{"id":267218,"date":"2023-07-13T17:48:05","date_gmt":"2023-07-13T15:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=267218"},"modified":"2023-07-13T17:48:07","modified_gmt":"2023-07-13T15:48:07","slug":"bill-mckibben-is-it-hot-enough-yet-for-politicians-to-take-real-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=267218","title":{"rendered":"Bill McKibben: Is It Hot Enough Yet for Politicians to Take Real Action?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essay by Eric Worrall<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to McKibben, even Canada is backsliding and compromising. And\u00a0Britain\u2019s opposition leader \u201chates tree huggers\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is It Hot Enough Yet for Politicians to Take Real Action?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest record temperatures are driving, again precisely as scientists have predicted, a cascading series of disasters around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0<\/em>Bill McKibben<\/a>
July 11, 2023<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve crushed so many temperature records recently\u2014the hottest day ever measured by average global temperature, the hottest week, the hottest June, \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the crisis is everywhere\u2014that\u2019s why it\u2019s called global warming. But the case of Canada is interesting, because it\u2019s a liberal democracy with a strong environmental sentiment\u2014<\/em>polling<\/a>\u00a0earlier this year found that seventy-five per cent of Canadians were anxious about climate change; twenty-one per cent of the population was having fewer or no children as a result.\u00a0\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet none of this has been enough to really change the political dynamic, which remains dominated by the fossil-fuel industry. Justin Trudeau\u2019s government had been making noises about a plan to dramatically cut emissions\u2014perhaps by forty-five per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, in line with what climate scientists have set as the necessary targets. But the government quickly began to back down after a meeting in June with officials in the oil-rich province of Alberta, when the Minister of Natural Resources, Jonathan Wilkinson, explained that \u201cwe have committed to a cap on oil and gas emissions. But there are lots of different ways to do that. There are flexibilities and how you design it.\u201d The targets may shrink, the timetables may fade, and, incredibly, Canada may decide to count increased exports of fossil gas as a method of cutting carbon.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s not fair to just pick on Canada. In the United States, President Biden has laid claim to a powerful environmental legacy by passing the Inflation Reduction Act, but his Administration also approved both a giant oil and a giant L.N.G. project, in Alaska; the Mountain Valley Pipeline, in the Virginias; and lots of offshore leasing\u2014and it may back big L.N.G. terminals on the Gulf Coast. In Great Britain, the leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, was quoted in the\u00a0Times of London\u00a0on Sunday as saying that he \u201chates tree-huggers,\u201d probably because they keep pushing for more action than his party wants to commit to.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/daily-comment\/is-it-hot-enough-yet-for-politicians-to-take-real-action<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill McKibben himself is not without his own climate controversies. McKibben had a hard time remembering who his sponsors are in \u201cPlanet of the Humans<\/a>\u201c, though\u00a0McKibben\u2019s supporters strongly denounced the documentary\u2019s portrayal of their climate hero<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n