CO2 mitigation curves that allow us to keep global warming below 1.5°C, the only mark that keeps the planet reasonable livable. For discussion see "Poised on the Brink: A Tale of Hope and Change." It's rightly said that "the road to 2°C is steep; the road to 1.5°C is a cliff."by Thomas NeuburgerThe most important issue that humans have faced in their history is the impending catastrophic climate disaster. ... 'We have until 2030 to avoid catastrophe.'" — Noam Chomsky, in a new pro-Biden campaign ad, "#VoteTrumpOut"In a new ad Noam Chomsky correctly says, "The most important issue that humans have faced in their history is the impending catastrophic climate disaster."He's exactly right, the "impending catastrophic climate disaster" is an existential crisis, a crisis of our existence itself, and if we don't face it with the most radical of solutions between now and 2030, Americans and all of the rest of our species will scramble for cover and triage for most of the rest of this millennium. Scramble for survival, in other words, until the climate system stabilizes into a "hot new normal."When will all this end? The planet will continue to heat until the day... • When humans stop emitting CO2, either by choice, by devolution to pre-manufacturing life, or by extinction; and • When all of the secondary effects of the carbon we've already burned have had their say. When loss of ice; loss of temperate zones; loss of wealth, habitat, and farmable arable land; loss of livestock and life-preserving species like bees; global and regional wars, famines and plagues; collapse of our economic systems; collapse of all social systems larger than tribes have each had their moment in the sun, then left the ravaged scene.Only after these two conditions are met will the climate/life cycle system of the earth reach a new equilibrium and stop adjusting to the effects of human-emitted atmospheric CO2. The "hot new normal" will not be as friendly as our comfortable old normal, the Holocene, the climate that gave birth to civilized man with all our wonders and delights, but it will at least be a stable and predictable environment for whoever is left to live in it, at least until the next great cataclysm — a comet, a massive tectonic shift — forces its own rearrangement on our only home in the world.So Chomsky is not exaggerating. The life of our species and our way of living that life is literally at stake. We could easily go from smart phones everywhere to homeless campfires set on rubbish heaps, a global assembly of disconnected pre-industrial and mostly non-farming societies in not too many generations.With that as the opener of the ad, the statement of this great urgency, it's appropriate to say that Donald Trump is not the answer — is in fact the perfect inverse of the answer. "Another four years of Trump," Chomsky announces at the beginning, "may literally lead us to the stage where the survival of organized human society is deeply imperiled. ... Trump is the worst person in the world on this issue." "Get rid of Trump, and then we have opportunities," he concludes. All true.And yet I find myself wishing, if climate is the existential question, that Joe "Fossil Fuel" Biden was not the only answer on offer. Because I don't think Joe Biden, or whoever fleshes out his empty suit in the next four years, is capable of the radical change these radical times require.After all, didn't Joe Biden, with the eager, happy help of the entire Democratic leadership, work to defeat the mildest "radical" of my whole life on earth, the rumpled FDR who ran against him?Biden's own version of the Green New Deal, for example, "wouldn’t ban natural gas and oil fracking," says this glowing report. If Sanders was Biden's enemy, he of the actual Green New Deal, how on earth can Biden be our friend?Does this mean Don't Vote for Biden? No, nor does it mean Don't Vote. It simply means if climate is your question, this election offers no answer.
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