1.5 Is Jive

I am of the minority opinion that the hype around 1.5° C was and is a type of greenwash. There never was any hope of holding the average global temperature increase to 1.5° C, as Kevin Anderson pointed out almost a decade ago. The plan was always to let it slide to 2 at least. But 1.5 had good propaganda value, as long as governments and corporations could claim to be working towards it, even though it was actually impossible.

People are simply not going to accept reductions in their standard of living, except possibly at gunpoint. Politicians who try to persuade people to reduce their standard of living get voted out of office fast, and that places a severe limit on how rapidly the world’s economies can decarbonize.

The whole program is so transparently lethal that it’s almost laughable, like a B dystopian sci-fi film. Since the default plan amounts to collective suicide, maybe I should start counting the entire human population as Church of Euthanasia members. That would certainly improve our numbers!