Roberts got so much shit from those in his social world that he felt forced to write a defense of his unacceptable negativity in the first post. That defense is called The news on climate is awful. So now what?

In short, a few observers are just now getting around to noticing that meeting the 2-degree target is implausible (Roberts' phrase). They are now noticing that humans are fucking up because of the international climate negotiations to be held in Paris later this year.

And, for the record, I ridiculed the 1.5-degree (C) target (low emissions scenario) in 2013 in an essay called Your Next Stop, The Twilight Zone . There was a follow-up called Confusion In The Twilight Zone . Both essays are long, but I recommend you read or review them both.

Dave Roberts, formerly of Grist, now with Vox, doesn't have that luxury. He comes with a lot of baggage. So when Roberts wrote The awful truth about climate change no one wants to admit shortly after I talked about the same awful truth , he got a lot of shit for it from those in his social world. The awful truth is that humanity has a snowball's chance in Hell of meeting the 2-degree (C) global warming policy target.

In this way, I can bring a certain objectivity to the things I discuss.

I'll get right into it: I don't belong to any human social world, so I can pretty much say anything I like. I don't come with all the heavy Flatland baggage which human sociality brings with it, so what I say stands or falls on its own merits or deficiencies. I don't have to kiss anybody's ass. I'm not harmonizing with other humans. My own self-interest is not involved. In fact, writing the stuff I do goes against my own self-interest. (I should be kissing somebody's ass! For money!)

Here's Roberts talking about the reaction to his original post.

My post elicited all sorts of interesting responses, over email and Twitter (see also Jonathan Koomey and Dan Lashof). A good number, however, took the form, "So what you're saying is, [thing I'm not saying]." It seems that lots of issues have gotten lumped together in discussions around the 2°C target, so I thought it would be worth a follow-up to try to tease them apart.



The blue line scenario is the one I ridiculed in 2013

And here's Roberts defending himself, point by point.

So what you're saying is there's no hope No! Remember, the main question at hand is not whether 2°C is physically possible but whether it's sociopolitically feasible, or likely. That is, to say the least, uncertain, and where's there's uncertainty there's always hope.

Roberts opines that, physically, maybe we'll get lucky. (DOTE, 3/21/2015). I will skip that part and go to the human part of the question.

There could be a fundamental shift in consciousness and behavior sometime this century. Many people responded to my post by citing the relatively big recent shifts on gay marriage and marijuana as examples.

But Roberts is not buying the idea that gay marriage and mitigating global warming are comparable.

But ... still. Those are mild, passing gusts compared with the mighty wind necessary to blow the entire world economy in a new direction. The [behavioral] shift required to achieve 2°C would have to be enormous — utterly without historical precedent — and it would have to get underway soon. Hoping for a fundamental shift in human consciousness and politics in the next 10 to 15 years amounts to hoping for a miracle. That's what hoping for 2°C means — banking on a miracle.

Yes, of course. OK, what next?

So what you're saying is we should give up No!

I'll skip some babbling. Then we get this:

Even if we go past 2°C, we'll still want to stop before 3°C; 4°C will be worse than 3°C, 5°C worse than 4°C, and so on. It will get progressively worse until we stop pushing the system with carbon emissions... Sorry, then, but no one's allowed to give up — our children and grandchildren will still be fighting this battle. Even if it does become finally, physically impossible to hit 2°C, so what? Carbon emissions still need to be driven to zero as quickly as possible to avoid even higher temperatures. The fight remains the same, no matter the temperature outcome.

No one's allowed to give up! The fight remains the same! And so on.

But wait a minute, Dave, didn't you just say that hoping for a fundamental shift in human consciousness and politics is tantamount to hoping for a miracle?

So, whaddaya gonna do? Keep waiting for the miracle? I guess so.

Thus Roberts contradicts himself. Now, clearly working on climate change mitigation gives Roberts' life meaning and purpose. And I would never tell a progressive to stop what they're doing because it is futile. I merely want to point out that what Roberts is saying is incoherent because of all that heavy Flatland baggage he's carrying around.

So what you're saying is we should abandon the 2°C target No!

WTF! Dave, you just said, and I quote, "That's what hoping for 2°C means — banking on a miracle." At this point, Roberts babbles to defend the indefensible, mostly about shifting to other policy targets (he changes the subject). Let's skip that, and his remarks about Flatland scientists, and get to his summation.

What I'm really saying At this point, it looks like we're going to pass 2°C this century. And that's going to mean considerable suffering for lots of people (especially the world's poorest) and species. Right now we are mitigating for 4°C and adapting for 2°C; we need to do the opposite. If we're going to hit 3°C or 4°C this century, we need to start making the investments necessary to ameliorate the effects (a process somewhat deceptively known as "adaptation"). This is especially true in poorer countries already ill-prepared for natural disasters, food and water shortages, and resource conflicts. Policymakers will find that whatever was saved by skimping on mitigation is absorbed many times over by coping with the impacts. Still, 2°C or no 2°C, the task ahead remains the same: to get to zero carbon, or as close as possible, as soon as possible; to prepare for a hotter, more volatile future; to protect the most vulnerable, who did the least to cause the problem; and, along the way, to tell the truth about how we're doing.

We need to ... blah, blah, blah. The task ahead remains the same ... blah, blah, blah.

But, then, there is that last statement—we need to tell the truth about how we're doing. I can only admire Roberts' courage in telling his fellow progressives that humans are fucking up. He's a sitting duck, a problem he is trying to get around by telling those in his social group to keep the faith.

So Now What?

Now, I happen to be very good at telling the truth about what humans are doing, mostly due to my lack of Flatland baggage. I look at outcomes and filter bullshit. Furthermore, I believe I've got a pretty good handle on what's going to happen later this century, not because I can predict precise events in the future—nobody can do that, though possibilities can be modeled—but because I take Human Nature into account.

In a general kind of way, everything that has happened in this debate about the 2-degree target has been entirely predictable. For example, I didn't foresee that modelers would invent "negative emissions" from BECCS to make the target achievable, but I did foresee that modelers would invent some kind of implausible physical bullshit (some miracle) to make the target achievable. That's just Human Nature at work. Positive delusions must be maintained at all costs, no matter how crazy they are.

And these happy human modelers will continue to invent future miracles. Geo-engineering to avoid 3 degrees — wait for it!

Similarly, in the future, sometime after the 2-degree target has utterly failed, some future Dave Roberts (or maybe Roberts himself) will say we need to draw the line at 3 degrees. This future environmentalist will say "we need to start making investments to ameliorate the effects of [3 degrees]." He will say "the task remains the same." He will say that we need to "prepare for a hotter, more volatile future." These silly human games can go on much, much longer than one might think.

In the here and now, it was also predictable that Roberts would get a lot of shit for saying that the 2-degree target was implausible. If one had given it some thought, one could also have predicted that Roberts would write a "keep the faith" response to all the shit he got so as to avoid becoming a social pariah among environmentalists.

So knowing about the future (generally speaking) is no big deal, except in the sense that you've got to distance yourself from socially-engendered meaning and purpose. You've got to distance yourself from your hard-wired hope & optimism. You've got to question your faith in technology. And so on. And that is harder than it sounds. It helps if you don't have kids who will have to live in that future.

And one final point: this entire 2-degree debate is taking place inside a teensy-weensy human bubble. There are maybe a few thousand people on Earth who are paying serious attention to human failures in this regard, and how it affects the human future on this planet. And only a handful of people (like me, Geden and Roberts) are actually writing about it. Hardly anybody on Earth gives a shit, or they're deluded. That's the truth of it, like it or not.

So now what? More of the same, I'm afraid.

Sometimes, that is a good thing (Above & Beyond, live acoustic). You know, just to take the edge off.