You can listen to this here (NB Terrible Sound Quality – if/when I do actual podcasting I will have to get some proper kit!)
May 28, 2025, with the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide at 430ppm, up from 315ppm in 1958.
Three pieces of news today tell you everything you need to know about the planet and the prospects for our species. Taking them in turn – physical, government-capital and “resistance”.
The physical news first.
As Madeline Cuff, writing for the New Scientist reports
The world could see its first year of warming above 2°C by the end of the decade, leading climate scientists have warned for the first time…. The chances of seeing a year above 2°C of warming are still very slim, with the WMO/Met Office team estimating the probability at 1 per cent.
She quotes Leon Hermanson of the Met Office as saying “It’s exceptionally unlikely, but it could happen”
It was the WMO – the World Meteorological Organisation that coordinated the use of satellites and other forms of data collection. In the mid1970s it was a key node in international cooperation and discussion of carbon dioxide build-up. The WMO hosted the First World Climate Conference in February 1979. It could and should have been a turning point in the way politicians thought about atmospheric pollution. Almost ten years later it was – along with the United Nations Environment Program – co-founder of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
One of life’s mild coincidences is that 35 years ago today Working Group 1 of the IPCC released its first report on the science of climate change.
The government capital nexus
To the surprise of precisely no-one, in Australia, the Federal Labor government led by Anthony Albanese has said yes to climate chaos, by granting an extension to Woodside’s North West Shelf project. As per the Australia Institute, this is a disaster on five fronts.
The ALP was recently returned to office in Australia, with the overt climate denialists of the Coalition punished by voters. However, given decisions like these, one cannot but be reminded of the mournful closing lines of George Orwell’s Animal Farm – so spoilers –
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Resistance
Thirteen years ago the UK commentator George Monbiot asked the right question. In an article called “The Mendacity of Hope” he wrote
“So this is the great question of our age: where is everyone? The monster social movements of the 19th century and first 80 years of the 20th have gone, and nothing has replaced them. Those of us who still contest unwarranted power find our footsteps echoing through cavernous halls once thronged by multitudes“
In late 2018 a new group – “Extinction Rebellion” – made a splash with a declaration of rebellion in Parliament Square in London and then the occupation of five bridges across the Thames. A “rebellion “in London in April 2019 gained a lot of press attention, but a follow-up in October 2019 was less successful and the wheels were wobbling, if not yet actually coming off. 2020 saw COVID and also offshoots from XR – a “Pink Party”, Insulate Britain and then, in 2022, “Just Stop Oil.” High profile arrestable actions followed, as did media smears and police and security service activity. Many JSO activists have gone to jail. JSO has recently announced it is ceasing its activity. However, the past is not even the past.
As the BBC’s Laura O’Neill reports
“Four Just Stop Oil protesters who were planning to glue themselves to the taxiway at Manchester Airport have been jailed.
Officers arrested Indigo Rumbelow, Margaret Reid, Leanorah Ward and Daniel Knorr as they were making their way to the airport on 4 August 2024.
They were equipped with heavy-duty bolt-cutters, angle grinders, glue, sand, Just Stop Oil high-visibility vests and a leaflet containing instructions to follow when interacting with police.
All four were found guilty of conspiracy to intentionally cause a public nuisance and jailed at Manchester Minshull Crown Court for between 18 and 30 months. Additionally, they were each fined £2,000.
“
So what can we expect?
We can expect more temperature records to fall. It would be no surprise to me at all to see us breach two degrees by 2030, though I suspect that won’t actually happen until, say 2035. What does this mean? It means that the second half of the twenty-first century will make the first half of the twentieth look like a golden age of peace, love and understanding.
We can expect more extractive capitalism projects to be given approval by supine/captured governments (though one should resist the illusions of a golden age -elected and unelected policymakers are almost always and everywhere mere meat puppets for whoever has the most money. It can be more complicated than that, but it usually isn’t.)
And given that the consequences of our species’ failure to act on scientists’ warnings are clear to all but those most determined to deny reality, we can expect more resistance.
The failure, over the last thirty five years of citizens in the West – with freedom of speech, assembly and information – to build strong, determined and resilient social movements and civil society organisations is a fascinating puzzle. Or perhaps a mundane puzzle, made fascinating by the consequences of the failure.
In any case, despite the jailings, expect more resistance at some point – which is not to say that that resistance will be any more effective than what has gone on these last thirty six years, as annual carbon dioxide emissions went up by almost 70 per cent and the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide rose from roughly 350 parts per million to the current level of 430ppm.