Report warns world is trapped in climate ‘doom loop’
(CNS): Governments all over the world are facing what experts are calling a “doom loop” as they spend evermore money tackling the consequences of climate change but spend very little on reducing the causes or increasing bio-diversity, a new report has found. As governments put more resources into coping with the increasingly destructive impacts of climate change, it is distracting them from slowing it down, according to a paper published as part of the Cohort 2040 project.
Cohort 2040 seeks to better understand how younger generations can provide effective and transformational leadership to secure a better world even as environmental destabilisation grows. This paper was published in collaboration with the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Chatham House (also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs).
Recovery from hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters fuelled by climate change causes cascading problems including water, food and energy crises, as well as increased migration and conflict, all draining countries’ resources. That means people have less to spend on cutting carbon emissions or rewilding lost natural habitats.
The authors of the paper use the debate over whether or not the world can keep global warming within 1.5°C to explain the issue, which is that the debate itself is now a problem. On the one hand, it is perpetuating complacency, reflected in the slow pace of change by those who believe it will happen but that things won’t be that bad. On the other hand, those arguing that keeping global warming below 1.5°C is not possible are trapped in the fatalism of thinking there is no point in taking decisive action.
Describing the situation as “a new chapter in the climate and ecological crisis”, after 2022 recorded the highest emissions over a twelve-month period since records began, the situation many communities are facing means their resources are being directed towards responding to the escalating impacts of the climate emergency rather than the massive efforts governments should be making to slash fossil fuel emissions.
“Narratives are needed that are able to convey the accelerating danger and spur rapid, transformative change – and are more robust to exploitation by fossil interests and other delayers,” the authors said. They found that the deepening climate and ecological crisis is creating complex and difficult consequences that undermine the prospects for societies to achieve the kind of transformational change needed.
Laurie Laybourn one of the co-authors of the report and the leader of the Cohort 2040 project, posted on social media that “we’re spending too much time mopping the floor to deal with the leak”.
Here in the Cayman Islands, while our level of emissions per capita is high, these islands contribute a minuscule fraction of global greenhouse gases. However, they are extremely vulnerable to climate change and especially sea level rise. And yet successive governments have done nothing to preserve mitigating features such as mangroves to protect us from the consequences of global warming, while resources are being diverted towards tackling the cost of living crisis and our exploding population.
Despite the significant biodiversity loss in the Cayman Islands and the desperate need to hold onto the remaining critical mangrove habitat and replant in some areas, the government is instead currently planning to construct a highway through the Central Mangrove Wetlands and continues granting planning permission that involves clearing mangrove habitat.
See the report full here.
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Category: Climate Change, Science & Nature
don’t worry God will protect the Cayman Islands
Not so far!
God bless the excavators and concrete trucks.
You have some of our political idiotship who honestly believe Cayman is and exception to this dire situation despite unequivocal evidence to the contrary . Obviously numb or too dumb and devoid of any kind of brain function. Our dire environmental consequences is equivalent to sugar waste in their enormous guts protruding over their privates and feet. How sad for our future existence Cayman..
To me, using hackneyed hyperbole like “crisis” or “doom loop” sounds so elitist and tone deaf to the common man, that it immediately puts them on the defensive.
This message would land better if it had pride, opportunity, practicality, and national security overtones that one can relate to.
when is everyone going to wake up. They have been dooming and glooming for 50 years.
the ozone is coming back (yes look it up) and they estimate by 2040 the ozone will be completely restored.
So if the environment was so bad, how is that happening?
Doom and gloom gets clicks and viewers. Just tune them out.
CNS: Head explodes. The fire alarm raised by scientists about the ozone layer was fully justified. Luckily, governments listened to them and banned the offending chemicals, and it started to heal. It didn’t just magically start healing because the scientists were wrong, as you are implying.
The ozone layer is slowly, but surely, healing, the UN says
This is what scientists are doing now, trying to raise the alarm so that the doom and gloom doesn’t happen.
Trying to enlightened some of these trifling people is useless. First you have to teach them how to read and understand the written and spoken word. A pity we cannot pack them all off to to Orange One up to the north.
the average person isn’t taught to do their own research. much like how people blindly listen to pastors, we are conditioned to trust the ‘experts’ not realizing they are all for sale and can spin any narrative you want using the magic of statistical manipulation.
the late cns comment editor who’s head unfortunately exploded is correct. the Montreal protocol is a great example of how countries can set aside their differences, agree on action, and then importantly do that action.
And our government wishes to tear through our wetlands. Sad that greed will choke the puppy!
Put a moratorium on people having children.
Too bad your parents didn’t start with you.
50 billion livestock raised for food we didn’t need. That will be humanity’s epitaph.
To me what we do as a nation to reduce any sort of Carbon footprint is pointless. The levels of CO2 will be decided by 2 or 3 of the big nations. With our limited resources we a) shouldn’t waste them, b) put any, or all of our cash into mitigating the effects, like better building codes for houses and better infrastructure. Even if we don’t see any climate impact we will benefit from being more resilient to the hurricanes we do have.
i love the small minded approach, ‘we are so small we don’t make a difference’……zzzzzzzzzz
what if every small country, town or county took the same approach?????
It would not make any difference whatsoever. Without the likes of India/China/USA committing themselves to a radical climate change agenda, this is a complete waste of time.
The population of the Cayman Islands could fit into a one single large football stadium in the UK – that’s the perspective.
20@5:27pm is spot on, 3:17pm is close. The most Cayman could / cam do right now or in the near future are: recycling, a real public transport system, and the dump and waste-to-energy “program” established. But we’ve regressed on the only one which was seeing any progress; the others are still mired in political incompetence!
Meanwhile, I recycle and reduce energy in my home. That’s about all most of us can do now – electric vehicles in every driveway isn’t happening soon and they still depend on carbon out anyway.
as much as recycling is touted as a great way to reduce waste, for the most part it ends up in the dump of some 3rd world country.
Keep quiet! I’m making a difference!
It’s called being realistic, your carbon footprint (a term created by BP to shift the blame) is massive just because we need AC, we import all our food and we have to fly everywhere. If you have limited resources it’s best to spend them where they will do the most good. I also think we should preserve the natural environment and not waste things but the reality is we will be impacted by the choices of a few nations and change is going to happen. If you had $50k would it make sense to spend that on a Tesla or building your house 3 feet higher?
Yet our esteemed local political leaders with spew forth statements like ” Accruing Carbon Credits for Sustainable Development” to ” Developing with a Low Carbon Footprint ” .
Have not heard from, or seen much of Jackie Doaks promise of not developing land in exchange for that granted for development , by DART.
Jackie… See. you thought we all forgot about that, Din-ja?
May I point to the old Hyatt site as NOT being developed?
Go on then. Why don’t you enlighten us all on how many acres of previously undeveloped land have been approved for development since the commitment was made?
Every little bit can only help! Don’t be an ostrich and bury your head in the sand.
Eating plants is cheaper, healthier, and actually cuts carbon emissions and water waste by up to 80%. Meat and Dairy industries contribute more GHGE than the entire Transportation Sector – including aviation and shipping (source UN FAO 2006, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”). We can each chose to make responsible choices or not at our next meal, but we cannot continue to put our heads in the sand and pretend that we don’t know the answer. For meat eaters to claim they can’t afford to cut both their grocery bill and their GHGE footprint, simply by Googling some delicious vegan recipes, is a colossal education gap propelling planet-scale extinctions. Past time for that to start mattering.
free money making solution:
stop meat production.
terrible for the planet, terrible for animals, terrible for humans and totally not required.
Avoid the rush.
Mutate now!
‘Since records began’. Which was not that long ago. I can vividly remember being told in the 70’s, oil would run out before 2000, much of the world would be underwater and we were entering a new ice age. The science is skewed, climatologists and scientists are not all in agreement. This is largely driven by politics
‘largely’….zzzzzz
keep watching youtube for news while you ‘largely’ ignore science
Everything that poster said is true. Look up Time magazine cover stories from late 70’s. Full on ice age scaremongering. Then look up cover stories from early 70s. World will run out of oil. And don’t forget killer bees, acid rain and Y2K just to name a few.
So yes by all means zzzzzzzzzz.
CNS: Suggested reading: What were climate scientists predicting in the 1970s? Note the Sean Hannity quote at the beginning.
Acid rain, explained, by National Geographic. Acid Rain, like water pollution, is a thing. Very silly to dismiss either.
Are We Running Out of Oil?. Short answer: We’re actully running out of cheap oil.
Killer bees: a deadly swarm. The upside of killer bees by the UK’s Natural History Museum.
Apocalypse Then: When Y2K Didn’t Lead To The End Of Civilization, from Forbes. There were the usual end-of-day weirdoes but that fact was, computer scientists just didn’t know what was going to happen.
Skip to the end: “It may be hard not to smile at some of the excesses that occurred in the sometimes frenetic leadup to the eerie calm of the night of December 31, 1999, but no great harm came of it all, and it may have produced a great deal of good in the strength and flexibility and resilience of our information networks. Those networks are today, even more than 20 years ago, the central nervous system of civilization. Keeping them healthy cannot be overvalued.”
all politics and globalization!
Economies are more interested in profiting from selling a green, meat free, gluten free, keto, eco, carbon neutral, all inclusive friendly, BS bandwagon future than actually making drastic changes. Such as immediately cancelling any old, new or emerging technology, material or foodstuff that has seemingly made our lazy ass lives easier but come back to bite us with a vengeance.
All this fear mongering about climate change flies in the face of cyclical geological evidence of similar historical cataclysmic climate patterns. One cannot deny however human activity has negatively impacted this planet but natural forces have and always will have the ultimate impact.
#insectslivesmatter 🪰🦗🪳
Look to the port today and behold some of the worst polluters of the seas and enjoy 4 more of them on Ash Wednesday with 4 more the following day.
and you are fine with planes though????
Earth Overshoot Day was July 28th in 2022 and it gets reset earlier and earlier each year. Most of the industrialised first world countries exceed their sustainability quotient in the first quarter. Unfortunately, even the Global Footprint Network can’t honestly talk about meat and dairy because of their donor list. Our problems are almost 80% diet.
https://www.overshootday.org
What is the carbon imprint from
✅Nord Stream blast
✅Switching from gas and oil to coal due to sanctions and the Nord Stream blast
✅Never-ending fires due to crumbling infrastructure (US: New Palestine, a recent 13hr long fire near Orlando etc.)
✅Private jets carrying few people
✅Shooting balloons with military jets
✅Burning open air Dumps, in Cayman and elsewhere
✅Inability to implement 21st century Public transportation and relying on cars and eve expanding roads?
LASTLY
✅Pastic. Is. Everywhere. Suffocating and poisoning every form of life on planet Earth.
Politicians can’t tell their voters what to eat, and the livestock and dairy big agricultural lobbies have been successfully pointing the finger at fossil fuels as the primary GHGE contributor, contrary to numerous FAO reports, and successively bleak and unread UN IPCC Assessment Reports.
Netflix- ‘Cowspiracy’- dreadful title and some interesting perspectives presented.
Is this similar to the “winter of death” that the Biden administration predicted for Covid which never happened?
There were 6,844,267 deaths from covid worldwide so far? Is that enough for you? . I guess you would only believe it if you were among that number! Stop being agnorant jackass.
“with” Covid
I wouldnt mind a worldwide lockdown again.
Sea life, reefs, animals, insects and trees would too.
there is a documentary on Netflix “100 days with Tata” I recommend you watch.
We avoided this madness in FL, but the rest of the world, Cayman including, has paid a high price.
‘Doom loop’ – so kind of like the perpetual incompetence loop that PACT is stuck in everything all the time
trapped in its own greed! cant stop it..it seems …wonder what man will do when no oxygen to breathe…self suicide
Unfettered capitalism runs on unsatiable consumption to thrive.
Boomer doesn’t care; he’ll be dead.
Boomers probably care more than you realise; perhaps more than you. Why? Because they are pragmatic, for the most part. Boomers don’t tend toward blaming others, but tend toward taking responsibility for where they are. Most of us realise that blame is pointless and a waste of energy, and accepting personal responsibility is the only road to personal peace.
So, you go ahead and point your blamey fingers are us. Doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is results, and pissing away trillions of dollars to trade imaginary brownie points amongst nations and organisations doesn’t fix the problem.
Let us all become conservationists, and clean up the water, the sea, the land, the [expletive] DUMP, the air. Let us recycle efficiently, and ease into sustainable systems of transportation (emphasis on the EASE) which will allow us to not continually pollute our air and landfills.
THAT is meaningful change. THAT is change that will benefit our children, and theirs, and theirs.
Ever seen Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax”? Fresh air will soon become a consumer good.
Smaller brains require less oxygen, so the same people will still be in charge.
The future of the world will likely look like Blade Runner than a utopia.