[MCN] Resistance and challenges to Green Deals should not be underestimated

[Lance Olsen]

Resistance and challenges to Green Deals should not be underestimated
EUROPEAN ACADEMIES' SCIENCE ADVISORY COUNCIL
A Perspective by the EASAC Environment Steering Panel


 <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-10/easa-rac102820.php>https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-10/easa-rac102820.php <https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-10/easa-rac102820.php>

Excerpt : Demand for energy and resources has been growing as a result of population growth and increased consumption to the point where all the scientific evidence shows we are bumping up against fundamental planetary boundaries on which our civilizations depend. EASAC summarises this evidence with a focus on climate and biodiversity, describing what many international scientists have been thinking since the 1970s - that current unsustainable trajectories are built into our economic theories and our political reward systems. These fundamentals need to be reset so that long-term sustainability is built into our decision-making at all levels rather than just left to altruism at the fringes.

The short-term perspective of many vested interests in continuing the status quo (whether in fossil fuels, resources extraction, high consumption in the linear economy, overfishing, conversion of forests and so on) is a formidable barrier to change. "Decision-makers seem to listen more to vested interests than to science," says Anders Wijkman, Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. "The science message has been consistent since the 1970s on the finite nature of the planet but been ignored. Incremental emissions reductions - achieved so far - are far from what is needed."

Climate warming is proceeding too fast to meet the Paris Agreement objective of avoiding dangerous climate change. Positive feedback effects that accelerate warming are already occurring.


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"Direct effects of climatic warming can be understood through fatal decrements in an organism's performance in growth, 
reproduction, foraging, immune competence, behaviors and competitiveness."

Portner and Farrell. Physiology and Climate Change. Science  October 31 2008

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“The fact is that we, humans, have changed the composition of the atmosphere with respect to heat-trapping gases enough to start the progression of global climate, not into a new steady state, but into an open-ended warming that is pulling the environment out from under this civilization.”
George Woodwell
<<https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-dr-george-woodwell-sets-the-record-straight-455bfcf14412/ <https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-dr-george-woodwell-sets-the-record-straight-455bfcf14412/>>>

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“A new area of study is the field that some of us are beginning to call social traps. The term refers to situations in society that contain traps formally like a fish trap, where men or whole societies get themselves started in some direction or some set of relationships that later prove to be unpleasant or lethal and that they see no easy way to back out of or to avoid."
John Platt. Social Traps. American Psychologist, August 1973

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Caught in a Trap of Our Own Making: Climate Change, Blame, and Denial
Lance Olsen
<<https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/25/caught-in-a-trap-of-our-own-making-climate-change-blame-and-denial/>>

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