A hotter more dangerous world demands new thinking about the climate crisis
Recently I’ve been DJing at events and playing R.E.M.’s It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine). Most people in the crowd have either never heard it before, or think of it as a bit of retro their parents have in their playlist. In any event, I can sometimes get them singing the chorus “It’s the end of the world as we know it… and I feel fine”. When it really works it becomes a cathartic howl.
I mention this because as warming passes beyond 1.5°C people are quite understandably asking what’s next? If the supposed highest ambition of the 2015 Paris Agreement isn’t going to be met (in fact we seem to be on course towards a 3°C warmer world) then is it over, is this the end of the world? There are numerous threads to pull out from that question. In the future I will write about how to find the rubies in the rubbish of doomism, and related to that geoengineering and how 1.5°C has become something of a battlefield over which competing narratives around carbon removal and solar radiation management are being fought…