Attempts to slow climate change with aggressive political policies are virtuous but pointless, writes Peter Hody in an essay for finews.first. Meanwhile, finance is farming an opportunity – as usual.
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Greta Thunberg slept in a tent in subzero Davos, schoolchildren skipped school to take to the streets in demonstration. A wave of indignation washed over politicians for standing by idly instead of crafting effective policies for fighting climate change.
The outrage is understandable considering the high-minded chatter coming out of major confabs like Davos' World Economic Forum or a recent United Nations conference in Katowice, Poland. And yet the disgust is misguided.
Instead, the displeasure should be aimed at the fact that politicians of the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, European Union, or Swiss government truly believe they can influence climate change through politics.
«The climate goals are a manifestation of hubris as well as mankind's desire for omnipotence»
The «historic agreement» reached in Paris three years ago to lower global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, and to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees by 2050 is a combination of scientific elements, physical model equations, and an unrealistic expectation from the start to reduce carbon dioxide, or CO2, emissions by 80 or 95 percent compared to 1990.
The climate goals are a manifestation of hubris as well as mankind's desire for omnipotence: as if the temperature of our planet would be controlled as easily as regulating your home thermostat.
The goal and the ability to postulate control over the earth's atmosphere is hypocritical because the climate killjoy CO2 continues to rise. The true will of politicians and the business elite to reach climate goals is laid bare by their inability to introduce specific measures to fight global warming.
The actual goal was not to agree on global measures based on established scientific basics. Rather, the IPCC's goal wants to reinvent a mostly failed climate and emissions policy which has been splintered by individual interests into something which sells well publicly. Environmental protection, a relatively tangible term, has been rebranded into the more opaque one of climate change.
«The financial industry has taken to climate change awareness like a duck to water»
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