This is whataboutism.

Agreed. I'm getting tired of these pencil-pusher reports implying that "the economy" is going to keep chugging along at a reduced rate, as if we can just shuffle around our stock portfolios and weather the storm.

The "Planetary Solvency" report by IFoA is one of the first mainstream papers that's taking a sober look at the climate crisis. If we hit 2°C by 2050, they're seeing a significant likelihood of:

• 2 billion deaths
• High number of climate tipping points triggered, partial tipping cascade.
• Breakdown of some critical ecosystem services and Earth systems.
• Major extinction events in multiple geographies.
• Ocean circulation severely impacted.
• Severe socio-political fragmentation in many regions, low lying regions lost.
• Heat and water stress drive involuntary mass migration of billions.
• Catastrophic mortality events from disease, malnutrition, thirst and conflict.

I don't even want to think about 3°C and 4°C scenarios.

Jesuits are real ones. The Nazis considered them to be one of their "most dangerous enemies" due to their principled opposition. Glad to see they're keeping the flame alive.

Banks trying to take profits buying air conditioner stocks while society and the biosphere is crumbling around them is a perfect encapsulation of this crisis. I'm doing my best to laugh at the absurdity of it all, because the alternative is paralyzing depression.

If you're interested in the more fundamental dynamics at play here, I'd highly recommend giving these a watch:

• William Rees: The Enigma of Climate Inaction
• Daniel Schmachtenberger: Modeling the Drivers of the Metacrisis

It is the stock brokerage division of banks giving their boiler room reps a “hot tip” lead.

"When it gets hot, people will use more air conditioning." Thanks Morgan Stanley, that's some real insider knowledge.

Thank you for sharing! I'm a big proponent of the planetary boundaries framework, it's a great way to visualize overshoot. While climate change is a big (perhaps the biggest) issue facing global civilization right now, it's extremely important that we don't get tunnel vision and try to solve for one variable without looking at our biosphere holistically. (That's how we get carbon capture and geoengineering.)

A few more links/resources for those interested:

• This is the Stockholm Resilience Centre's home page for planetary boundaries, showing the change in overshoot from 2009 (when the framework was established) to 2023.
• Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries is the corresponding paper for their 2023 update, which goes more in depth into each boundary and what constitutes a transgression.

The IPCC, FAO (UN), and the World Resources Institute put emissions from (all) agriculture at around 20%-25% of total emissions.

This article cites a single paper in opposition, which claims that emissions from animal agriculture are more than double that number. I don't have the time or expertise to comb through that paper with a critical eye, but the reports of the above organizations cite dozens of studies so it seems the weight of evidence is tilting towards the 20% figure.

This isn't to say that animal agriculture isn't an issue - it's a huge issue, and not just for the climate. But I think it's important to acknowledge that these emissions numbers aren't widely accepted.

Ignorance, petulance, and a willful dismissal of the truth are the new norms for this "administration." But information wants to be free, and this is a good example of how the internet can be a force for good.

Thank you to Fulton Ring for making the raw data publicly available on their Github. I'll be downloading this data and hosting the risk maps on my website as well; the more copies of this information out there, the better.

The level of obstinacy and stupidity in this administration never ceases to amaze me.

Each year the WEF publishes a Global Risk Report, surveying over 300 global experts and leaders from business, government, and academia on what they believe are the most pressing threats facing the world. For the past 3 years, climate change and its associated impacts have consistently ranked #1, #2, and #3 among all quantified threats.

To not only downrank this threat, but pretend that it presents no risk entirely implies that the US doesn't even have object permanence at this point.

That might depend on where you call home. I used to live in VT where you couldn't step outside without something (blackflies, mosquitos, midges, deerflies, horseflies) trying to take a bite out of you. But now I live in CO, and generally speaking most of the American West is an absolute joy to be outside in. You can just sit down on the ground in a forest and be at peace.

I think it's important to spend time in wild spaces (backpacking is great for this), but since home is where we spend most of our time, bringing nature into the backyard is huge for daily exposure. I work from home, so whenever I feel like I've been staring at screens for too long, I head out to the pollinator garden for a reset.

For those who are coming straight to the comments, essentially the Fish & Wildlife Service is proposing culling tens of thousands of Barred Owls in order to prevent them from displacing Spotted Owls. The issue is that landowners can also apply for a culling permit, and the two species are close enough in appearance as to be indistinguishable from each other (especially at night), which means Spotted Owls are just as likely to be killed as Barred Owls.

In short: a good intention, a very bad idea.