Climate Deadlines

 According to this carbon countdown clock (https://www.mcc-berlin.net/fileadmin/data/clock/carbon_clock.htm), at the current rate (1,337 tonnes per second or 42.2 gigatonnes [Gt] per year), the most CO2 we can emit to stay below 1.5ºC rise (global average surface temperature is 1.2ºC above what it was in 1880 and the annual rate of change has doubled in the last 40 years) is 400 Gt, starting from 2020, and that carbon budget will be used up by about July/August  2029.  

We are at 311 Gts left as I write (3/8/22).

To stay below the 2°C threshold, the carbon budget deadline is April/May 2047.  No more than 1061 Gt of CO2 emitted between now and then if we want to stay below that temperature limit. 

I'd like to think there are a whole bunch of wise, dedicated people backcasting from those dates and figuring out what we can do daily, weekly, monthly in the next 7 years and a few months, 25 years and a month or two so that we don't exceed those limits.  If there is, I wish there'd be a more public conversation about it.

Maybe even an even an online all the time, open source simulation/conversation, a World Game (https://worldgameworkshop.org) where those of us all who are for the benefit of all, as my friend the ethicist Milt Raymond would say, could play out the next 7-25 years repairing the climate damage our species has done and is doing, envisioning how "To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone," as R. Buckminster Fuller, the originator of the game, said.

Fuller also wrote, "Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous behaviors that will avoid extinction."

How about a global online design workshop on a climate successful 2029 or 2047?  Just as a thought experiment.

We remain alert so as not to get run down, but it turns out you only have to hop a few feet to one side and the whole huge machinery rolls by, not seeing you at all.
Lew Welch

the war that matters is the war against the imagination
all other wars are subsumed in it.

Diane di Prima