Wolfgang Cramer’s first involvement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was in the 90s. He worked on the second assessment report, delivered in 1995, which affirmed the science of anthropogenic climate breakdown. At that point, no one could say they did not know what was happening.
Almost three decades on, Cramer was part of the international scientific team that prepared the sixth IPCC report. Its conclusion, delivered in March, issued human civilisation a bleak “final warning” – the biosphere stands on the brink of irrevocable damage.
Now, as diplomats meet in Dubai for the 28th round of the Cop climate talks, in a year predicted to be the hottest on record, and as carbon emissions continue to rise, Cramer is one of 33 IPCC authors among 1,447 scientists and academics in signing an open letter calling on the public to take collective action to avert climate breakdown.
“We are terrified,” they warn. “We need you.”
If you want to see aggressive activists, look no further than car drivers. The moment a city starts talking about pedestrianizing a road, an angry violent mob of car drivers burns tires and vandalizes. Car drivers are easily triggered the moment they think their life will lose the slightest convenience.
Whereas with climate activists, there are not generally many singular impacting events to get outraged about… in part because of the constant tiring slew of non-stop bad news that has a continuous numbing effect.
Many actions that are needed will inherently piss off car drivers. We need personal cars to become unaffordable. Public streetside parking for 1 year should cost $3000, not $30. In California, a democrat in a democrat-stronghold area got voted out of office for trying to levy a fuel tax. Although republicans are worse than dems on climate, dems will turn on each other whenever cars are on the chopping block.
@activistPnk @GreyShuck I am waiting to see the results of the next experiment here. On Monday, we’re getting a new high speed bus in its own bus lane that controls the traffic lights all along its route to have priority over cars. How the drivers react should be interesting.
Sounds like a great move. I hope as well that medics and fire trucks can override the signal with higher priority.
BTW, did you get a notification @GreyShuck? I just wonder if @'ing a user actually works in Lemmy. Since you only gave the nick without domain, I would not think that would work. (I got a notification myself but that’s because it’s built into Lemmy when replying)
@activistPnk here in France I think First Responders always have been able to change the lights, or ignore them with sirens blazing.