May we get sense and keep this world degree by degree

We humans have reached payback time, and if we put the final boot into Mother Nature we will see off ourselves and all other life on this unique rock, and return it to the insignificance of a dead moon, writes Damien Enright

If we let the planet warm just 1ºC above present pre-industrial levels (it is already 1ºC above these levels), further warming to 3ºC will be unstoppable. A millennium of deprivation, desperation and wars will follow before all goes cold and quiet. The job will have been done.

We can prevent this. We can and must limit ongoing global warming to no more than 0.5C above the present level. If we can, only 80% of corals in our oceans will die and fish catches will be reduced by only 70%. Hurray!

But irony is wasted. Scientists warn that warming by another 1ºC will spell extinction for countless species and make an environment where, even if we can grow food crops in the silent fields, we will have no insects to pollinate them. Before starving, we will have wars for water, wars for land.

It is a frightening scenario. Science fiction becomes fact. Now, having seen the United Nations study on this immediate global threat, reducing emission must be humanity’s priority. With warming totalling no more than 1.5ºC above pre-industrial level we can survive. It would be a world with less diversity and surplus of anything – plants, insects, birds, animals, people. The small things that feed the body and the soul.

Love between family, friends and neighbours would survive: but love for outsiders, for the unfortunate survivors of flooded deltas, drowned islands, savannahs that have become deserts, oceans that have become acid; these we will be unable to succour, much less feed: our humanity will pay the price.

Ambient temperatures at 1.5C would be the last-ditch scenario, a compromise with desperation: our target should be to stabilise warming as it is now. Now, we suffer ‘only’ hurricanes, tsunamis, droughts, a mere soupçon of what is come if we do not act.

Our international strategies are as tangled as a bowl of spaghetti: do we not have, with our massive brains, some way of finding a single thread? Perhaps: certainly we aspire to, as evidenced by the Paris Agreement. But not all signatories fulfilled their laudable intentions: hence, the present threat. We Irish were second most lax of all the 28 European countries committing to reduce carbon emissions.

Trump’s withdrawal of America from the Paris accord threatens the planet. The USA, with just 4% of the world’s population is responsible for 30% to 40% of greenhouse gases. Trump says America shouldn’t give a hoot for the millions who will suffer the inevitability.

This act, by this one man, may tip the balance that threatens to deliver this planet to a lifeless eternity, a graveyard devoid of life or sounds of life except for, perhaps, the deep rumblings of subterranean rocks splitting and the hiss of subterranean fires flaring. The wondrous work of evolution over aeons will be obliterated and the only relics of humanity will be the sterile shells of cities, roads untrafficed, ports unshipped, airports unpeopled.

But what can we do, you and I, the people, to combat uncaring or inept governments? We can, at least, refuse to be accessories to the sin. It has, we know, a lot to do with carbon gases, and fossil fuel emissions. I will start there.

When my elderly car wears out, I will buy an electric car. Until a means is found to contain cattle flatulence, I will eat less or no meat. I will ask forgiveness of the farmers and I know that the export of dairy products is a bulwark of our economy. But, our land is fertile. It will nurture food that does not fart.

I will burn less oil for central heating, and wear woollen pullovers like I did as a child. I will vote only for politicians who act on carbon controls. I will insist on excess electricity from householders’ or farmers’ wind turbines being saleable to the grid. I will grow trees on my small patch. I will tell my grandchildren and great grandchildren about our dilemma. And apologise to them and give them what bobs I can to help instal solar heating or insulate their homes. I will agitate for redemption at this eleventh hour.

My effort will be small, I know, but we must all take a stand. This is about saving the planet, not the just the bog, important as carbon sink-holes though bogs may be.

The migrants are back on the bay, birds from Greenland, Iceland, Northern Canada. The sun is shining. May we get sense, and keep this world!