‘An intergenerational crime against humanity’: what will it take for political leaders to start taking climate change seriously? Essay by Eric Worrall
How many of the USA’s horror show annual Fentanyl deaths were kids who got their start in addiction because all their teachers told them they would never have a chance to live a fulfilling adult life,
Claim: Climate Change is “An intergenerational crime against humanity”
Essay by Eric Worrall
The persistent and damaging academic campaign of climate fearmongering is the “intergenerational crime” which history will remember.
‘An intergenerational crime against humanity’: what will it take for political leaders to start taking climate change seriously?
Published: June 4, 2024 6.08am AEST
Joëlle Gergis
Honorary Climate Research Fellow, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of MelbourneIn February 2024, I attended the annual conference of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society – the peak group for scientists working in all branches of weather and climate research. Over the past decade, the mood of our gatherings has become increasingly sombre. Some presenters have taken to apologising in advance for their confronting results, with some attempting to soften the blow by including funny animated gifs or photos of soothing sunsets to comfort the audience.
It’s not hard to understand why. This year we had a plenary address by a distinguished IPCC veteran. The speaker began by saying that the world has “Buckley’s chance” of achieving the 1.5°C target, and even 2°C is going to be a stretch. If emissions continue at the current rate, the 1.5°C threshold could be breached as soon as 2028.
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As global warming continues, Australia’s climate is fast becoming more extreme and unpredictable, edging us closer towards breaching thresholds that will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to adapt to. This is especially the case when there are simultaneous disasters unfolding in different regions, or a rapid succession of back-to-back disasters that undermine the ability of communities to recover. If there is not enough time between destructive events, the damage begins to compound. We see the continued degradation of our natural environment and the weakening of social resilience that will eventually lead to the permanent displacement of people from their homes and ongoing impacts on our economy.
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How many disasters does it take to wake people up to the fact that Australia’s climate is becoming more extreme, with today’s destruction set to be dwarfed by things to come? Do people realise that adapting to climate change won’t be possible in some parts of the country? Exactly how much do we need to lose before our political leaders decide to take this seriously?
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It makes me wonder if people in decades to come will look back at the world’s collective failure to shut down the fossil fuel industry in time and see it for what it really is: an intergenerational crime against humanity.
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These sad rants from members of once respected scientific institutions are barely worth publishing.
The reality is there is zero paleo evidence that a warmer world is a less habitable world. Our monkey ancestors’ first appearance in the fossil record was during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a natural period of global warming so extreme, some scientists have postulated it was caused by a close encounter with another star. Those monkeys spread throughout Eurasia, feasting on the abundant food provided by the hothouse PETM, only retreating when the warm period ended and encroaching cold drove them from their new homes. Fish were more abundant during the hothouse PETM. Greenland was a temperate forest. Antarctica had a thriving ecosystem.
Even if a PETM level of warming occurred (5-8C hotter than today), it is unlikely we would even have to move any of our cities. Sea level rise is no threat to a high tech civilisation. A sizeable part of Singapore is land reclaimed from the ocean. Half of the Netherlands would be under water without their centuries old system of dikes and sea walls. As far back as the mid 1800s our ancestors were performing giant civil engineering works, elevating the cities of Chicago and Seattle an entire floor level to beat the flood risk. Venice in Italy didn’t give up their city when it sank into the mud, they kept building up, and created one of the wonders of the world.
In my opinion, the only intergenerational climate crime today is all the trusted scientists frightening millions of kids with their wild claims, frightening some of them into giving up on life and destroying themselves with hard drugs.
How many of the USA’s horror show annual Fentanyl deaths were kids who got their start in addiction because all their teachers told them they would never have a chance to live a fulfilling adult life, because climate change was going to destroy the world?
Global warming is not an “intergenerational crime against humanity”. The real intergenerational crime against humanity is the constant climate fear mongering, which is convincing young and impressionable minds the future holds no hope for them.
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