A new study published on Thursday warned that the world has entered “a new chapter in the climate and ecological crisis,” in which communities are compelled to devote enormous resources to addressing the emergency’s worsening effects, diverting attention away from efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions and creating what the report’s authors referred to as a “doom loop” that will make avoiding the worst effects of planetary heating more challenging.
The Institute for Public Policy Research and Chatham House released a paper urging decision-makers to “actively manage” the threat that more global warming poses to the green transition itself.
The study’s co-author and associate member of IPPR Laurie Laybourn said, “It’s too late to completely avoid the climate storm, and the challenge of navigating around a storm is very different from the challenge of navigating through it. “Having to control the effects of the storm on the ship is frustrating our ability to steer out of the storm.”
He continued, “This is an illustration of the issue that environmentalism faces as we get closer to 1.5 C of global warming.” Storms, spikes in food prices, and armed conflict are just a few of the growing signs of the ecological and climate crises that will keep us from taking effective root-cause action.
“It’s too late to avoid the climate storm altogether, and the challenge of navigating around a storm is very different to the challenge of navigating through it.”
The cost of climate disasters like the severe flooding that occurred in Pakistan last year, in Europe in 2021, and in parts of Western America and Africa for an extended period of time is expected to reduce global economic output by $23 trillion by 2050, according to the report, and recovery efforts may end up costing the United States $2 trillion annually by the turn of the century.
In a statement, the researchers warned that such demands “may come at the expense of diverting attention away from the quick switch presently needed to decarbonize the world economy.”
The paper claims that doing so runs the risk of starting a “doom loop” in which the effects of the climatic and environmental crises divert attention and resources away from addressing their root causes and the immediate steps required to remedy them.
The debate over whether and how the world community can still achieve the Paris Climate Accords target of limiting global warming to 1.5 C over preindustrial levels has taken on a new dimension, according to academics.
According to the authors, “some contend that affirming the goal as being within reach continues to be the most powerful motivation, but others believe that exceeding the limit might be the ‘wake-up call’ that would motivate activists and legislators to intensify their efforts.”
However ‘climate delayers,’ who seek to stop transformational change and slow down greenhouse gas emission reductions, can take advantage of both positions.
If that debate is not resolved, policymakers may pursue unproven geoengineering techniques to reduce planetary heating rather than enacting regulations to ban emissions from fossil fuels, as energy experts and climate scientists have categorically stated they must do in order to prevent the worst consequences of the planetary emergency.
According to the paper, “This is a doom loop: the results of the problem pull attention to and resources away from addressing its causes, leading to higher temperatures and ecological loss, which then create more severe repercussions, diverting even more attention and resources, and so on.”
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The research supports the claim made by German researchers from the University of Hamburg earlier in February.
According to their study, which was covered by Common Dreams, wallowing in despair over climatic “tipping points” like the melting of glaciers and sea ice runs the risk of detracting from “the best hope for crafting a good climate future… the capacity of society to undertake fundamental changes.”
Laybourn and Henry Throp, a research analyst at Chatham House, compared the danger of losing sight of solutions to that faced by a ship that has been sailing too long into a storm in the distance without making a significant course change.
The crew, who are preoccupied with the storm’s immediate effects, find it increasingly difficult to make the necessary alterations as it starts to consume the ship, they claimed.
The Authors Advised Decision-Makers To:
- Develop narratives that motivate even as the climate and nature crises deepen, focusing on the benefits climate action will bring to societies around the world;
- Decisively shift the focus of environmental politics toward realizing economic transformation by moving beyond describing the problem and setting climate targets to focusing more strongly on the economic policies needed to transform societies, such as an approach to public finances that enables the required government-led green investment;
- Better understand the risks to the green transition as the crisis deepens by improving analysis of complex, cascading risks that could feed into the dynamic of the ‘doom loop’; and
- Ensure that younger people are better prepared to lead the green transition despite the distractions and chaos of a world where temperature rises are close to or above 1.5 C or even 2 C.
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According to Thorp, “social narratives are needed that effectively explain the escalating, cascading hazards and inspire quick revolutionary change as global temperatures creep up ever closer to the 1.5 C threshold.”
The premise, direction, and momentum for a climate transition in line with opportunities for sustainable development and players and attitudes that hinder action on climate change should be established by these narratives.
