Jonathan Franzen is right that we are very unlikely to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius. He’s badly wrong about what that means. EricLevitz writes
Residents of the Bahamas boarding a cargo ship for evacuation after Hurricane Dorian. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Nine months ago, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd at The Riverside Church in Manhattan, “the world is going to end in 12 years if we do not address climate change.” In some respects, the congresswoman’s statement was excessively optimistic.
So, instead, climate activists say things like, “We have 12 years to save the planet.” And heads of state solemnly swear to “solve” climate change by keeping warming below 2 degrees. We tell ourselves stories in order to do politics. “The whole idea that everything’s going to work out isn’t really helpful, because it isn’t going to work out,” said Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Climate change is going to worsen to a point where millions of lives, homes, and species are put at risk, she said.
Five years later, the path to 2 degrees requires assumptions even more heroic. So, Franzen is probably right that we aren’t going to keep warming below that threshold. He’s just badly wrong about what that means. Preparing for fires and floods and refugees is a directly pertinent example. But the impending catastrophe heightens the urgency of almost any world-improving action. In times of increasing chaos, people seek protection in tribalism and armed force, rather than in the rule of law, and our best defense against this kind of dystopia is to maintain functioning democracies, functioning legal systems, functioning communities.
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