Collaboration or Incineration. Those are the options.

 

Excuses for climate inaction:

• Our emissions are negligible compared to China's!

• China: Our per capita emissions are low compared to yours. And besides that, most of what we produce is not even consumed by us.

• It would be completely irresponsible to cut everyone off of fossil fuels before affordable alternatives are on line. We have reduction targets for 2050.

• It is the consumers fault. Consumers are not choosing green alternatives.

• Producers are using too many carbon-intensive production processes, and shipping raw materials across the planet to take advantage of cheap labour and lax environmental laws, only to ship them all the way back again in the form of cheap consumer goods. .

• Developed countries have been spewing carbon for centuries! That stuff is still up there! Now they just want to keep the rest of us from developing so they can use all the resources themselves.

• If they want poor countries to reduce emissions, rich countries should provide poor countries with clean technology for free. Not only that. Poor countries should be allowed to sue rich countries for damages resulting from climate change, because it was demand and over-consumption in rich countries by rich consumers that is causing the problem.

• There is no point in stranding assets, loosing jobs and access to cheap fossil fuels unless other countries do the same. We should not put ourselves at an economic disadvantage until we have iron-clad guarantees that other countries are also going to reduce emissions.

No amount of windmills, solar panels, electric cars, LED light bulbs are going to stop climate change. Stopping and reversing climate change will require an unprecedented level of global cooperation that, if access to COVID vaccines is any indication, is never going to happen. So far I haven't seen any government, or even opposition party for that matter, propose a way to increase global cooperation in a grossly unequal and unjust world. National targets are useless without a serious plan to induce those who cannot afford to collaborate to change their minds. Naomi Klein was right: This changes everything. Because unless everything changes, nothing will change.