According to a report by Roman historian Tacitus that is unsubstantiated, Emperor Nero fiddled and sang while the city of Rome burned in 64 AD. The phrase “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” symbolizes ineffectual leadership during a time of crisis. Today, national leaders and powerful corporate executives are the fiddlers while climate change threatens to consume civilization on Earth. Greta Thunberg, the 18-year-old Swedish climate activist made the same charge against world leaders assembled in Glasgow, Scotland for the United Nation’s Glasgow Climate Conference, in theory, to renew pledges to limit fossil fuel emissions and stall climate change. She accuses them of “greenwashing” as a publicity stunt. According to protest signs at Glasgow rallies, they are engaging in “Blah-Blah-Blah.” Youth climate activists have filed filing a legal petition with United Nation’s Secretary-General António Guterres urging the U.N. to declare a level-3 climate emergency similar to its response to the COVID pandemic.
This is a long post because proposals coming out of the Glasgow Climate Conference are grossly inadequate to address the impending climate catastrophe. In the last 250 years, as it industrialized, the United States burned more fossil fuel and emitted more greenhouse pollutants into the atmosphere than any other country, including the earlier industrial powerhouse, Great Britain. During the Trump administration, the United States withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, denied indisputable scientific evidence, and ignored the impact of climate change, even as it devastated parts of this country. At the Glasgow Conference this week, President Joseph Biden tried to convince other countries, many like China, Brazil, Australia, and India that are increasing carbon dioxide footprint, that there is a dire emergency and the world must act quickly, decisively and in coordination to prevent a global climate catastrophe. China and Brazil have pledged to end deforestation in their countries by 2030, but not sooner. India plans to keep coal-powered plants at the core of its power production for at least the next decade. Over forty nations signed a pledge to phase out the use of coal, but unfortunately not India and China who combined account for two-thirds of the world’s coal consumption and Australia, a major exporter of coal to India and China.
Meanwhile, at the same time that government officials were meeting in Glasgow, financial leaders are meeting in Saudi Arabia to plot out their investment strategies, strategies that include fossil fuel production. Countries currently spend over $400 billion a year subsidizing oil, gas and coal exploration and production. According to the U.N. Development Program, that is approximately four times the amount of money needed to help poor countries address climate change, according to the.
While preaching to the other countries in Glasgow, Biden is unable to sell a carbon reduction plan here and the United States did not sign the coal reduction pledge. Republicans and DINOS from coal states (Democrats in Name Only) blocked legislation that would reward electric power companies that shifted to renewable energy production using wind and solar power and punished companies that didn’t. Not one Republican in Congress is willing to support the Biden Administration’s climate efforts and a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute declared curbing the country’s energy options would harm the economy and national security. The United States has also been unable to pass a back-up plan to offer tax credits and incentives to companies that shift clean energy production. Meanwhile, a rightwing Supreme Court may overrule administrative efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. There are also questions about Biden’s commitment to reigning in the use of fossil fuels. While Biden was calling emissions from the burning of oil, gas and coal an “existential threat” to humanity, he was urging oil producers to increase production because of recent shortfalls.
The minimal greenhouse gas emission cuts included in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement have largely been avoided by fossil-fuel producing countries. In Paris, over 200 participating countries agreed that they would implement plans to transition away from fossil fuels with the goal of keeping the global temperature increase this century to 2.7º F (1.5º C) above preindustrial levels, the same target proclaimed in the Glasgow agreement. Temperature increases above this level will mean more frequent and deadly destructive heat waves, fires, hurricanes, and coastal flooding. But because of stalling, political gridlock, increased corporate investment in fossil fuels, and generally inadequate measures, scientists now predict that if fossil fuel burning trends continue the global temperature increase will actually be almost 5º F (2.7º C) by 2100.
According to research recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change, 80% of the world’s land area and at least 85% of the population is already experiencing the negative effects of climate change. In the United States, climate disasters caused almost 400 deaths and over a $100 billion in damage in the first nine months of 2021. In New York City people drowned in their homes because of unprecedented rainfall and flooding this summer. There were also murderous floods in Europe, China, and Sudan. At the same time, over 1 million people face starvation in the southeast African island nation of Madagascar because of a historic drought caused by climate change shifts in rain patterns. At the Glasgow conference, the Kenyan environment minister highlighted that even an average global temperature rise of 1.5º C would mean a devastating 3º C increase in parts in Africa and would shifts and rainfall and worsen droughts.
An open letter from over 450 organizations representing almost 50 million health care workers, demanded that the Glasgow conference address climate change as a national health threat.
“The climate crisis is the single biggest health threat facing humanity. As health professionals and health workers, we recognize our ethical obligation to speak out about this rapidly growing crisis that could be far more catastrophic and enduring than the COVID-19 pandemic. We urge governments to live up to their responsibilities by protecting their citizens, neighbours, and future generations from the climate crisis. Wherever we deliver care, in our hospitals, clinics and communities around the world, we are already responding to the health harms caused by climate change.”
Historians and climate scientist have tracked the impact of climate change on earlier and smaller human societies and the record is frightening. In Mesopotamia and on the Yucatan Peninsula, civilizations collapsed. Norse settlements in the North Atlantic disappeared. Pandemic diseases like the Bubonic Plague spread. In my new book, Teaching Climate History: There is No Planet B (Routledge 2022), I argue that while facing climate change, global capitalism continues to promote short-term corporate profit over long-term human survival. At most, it hopes to slow climate change, counting on societies with more advanced economics to adjust and possible bailout technological fixes.
But the storms are growing stronger more quickly and the waters are rising faster than they anticipated. The latest projection is that sea-levels will rise four inches per decade by the end of the century, flooding coastal communities and displacing tens of million of people. The 20 coastal cities most at risk of flooding caused by rising sea levels include Kolkata (Calcutta) and Mumbai in India with a combined population of over 27 million people, Dhaka in Bangladesh, an estimated population of almost 22 million people, Guangzhou and Shanghai in China with a combined population of over 40 million people, and the Miami and New York metropolitan areas in the United States.
In an interview with BBC, Greta Thunberg announced she would attend the Glasgow summit although she had not been invited. Greta believes change is possible if young people continue to put pressure on politicians, banks, and corporations. The official summit program stated that it wants to "elevate youth voices" during a series of parallel events. Greta argued that summit organizers “might be scared that if they invite too many ‘radical’ young people then that might make them look bad.” Greta is right. We need to make them look “bad.” As Greta and her allies keep reminding us, “There is no Planet-B.”
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