doomed and we know it

horsemouth is out in the countryside. it is rainy and grey (now read on). 

john gray is kvetching on about net zero.

'we will look back at the net zero era and almost laugh'

now net zero itself doesn't matter. it simply means the point when humanity as a whole are no longer adding more CO2 (or more of other greenhouse gases) to the atmosphere and thus humanity is no longer contributing to the warming of the planet. this does not remove existing warming. and further, this does not mean that the planet will cease warming because the already existing warming will cause other effects likely to lead to warming - the unfreezing of the permafrost in siberia leading to vast releases of methane (a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2) etc.

global warming is not linear. it is an avalanche. a cascade of tipping points. 

humanity (capitalism) is capable of starting global warming and climate change off (yes) but may not be capable of stopping it moving once it is started. 

what matters is how you get to net zero. or rather how soon you get to net zero.

the important thing is to make drastic cuts in the release of greenhouse gases now. a strategy of getting to net zero at five minutes to midnight will, even if it succeeds, simply dump many more millions of tons of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere leading to far greater global warming. a straight line decline is simply not enough and we are far from even that.

otherwise we face the on the beach moment of being doomed and we know it.  

would it not be easier to accept that we are doomed and work with that? 

meanwhile horsemouth observes this from the trenches. the tories have handed out more north sea drilling licences and let private landlords off the requirement to insulate their homes (up to EPC C standard) in order to have a more honest public debate (allegedly) about what reaching net zero will require. 

further the bid for government money to decarbonise social housing has fallen over (even horsemouth (the eternal optimist) has pronounced it dead). the communal endeavour (and the other co-ops involved in their particular small consortium) will have to find all the money to do their decarbonisation (rather than half of it).  decarbonisation that (lest we forget) they are obligated by law to do. money was tight before and at the current high interest rates it will continue to be tight for a long time (or rather long enough to strangle these attempts to decarbonise).

horsemouth has not fully unpicked the john gray interview but he will endeavour to do so soon.

there was a similar one on the prevalence of numbers in current political debate - immigration has been the major hot topic in british politics for decades but this was despite the fact that there were no accurate statistics about it.  similarly with GDP. of course, it being the LRB, there is some self-congratulatory back-slapping about how smart they are (not so smart you couldn't lose the brexit vote eh fuckers?). 

gray (see above) sees hope for electoral reform allowing a wider range of opinions into parliament and potentially, through coalition, into government. but, of course, this does not mean that the crisis of representation that representative democracy is going through can be resolved by these means, it may be that it just intensifies. 

today. looking out the window at his mum feeding the chickens. probably not a lot can be done. the tasks outside mostly need a dry day. 

ok there's a chance of it being dry this afternoon and dry tomorrow.  soon the first 'ember' (september) will be done. soon enough we move to daylight saving time and after that halloween.