissions we created to power civilization. The oceans are now turning acidic, the ice is disappearing globally, the temperature is rising fast and the desperation of politicians and activist is becoming more and more apparent. But so is the endless bullshit we’re being fed – they’re still lying to us about when, how and where humanity is finally going to stop making things worse and worse.

So far, we haven’t seen it and likely, never will. Everything is sacred and must be “saved” when it comes to civilization, but the Earth itself is not. It’s been sacrificed bit by bit, bite by bite until entire chunks of the planet have been completely devoured. Being our only home, likely forever, for as long as our species will survive, the Earth should have come first. But the world turned against environmentalists and conservationists and a sustainable way of life and pointed to all the profits and plunder and “opportunities” that could be taken if the Earth was forced into giving up her wealth, and that’s exactly what happened. Humans raped and pillaged and plundered and destroyed and razed and poisoned everything that they touched across the entire surface of the planet, never stopping, never resting to this very day.

So now we have to face the reality. Global leaders attending endless global meetings, decade after decade, trying to find a way forward, but all they offer is mere words. Empty words, empty promises, none that address root causes and the root responsibility for the global crisis that affects us all. Our civilization is to blame, what we built, designed and erected, a energy-hungry voracious monster with an insatiable appetite for the Earth’s resources, generating a gigantic waste stream of greenhouse gasses, toxic poisons and dangerous emissions. Our waste heaps rival the world’s largest mountains now with no end in sight. The oceans are being stripped bare of life and even the very atmosphere is polluted with nano-plastic particles. Humanity and our domestic livestock has dominated the entire world leaving less then 4% of the wild biomass left. Amazingly, we still have plans to devour the rest.

The priorities of humanity could not be more clearer then they are today. To save ourselves (if we can) we must save what’s left, and protect Earth’s habitability at any and all costs, including the sacrifice of our energy-intensive civilization. We have no other choice, we never did once we embarked on this dangerous dead-end. We’ve discovered the cul-de-sac that we were always destined to find on a finite planet – will we turn around and head back the way we came? Or will we go on ignoring what will surely extinguish us all?

I believe we will go right on ignoring what matters and then belatedly, far, far too late, make a desperate attempt to save ourselves. I don’t believe this will work, I believe we will fail, miserably and go extinct. The reason why I believe this is what lays ahead is because we’ve had ample opportunity to change our course but refused to do so. We’re still refusing to do so, decades and thousands of warnings later.

This means every young person, every generation alive today should be prepared for the very worst to come. Resource wars, conflict, massive shortages, endless suffering and death. Our leaders lack the vision, comprehension, fortitude and courage to tell the truth or to change course, irrevocably committing us all to absolute disaster (extinction). That’s the long and short of it and there is nothing I or you can do about it.