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Trump's science-denying fanatics are bad enough. Yet even our climate 'solutions' are now the stuff of total delusion
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/21/donald-trump-science-climate-cop29-carbon-marketsTrump’s science-denying fanatics are bad enough. Yet even our climate ‘solutions’ are now the stuff of total delusion
George Monbiot
Thu 21 Nov 2024 01.00 EST
The ‘progress’ made at Cop29 has been on carbon markets: a world of magical thinking, over-claiming and distorted truth
We now face, on all fronts, a war not just against the living planet and the common good, but against material reality. Power in the United States will soon be shared between people who believe they will ascend to sit at the right hand of God, perhaps after a cleansing apocalypse; and people who believe their consciousness will be uploaded on to machines in a great Singularity.
The Christian rapture and the tech rapture are essentially the same belief. Both are examples of “substance dualism”: the idea that the mind or soul can exist in a realm separate from the body. This idea often drives a desire to escape from the grubby immanence of life on Earth. Once the rapture is achieved, there will be no need for a living planet.
But while it is easy to point to the counter-qualified, science-denying fanatics Donald Trump is appointing to high office, the war against reality is everywhere. You can see it in the British government’s carbon capture and storage scheme, a new fossil fuel project that will greatly raise emissions but is dressed up as a climate solution. And it informs every aspect of this week’s Cop29 climate talks in Azerbaijan.
Here, as everywhere, the living planet is forgotten while capital extends its frontiers. The one thing Cop29 has achieved so far – and it may well be the only thing – is an attempt to rush through new rules for carbon markets, enabling countries and businesses to trade carbon credits – which amount, in effect, to permission to carry on polluting.
…
George Monbiot
Thu 21 Nov 2024 01.00 EST
The ‘progress’ made at Cop29 has been on carbon markets: a world of magical thinking, over-claiming and distorted truth
We now face, on all fronts, a war not just against the living planet and the common good, but against material reality. Power in the United States will soon be shared between people who believe they will ascend to sit at the right hand of God, perhaps after a cleansing apocalypse; and people who believe their consciousness will be uploaded on to machines in a great Singularity.
The Christian rapture and the tech rapture are essentially the same belief. Both are examples of “substance dualism”: the idea that the mind or soul can exist in a realm separate from the body. This idea often drives a desire to escape from the grubby immanence of life on Earth. Once the rapture is achieved, there will be no need for a living planet.
But while it is easy to point to the counter-qualified, science-denying fanatics Donald Trump is appointing to high office, the war against reality is everywhere. You can see it in the British government’s carbon capture and storage scheme, a new fossil fuel project that will greatly raise emissions but is dressed up as a climate solution. And it informs every aspect of this week’s Cop29 climate talks in Azerbaijan.
Here, as everywhere, the living planet is forgotten while capital extends its frontiers. The one thing Cop29 has achieved so far – and it may well be the only thing – is an attempt to rush through new rules for carbon markets, enabling countries and businesses to trade carbon credits – which amount, in effect, to permission to carry on polluting.
…
