Hurricane Harvey, as seen from the International Space Station on August 19, 2017. (Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)
In a December 2011 article, Noam Chomsky noted that in addition to those preaching skepticism of climate change, there exists another group of climate commentators whose input is ignored by the mainstream media: those who insist that the dangers of climate change go far beyond what we are told is the scientific consensus.
This latter group has grown increasingly vocal, especially outside the US, but it is still not being paid enough heed.
In a recent Vice article, Nafeez Ahmed broke the story of Schroders, a British investment firm with US $542 billion under management, privately advising its clients that global temperatures could reach 7.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century. Of course, as is well known, the safe limit for warming is generally considered to be 2 degrees Celsius.
As Ahmed puts it, a temperature increase of 7.8 degrees “would make Earth basically uninhabitable for humans.”
Schroders is not alone in this outlook. A lengthy treatment of the idea was published by New York Magazine in July of this year, beginning with arresting words that may well one day mark out a distinct moment in time: “It is, I promise, worse than you think.” The author, David Wallace-Wells, goes on to offer some 8,000 words that give the reader every opportunity to trust that promise, weaving a narrative around 4 degrees warming, 6 degrees warming, millions dead and humanity fundamentally devastated.
Notwithstanding all of this, we seem to have become entrenched in a public understanding of climate change based on 2 degrees as a “magic” number, as if the only two possible end-game scenarios for this century are 2 degrees of warming or the happy aversion of mass tragedy.
As the Schroders report makes appallingly clear, however, the reality of the planet’s struggle against us is far more fluid and uncertain than the 2 degrees…