{"id":74285,"date":"2021-11-15T15:56:57","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T21:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=74285"},"modified":"2021-11-15T15:56:57","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T21:56:57","slug":"74285","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=74285","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

BLUF:
\nClimate change is real, but adapting to it, mitigating it with technology is the most realistic solution. Will China and India just give up on coal, gas and oil overnight? No, and neither will the United States. But emissions already are falling in Western countries, the world is innovating.<\/em><\/p>\n

We predict things are going to get better. Ten years. Twenty years, tops. Maybe 30.<\/em><\/p>\n

50 years of predictions that the climate apocalypse is nigh<\/a>.
\nThe “end of the world” has been just around the corner for years.<\/em><\/p>\n

Apocalypse . . .\u00a0now<\/em>?<\/p>\n

For the past two weeks in Glasgow, Scotland, world leaders have gathered at COP 26, the\u00a0United Nations Climate Change Conference<\/a>, to listen to the same message: Disaster is just around the corner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world has to step up, and it has to step up now,\u201d former\u00a0President Barack Obama said<\/a>. \u201cWhen it comes to climate, time really is running out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professional yeller Greta Thunberg demanded the\u00a0United Nations<\/a>\u00a0declare a \u201csystemwide climate emergency,\u201d and force countries to take action.<\/p>\n

Press accounts were similarly Chicken Little-esque. If developed nations don\u2019t phase out oil and gas and give $100 billion in \u201cclimate financing,\u201d Paul Behrens, professor in environmental change, told Politico that \u201cthe only fact about the future I can declare with certainty is that the world as we know it is coming to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n

If it all sounds slightly familiar, consider this news story from 1972:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe have ten years to stop the catastrophe,\u201d said the UN\u2019s environmental protection boss. That\u2019s one of the headlines collected by Bjorn Lomberg, author of \u201cFalse Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lomberg notes that, for more than 50 years, the United Nations and the media have regularly predicted we\u2019re on the verge of calamity. And they always seem to forget about the last warning.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In 1982, after the catastrophe failed to materialize, the New York Times covered the second UN conference on the environment, which opened \u201camid gloom\u201d:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

The piece quotes Mostafa K. Tolba, executive director of the United Nations environmental program, as saying that if things aren\u2019t fixed by the turn of the century \u2014 the year 2000 \u2014 the world would face \u201can environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

In 1989, a senior UN environmental official shaved a year off that dire prediction, saying that if we didn\u2019t fix climate change by 1999, we would have \u201cGlobal disaster, nations wiped off the face of the earth, crop failures\u201d:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tolba was back in 1990 to say that \u201cWe shall win \u2014 or lose \u2014 the climate struggle in the first years of the 1990s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

The 1990s passed without the arrival of the End Times (unless you count Vanilla Ice), but that only turned up the volume. In 2004, the Guardian newspaper said a \u201csecret report\u201d from the Pentagon to President George W. Bush said climate change would \u201cdestroy us.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

Among the predictions:<\/p>\n

* Major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas<\/p>\n

* Britain is plunged into a \u201cSiberian\u201d climate by 2020<\/p>\n

* Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world<\/p>\n

The Guardian described this as \u201chumiliating to the Bush administration\u201d because they weren\u2019t doing enough to tackle climate change. No word on whether the Pentagon or the Guardian are humiliated now that it\u2019s 2021 and Britain is still experiencing summer.<\/p>\n

But then, another dire prediction came and went in the meantime. In 2007, Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN climate panel, said, \u201cIf there is no action before 2012, that\u2019s too late\u201d:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

That year did bring disaster in the form of the movie \u201c2012,\u201d but besides John Cusack\u2019s career, the rest of us survived.<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t fret, the goalposts have been moved again. As of 2019, the UN said \u201conly 11 years left to prevent irreversible damage from climate change\u201d:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

That gives us until 2030 \u2014 or 58 years after the warnings of 1972. Advocates for change believe if they just scream louder, or write more like the Book of Revelations, they\u2019ll get the world to agree to a complete upheaval of modern life and trillions in spending. But after decades of alarmism, they sound like the boy who cried warming. People have tuned them out.<\/p>\n

Climate change is real, but adapting to it, mitigating it with technology is the most realistic solution. Will China and India just give up on coal, gas and oil overnight? No, and neither will the United States. But emissions already are falling in Western countries, the world is innovating.<\/p>\n

We predict things are going to get better. Ten years. Twenty years, tops. Maybe 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BLUF: Climate change is real, but adapting to it, mitigating it with technology is the most realistic solution. Will China and India just give up on coal, gas and oil overnight? No, and neither will the United States. But emissions already are falling in Western countries, the world is innovating. We predict things are going … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-econuts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74286,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74285\/revisions\/74286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}