IPCC climate report is most urgent yet

The UN's International Panel on Climate Change is an interdisciplinary expert body comprised of leading scientists who study climate change; they issue periodic reports summarizing the best peer-reviewed science on climate change and making recommendations as to what must be done to avert the most catastrophic outcomes; their latest report is the gravest yet, where even the most optimistic projections of the panel predict disruption and hardship for tens of millions of people, within our lifetimes.

That is the most optimistic projection, based on the assumption of an immediate, drastic retooling to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which will hold warming at 1.5' C. A median projection, with temperatures rising to 2' C, involves trillions more in damage and hundreds of millions more people having to migrate, facing extreme weather events and pandemics, and suffering through famines and water shortages.

I have had stories about this report in my feed for days and haven't been able to bring myself to write about them, not even to read them in depth. It's hard not to read this and be gripped by despair.

But something I heard recently made me feel hope. On the latest Intercepted podcast, NYU history professor Nikhil Pal Singh finishes an address on the history of American empire by saying that Trump -- and the looting, reckless, destructive ideology he embodies -- may not be the beginning of a new, bloodier era of American carnage, but the last blast of the dying regime, the turning point for a better world. Read the rest