for - quote - lack of seriousness on addressing existential threat of climate change - Kevin Anderson - Dec 2024

for - quote - climate crisis - In 2024, temperatures soared above 1.5 Deg C. Have we breached the threshold? Yes and No - Kevin Anderson

quote - climate crisis - In 2024, temperatures soared above 1.5 Deg C. Have we breached the threshold? Yes and No - Kevin Anderson - (see below) - We hit it for one year and that doesn't tell us we've hit it or we haven't hit it - We we typically want to see a longer running average so we typically use n 11-year running average - so a single year doesn't tell us we've hit it or we haven't hit it - But it may well be that we're already in that long run average - We might be already one of those years that means we're not going to drop below 1.5

for - quote - IPCC - climate models - are deeply colonial - Kevin Anderson

• for: quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - elite positive feedback carbon inequality loop, climate crisis - societal aspirations, elites - societal aspirations, societal aspirations, key insight - societal aspirations

• quote

  • This 1% of humanity uses its awesome power to manipulate
    • societal aspirations and
    • the narratives around climate change.
  • These extend from
    • well-funded advertising to
    • pseudo-technical solutions,
    • and financialisation of carbon emissions (and increasingly, nature) to
    • labelling extreme any meaningful narrative that questions inequality and power.

• comment

• key insight - societal aspirations
  • it is the societal aspiration of the logic of capitalism and the free market that continues to create the next generation of the 1%
  • How can the luxury industry NOT BE high carbon intensity? It's an oxymoron. High carbon is baked into the definition of luxury, and it is luxury goods and services which accelerate climate breakdown.
  • The elites have a strong feeling of entitlement. They feel they DESERVE to reward themselves with a luxury lifestyle. That aspiration and reward structure multiplied by 80 million (1% of 8 billion) is a major variable driving the climate crisis

• for: quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - 1% manipulation

• quote

  • This 1% of humanity uses its awesome power to manipulate
    • societal aspirations and
    • the narratives around climate change.
  • These extend from
    • well-funded advertising to
    • pseudo-technical solutions,
    • the financialisation of carbon emissions (and increasingly, nature) to
    • labelling extreme any meaningful narrative that questions inequality and power.

• for: quote, quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - Kevin Anderson - Marshall plan, discussion - Johan Rockstrom / Kevin Anderson, perspectival knowing

• quote

  • Our choice to fail over the last 30 years has brought us to this position.
  • And a way out of that, a way out of the Marshall Plan, is to say we can have these negative emissions
  • I think we need to say that, okay that's one way out of it – if they work.
  • Another way out of it is the Marshall Plan.
  • And so we need to open that that dialogue up. but we've... in effect, I think the IAMs have closed that dialogue,.
  • Which is one of the reasons, going back to... It would be interesting to see other parts of the world looking at this, because, I would have a guess,
    • when we say 'that's not feasible', many people elsewhere in the world are saying 'well of course it's feasible, we've been doing... we've been living like that for years!'

• comment

  • In rebuttal to Johan's perspective on Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs),
    • Kevin is addressing the issue of perspectival knowing, and
    • its implications on what solutions we entertain as a global society.
  • The example he cites is Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) illustrates two major perspectives:
    • Johan includes NETs as he see's that without them, the transition goes from manageable to unmanageable
    • Kevin questions the inclusion of the NETs as potentially shutting down discussion about what Johan would consider an unmanageable situation
  • Kevin brings up a valid point for inclusion of other voices, especially those indigenous ones who are still institutionally marginalized not only in economic and cultural spaces, but also academic and intellectual ones.
  • The decolonization of academia takes on a concrete form here. Both the global and local south have lived under severe economic repression for centuries. Anderson's contention is that making do with less is something that billions of people have had to contend with for centuries as a social norm forced upon them by colonialist then post colonialist institutions.
  • Inclusivity of a greater diversity of voices does play an important role in shaping the future direction of humanity.
  • We should be having an open discussion about a Marshall plan and should not be afraid to go there.
    • We had it in WWII, which, while more direct threat, is not as great as the threat of climate change on all life on earth in a slightly greater time scale.
  • The global and local south has a lot to teach the global and local north. For this great transition of humanity to occur likely simultaneously requires
    • radical amounts of resource transfer from the global / local north to the global / local south,and
    • radical degrowth

• for: quote, quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - silence - activism for the status quo, Stop Oil

• quote

  • There is a risk that we end up being activists for the status quo by being silent

• comment

  • I would agree with Kevin. Silence is making a statement, it's not neutral
  • the "activists" are doing the dirty work of critiquing the top down actors

• for: quote, quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - academic support for bottom-up actors, bottom-up actors - academic support

• quote

  • We have been happy to engage with CEOs, with the senior policy makers, with the 'Davos set'.
  • We've been happy to engage with them – across, generally, the sort of more senior climate change academics. But they haven't delivered for 30 years.
  • But what we haven't... Who we very seldom engage with – the balance, to me, is wrong – with citizenry groups.
  • We haven't engaged... with the climate parliament group. Our support has been biased towards a group who are very much in favor of the status quo.

• comment

• Kevin is tuning into a potential idling capacity and leverage point that academic community has by-and-large missed.
  • Academic support of bottom-up and citizen groups could yield the kind of top-down and bottom-up partnership that could really accelerate climate policy action

• for: quote, quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - bottom-up and top-down partnership, IPCC AR6 WGIII demand side reduction and bottom-up actions
• quote
  • I hope that there will be some sort of partnership between bottom-up and top-down that will provide guidance to leaders to put the right things in place.
• author: Kevin Anderson

• date: Sept., 2023

• comment

  • The last IPCC report, AR6, WGIII described the important role that bottom-up, societal actors can play
    • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Freport.ipcc.ch%2Far6wg3%2Fpdf%2FIPCC_AR6_WGIII_FinalDraft_Chapter05.pdf&group=world