Climate Clock ticks down on ‘Keeping 1.5°C Alive’

| 20/07/2023 | 60 Comments
Climate Clock, Cayman News Service
Climate Clock in London switched on 28 June

(CNS): On 22 July, the Climate Clock will tick down below the six-year mark for humanity to drastically reduce fossil fuel emissions to keep global warming below 1.5ºC, despite a pledge made by governments at COP26 in 2021 to ‘Keep 1.5°C Alive‘. This weekend, people across the world will mark this moment with synchronized action demanding that governments and corporations act to meet the climate deadline.

Here in the Cayman Islands, local activist group Sustainable Cayman is urging people in the community to contact their MPs and demand action. The non-profit organisation wants people to call on the government to declare a climate emergency and take the problem more seriously.

There is nothing that Cayman can do to prevent the planet from warming more than 1.5°C, but it is within government’s power to ready the islands for what is to come. The activists are pressing the CIG to prepare for further increases in heat, sea-level rise and the other problems Cayman will face as the pace of warming accelerates.

Actions that local non-profits are calling for include planting thousands of trees, stopping the destruction of mangroves, changing planning laws to restrict coastal development, the managed retreat of properties that are causing beach erosion, progressing the introduction of green energy, and reducing traffic on the roads through a greener public transport system.

Hazard Management Cayman Islands (HMCI) Director Danielle Coleman travelled to Trinidad last week to attend a Caribbean Regional Workshop on Integrated Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaption Planning, which focused on what countries need to do to protect themselves from the mounting problems that the warmer earth is already causing.

Coleman said she had facilitated a session on topics “very dear to my heart, namely Climate Change and its impacts on health, migration and food security”. HMCI, the Department of Environment, the Ministry of Sustainable Development and the Cayman Islands National Weather Service have worked on a comprehensive Climate Change Policy that, if adopted in full, would go a long way to prepare Cayman for the dangers ahead.

The public consultation on the policy ended on 30 June. Once the input from the community has been considered and included in the draft document, it will go before Cabinet, which is expected to happen in the coming weeks.

But even though sustainability is a key part of the PACT Government’s agenda, it has become evident over the last two years that some Cabinet ministers either don’t understand the concept or simply don’t support the required changes to make Cayman sustainable. There are concerns that Premier and Sustainability Minister Wayne Panton, who is championing the policy, will not get the full backing from all seven of his colleagues for this crucial policy.

The Climate Change Policy calls for drastic changes and massive investment in order to make Cayman as resilient as possible before it’s too late. Many local environmental activists believe the country is already far behind where it needs to be to secure its future. The policy will be extremely challenging to implement, but further delays as politicians dispute its merits will only put this jurisdiction at greater risk.

While politicians may be reluctant to support the dramatic changes needed, Lisa-Ann Hurlston-McKenzie, the ministry’s senior policy advisor for the environment and resiliency, recently said that the public feedback for the policy has been overwhelmingly supportive. She said the community sees the need for a climate change policy to navigate the serious challenges posed by sea level rise, increased air and sea temperatures, and more intense rainfall events and tropical storms.

“The community understands the impacts of the status quo on their health, their cost of living and their quality of life, and they want to see our islands move towards greater climate resiliency and a more sustainable economy while protecting our environment,” Hurlston-McKenzie said in the last week of the consultation. “Overall, the feedback has been clear that this policy is something the Cayman Islands urgently needs.”

Since coming to office, PACT has promised a more sustainable future for Cayman, but to date no significant changes have been made to alter our approach to coastal development, manage the population increase, prevent mangrove destruction or decrease consumption. Less than 4% of our electricity is being generated through alternative energy, and despite the jubilee tree planting project, every two weeks the Central Planning Authority rubber stamps the destruction of trees and mangroves to make way more profit-fuelled development.

While climate activists continue their demands amid rising public concern about what future generations will face as the effects of climate change begin to bite, those in power here and abroad consistently fail to meet even the modest agreed targets.

Given that global surface air temperatures exceeded the pre-industrial level by more than 1.5°C last month, with sweltering temperatures continuing in many parts of the world in July, the reality is that it is very unlikely that humanity will make use of the remaining six years before the increase in global temperature becomes a permanent fixture rather than just a first brush.


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Category: Climate Change, Science & Nature

Comments (60)

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  1. Anonymous says:

    Every human being must be accountable for his/her actions and lifestyle choices pertaining to the effect it has on our planet.
    If you live with a high carbon footprint, you should expect to pay a higher Carbon Tax.
    This tax is critical and must be enforced at a global level.
    Technology today is capable of monitoring each human being either biometrically or with a subcutaneous silicon implant to ensure the necessary taxes are levied.
    I am sure the religious will be up in arms about all this, equating it to the “Mark of the Beast” or other such nonsense, but if we are to save the planet, sacrifices have to be made.
    The world is crying out for a charismatic leader with the moral fortitude to lead from the front and guide us to safety.
    The only person I can think of who has shown enough promise to lead humanity is Barack Obama.
    It is a shame that the term limitations of the US Constitution have hindered him from standing again.

    • Anonymous says:

      Obama? The same Obama that drone striked more innocent people than any president in history?

      Mandatory surveillance at all times?

      Hard pass.

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    • Anonymous says:

      you climate people are so addlepated. the poorest people and countries use fossil fuels almost exclusively. so now we’re goign to levy the biggest taxes on the poorest. But the again that’s all a part of the agenda.

    • Beaumont Zodecloun says:

      There is no doubt in my mind that wherever people gather, they injure the environment. We tend to despoil our own nest. Thus, I am a conservationist.

      Carbon Tax is a boondoggle in which the politically astute can manipulate finances and wealth to further their own pockets and causes, which may not necessarily positively affect the environment.

      Agree with you that the biggest polluters should pay the highest price, but pay it to whom? There is the rub; the ‘carbon tax’ proponents seem to lack the financial instruments to convert those monies into meaningful works to better the environment.

      Your ‘Mark of the Beast’ rant segment appears to be well off-base. Unnecessary.

      I don’t think that charismatic leader is going to show her or his face. The world is too convoluted, and only pays lip service to conservation, for the most part. We don’t need any more committees to ‘study sustainability’, we need real and genuine recycling, and we need a government which will support a future view which will cease overbuilding and fund parks and other places where locals can gather.

      I would do away with the party system, were I in charge for a day. That would fix us — then elected members would be forced to work together. If that notion frightens you, then you are probably not on the side of bettering our children’s future.

    • Anonymous says:

      As OP, it is very satisfying to see that satire is still alive.

    • Anonymous says:

      I posted this pretending to be a serious globalist.
      1. It was published.
      2. It was unpopular.
      If I had said it from an anti-climate change perspective, it would not have been published.
      I will post the same message again in the near future from a different perspective and we’ll see.
      You were definitely had. Thinking that Obama was going to save the world…lol.

      CNS: The comment was so ridiculous I weighed the possibility of you being an idiot or someone attempting irony. If you thought you sounded like “a serious globalist”, whatever that is, I clearly made the wrong decision. Now I know what to do with all your comments.

  2. Anonymous says:

    Y’all really think that Cayman going green is going to make one iota of a difference? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJdqJu-6ZPo

    CNS: You apparently didn’t get as far as paragraph 3 in the article: “There is nothing that Cayman can do to prevent the planet from warming more than 1.5°C, but it is within government’s power to ready the islands for what is to come.”

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    • Anonymous says:

      Except it is actually beyond governments power. Cayman lacks capacity to do anything meaningful to prepare.

  3. Anonymous says:

    This government gives me no faith that they can accomplish anything to do with climate change and doing absolutely anything to get it fixed. I had a bunch of lithium batteries that had failed. My staff was asked to take them to the garbage dump to properly dispose of them. They came back and said they just put them on a huge pile with a bunch of other batteries on the ground. Lithium reacts to water and starts fires. My guy pleaded with the guy to not to just dump them there, but to no avail.

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  4. Anonymous says:

    We’re screwed. Too many idiots in the gene pool. They deny pandemics that kill millions, deny overwhelming evidence of climate change, don’t even know about deforestation/extinction rates.

    What can we do?

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    • Arizona Bay Life Guard says:

      Go to the high country in America, prererably the western states. Lower cost of living than here, better schools than here, better infrastructure than here, more job opportunities than here, social safety nets, unlike here.

      Beaches are nice in America if you miss the sand & sea but with affordable accomodations and activities for all ages.

  5. Anonymous says:

    And so ends any hope that Wayne Pantin stood for anything

  6. Anonymous says:

    This makes the Covid hysteria look sane.

    A planet and atmosphere that’s been around for almost 5 billion years will be influenced by farting cows and cars, and will end up like Mars as a result.

    Climatephobia is a very serious mental illness.

    CNS: I think this is the best link to help you understand the issue: NASA’s Guide to Climate Change for Kids

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    • Anonymous says:

      CNS! 🤣 Great reply to this idiot.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Wow. Imagine being so clueless and arrogant that you believe you know more than the world’s leading epidemiologists and climate scientists.

      We’re doomed. Rupert Murdoch and the Trumper nuts won. Half or more of humanity is now insane.

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  7. Anonymous says:

    These climate prophets and their crystal ball into the future is something else. you really think the average person give a dam about 6 years from now when they struggling to get through each week? you’re telling people to invest in a more expensive style of living when they can hardly afford the life they have now? what climate goal can you reach when 80+% of the world is intent on using fossil fuels? people been preaching the end of the world since time immemorial and we’re still here.

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    • Anonymous says:

      kick the can down the road some more. hope you don’t have children.

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      • Anonymous says:

        Have you met our damn dump?

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      • Heat Miser says:

        July 2023 will be the hottest month in Earth’s recorded history.

        The last 17 days have been the hottest days in recorded history, with major heatwaves occurring across the planet from the Arctic to Europe to China and throughout the US.

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        • Anonymous says:

          The penmanship of the various cavemen tribes was not always very neat. So, until we can clear up whether they wrote a “1” or a “7” it would be prudent not to jump to any conclusions.

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      • You’ve been thoroughly brainwashed. Turn off MSM and just live your life.

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      • Anonymous says:

        “We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost effective.” – Kurt Vonnegut

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    • Anonymous says:

      Eating plants is perhaps a third of the grocery cart bill vs eating meat and dairy, and spares the really expensive medical bills. That simple menu adjustment cuts household GHGE in half, saves water, land use, and reduces trash. What trash is generated doesn’t stink or breed houseflies.

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      • Anonymous says:

        The downvotes here, if reflective of our society at large, show why we will never change or improve.

        #doomed

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        • Anonymous says:

          Not necessarily. It might well reflect the very high cost of fruits and vegetables here, as opposed to turkey necks and other lesser cuts of animal protein.

    • Anonymous says:

      “To heck with the chorus of naysayer scientists, career experts, their labs and professional agencies, I’m heading down to the Titanic in the Titan Submersible”, said nobody this week.

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  8. Anonymous says:

    greed is problem! mankinds quest to to accumulate weath will continue till his demise…zzzzz

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  9. Anonymous says:

    Inevitable population reset coming, can’t say the earth doesn’t need a break from humanity.

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    • Anonymous says:

      The Earth needs a break from the 50 billion livestock raised for food we don’t need to eat. Too much to ask, so extinction it is.

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      • Anonymous says:

        If civilisation is brought to its knees you will be forced to eat meat or perish.

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        • Anonymous says:

          Maintaining civilization and plant eating are completely aligned. The outliers are those that still think meat eating is natural, healthy, or sustainable – all evidence and guidance to the contrary.

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  10. Anon says:

    And yet, here we are in Cayman happily burning diesel whilst for years actively avoiding alternate solutions. Solar could fuel the island but as a nation we have chosen the CUC diesel monopoly and the dividend income that CUC provides to each shareholder. The too little too late CORE program is almost insignificant in the big scheme. Shame on successive governments allowing such a monopoly and shame on CUC for decades avoiding the renewable question whilst investing millions in fossil based technology.

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  11. Anonymous says:

    ‘Hazard Management Cayman Islands (HMCI) Director Danielle Coleman travelled to Trinidad last week’. All these ‘concerned people jumping on carbon emitting transport for a meeting, but they do not see the hypocrisy of what they preach.

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  12. Anonymous says:

    When ever has fear and pressure been a good way to manage an issue?

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    • Anonymous says:

      A. When there are deadlines. Our future selves are counting on us getting in gear yesterday, and we are mostly pretending we haven’t received the instructions, or worse: that those instructions are in dispute.

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  13. Anonymous says:

    sad to say people and governments generally don’t care.
    imagine if governments tackled climate issue the same way they tackled the covid ‘crisis’. govenrments shut down the world, took away peoples rights, destroyed economies, created hyper inflation for the forseeable future…..all for nothing.

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    • Anonymous says:

      It wasn’t all for nothing. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of lives were saved by lockdowns and restrictions that kept many of us safe until vaccines and medical treatments could be developed based on experience.

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  14. Anonymous says:

    The voting people on the demand-side of the economy, condemn the corporate donor special interest plagued capitalist governments on the supply-side, and point their fingers everywhere but at themselves. Governments pay lip service only for re-formation of entire polluting industries, often the recipients of heavy federal subsidy, and focus of tax-paying employers with community job retention issues – but won’t examine the personal consumer demand side they can each control. A minute to midnight and consumers still can’t generally accept the science behind the behavior change recommended in IPCC reports on diet change. Diet still isn’t even part of the mainstream conversation, despite contributing more GHGE than the entire Transportation Sector. We can each go to IPCC.ch, read the recommendations for humanity’s survival, and either adopt them or not. Regardless of WHERE we live, it shouldn’t continue to be acceptable to ignore published mitigations for the time WHEN we are living. The instructions are published in every major language.

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  15. False Alarm says:

    Of course we are not going to hit the 1.5 C target – it is simply not achievable without destroying the economies of the world, and making the poorest countries even poorer.

    Read the book “False Alarm by Bjorn Lomborg”, which gives a detailed analysis of this, and suggests a much more nuanced approach to dealing with climate change, instead of just focusing on carbon emissions and this arbitrary 1.5 C target.

    CNS: False Alarm by Bjorn Lomborg; Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger – review

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    • Anonymous says:

      Don’t Look Up

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    • Anonymous says:

      1.5’C isn’t a target, it’s a spillover limit. If we deliberately ignore and breach that Tipping Point threshold, then extinction-level cascading impacts unfold, with a half-life of 10,000 years, much like the 4th bulkhead on the Titanic, few survive. Revising it upwards to 2’C or 3’C doesn’t repeal the universal laws of thermodynamics, or limit the outcome.

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    • Al Catraz says:

      In 2010, Howard Friel wrote The Lomborg Deception, a book-length critique of Cool It, which fact-checks all of Lomborg’s claims against the book’s references and tests their authority and substance. Friel has said he found “misrepresentation of academic research, misquotation of data, reliance on studies irrelevant to the author’s claims and citation of sources that seem not to exist” and characterised Lomborg as “a performance artist disguised as an academic”.

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