Bill McKibben: Climate Crisis Needs Urgent Action as Earth Records Hottest Temps Ever

the world's average surface temperature has soared to its highest level ever recorded surpassing record levels of heat measured just one day earlier in the day before that this week's string of Records shattering hottest days came as climate scientists worn last month was the hottest June ever recorded with 2023 on track to become the hottest year in human history meanwhile a new report in the journal Nature Communications warns changing weather patterns and extreme heat due to the climate crisis will exacerbate the global food crisis with lower crop yields anticipated in the near future all of this has added new urgency for broad government action to address the climate crisis but much of it has been thwarted by fossil fuel lobbyists which we'll talk more about in a minute with the guardian reporter Oliver Millman but we begin with author environmentalist Bill McKibben co-founder of 350.org and founder of the organization third act whose new sub stack piece is headlined no human has ever seen it hotter but the sun that's cooking us could cool us too his latest piece for the New Yorker is headlined to save the planet should we really be moving slower the d-growth movement makes a comeback Bill welcome back to democracy now it's great to have you with us so the three hottest days in human history some saying a hundred thousand years talk about what's happening and what needs to happen well good morning Amy on on the one hand there's nothing surprising about what's happening it's what you and I've been talking about for literally decades now scientists have told us that this is we pour carbon into the atmosphere is the inevitable result but we are seeing in 2023 that result come to the fore we've seen truly startling things uh it's now a reasonable chance that this will turn out to be the hottest year ever recorded we've already had as you say the hottest days the hottest week we just had the hottest June if you think it's bad here really have some place in your heart for the people living in spots that are Beyond hot and and unlikely to be air-conditioned last night in parts of Algeria cities in Algeria the nighttime temperature stayed above 103 degrees Fahrenheit that's the hottest nighttime temp minimums ever recorded in Africa so all around the world we're seeing remarkable remarkable things going on and this is just as the El Nino uh Pacific warming begins to kick into gear the next 18 months are going to be a time of chaos and Havoc as we go to temperatures that no human has ever seen no society and no infrastructure is ever endured we don't know precisely what will happen but we can predict that it's going to be very very hard um and and we can predict really too I think that this is the last of these moments we're going to have when the world is summoned to action by events and when there's still time to make at least some difference in the question of how hot it ultimately gets can you talk about the D growth movement bill well as you know there's some uh ever since the limits to growth in 1972 I guess there's been this critique that the world can't keep growing as it has been uh that it'll eventually lead to uh ecological collapse that eventually seems to be coming true um but it is a very strange moment because on the other hand we understand that we need to increase very very quickly the amount of green energy and clean energy that we're producing and that requires growing at least one thing solar panels wind turbines batteries and so on so my piece for the New Yorker was an attempt to square that Circle to say are there ways that we could use this moment of extraordinary um need for technological change to also produce some social change along the way to build a different kind of world uh we need to make the technological change and I think we also need to make some really serious social change as we do it towards a different kind of planet the good news is that um we're beginning to see beginning to see the payoff from some of that technological change you know Texas was the center of the heat wave in the U.S so far this year this heat Dome settled Over Texas and the numbers were astounding there were cities setting new high temperature records 10 days in a row but the grid did not collapse in Texas and it did not collapse one analyst after another is telling us because of there's a lot of solar power on that grid four times more than there was in just four or five years ago and that power not surprisingly solar panels do well in heat waves uh that power has been enough to keep Texas uh going of course and as Oliver will make the case in a minute the irony is that the Texas legislature is busy trying to help the fossil fuel industry and and close down its renewable industry but so far its Renewables that are doing the job there and believe me utilities around the country are starting to watch because they understand that not only is this power cheap uh it's truly critical in the world that we're headed into now I mean we've been getting reports of hikers and tourists who've died of the heat a woman died in Arizona's Grand Canyon National Park after falling unconscious during an eight mile hike and over 100 degree Fahrenheit weather man found dead in car with two flat tires Death Valley National Park I think the recorded temperature the day before was like 126 degrees you had a a teen and his dad in Texas and but what about workers around the world as well well I mean the the scale of what we're doing is astonishing and you're very right to point that out one of the things that the international labor organization has told us is that our ability to do work Outdoors is already something like 10 percent degraded uh uh and that it'll be thirty percent forty percent by mid-century that is the number of hours that people can be out working there are lots of reports China's just come through are coming through an extraordinary Heat Wave and Mexico has been through a heat wave that makes the one in Texas look small by comparison uh people waking up at you know agricultural laborers waking up at 4am to get done what they can before it gets too hot to be outside we're changing the world in deeply fundamental ways we're not going to be able to stop We Can't Stop global warming at this point all we can do is try to stop it short of the place where it cuts civilizations off at the knees and that will require nimbleness and speed that we've really never seen before as you know the intergovernmental panel and climate change has told us we need to cut emissions in half by 2030 to have any chance of Meeting those targets that you reported on in Paris just eight years ago by my watch 2030 is six years and five months away so the the need to move fast has never been clearer I think Bill McKibben does expanding renewable energy necessarily lead to a reduction in fossil fuels recent data show fossil fuels accounted for 82 percent of worldwide energy Supply last year even as record wind and solar came online we're going to find out in the next couple of years and it it has to uh renewable energy is right now at this takeoff point it's suddenly becoming substantial and it has to reduce fossil fuel use if it's to matter that's why people were so upset when President Biden who's done so much to sponsor renewable energy also started approving things like the willow oil project in Alaska or the MVP pipeline in Appalachia or this new string of LNG ports along the Gulf Coast um the politicians are getting better at saying yes to renewable energy but they're no better at saying no to fossil fuel than they were before and that's because of the extraordinary political power of that industry they're clearly willing to break the planet it's why we need more activists and more people out pushing at third act for instance we're training up thousands of people to take on the public utility Commissions in state after state after State these are incredibly important institutions the public utility commissions they set rates and help determine what facilities the utilities are allowed to build but they're traditionally been protected by their incredible boringness and they've been captured in almost every case by the utilities that they're supposed to regulate so we need lots of people out pushing in places like that as well as out in the streets or at Wimbledon or wherever it is if you're uh if you're an older person like me come join us at third act and see what we can do I have finally bill it's beautiful to hear the birds singing behind you in Middlebury Vermont can you talk about the effect of This Global Heat Wave the hottest Earth ever on the Flora and Fauna of the world it comes at the worst possible time um we already know that because of lots of things climate change but also habitat destruction and pesticides and things the number of animals on this planet is something like 70 percent lower than it was when I was born and now we're being pushed and pushed and pushed I think in the next few weeks we're going to see devastating reports from around especially the oceans of the planet um it it looks like something like 40 percent of the earth seas are now going through what the oceanographers call Marine heat waves that means widespread bleaching of coral uh you know we forget sometimes we call the planet Earth but we were being honest we'd probably call it ocean because that's 70 percent of the planet's surface and and the Damage there is extraordinary sea temperatures are not just a little bit higher than they've ever been before they're they're not off the charts they're off the wall the the chart is tacked too so it's going to be a brutal period not just for human beings and that brutality is going to increase unless we get our act together now Bill McKibben thanks so much for being with us co-founder of 350.org founder of third act will link to your sub stack piece no human has ever seen it hotter but the sun that's cooking us could cool us too and your New Yorker piece to save the planet should we really be moving slower the d-growth movement makes a comeback

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 202,744

Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

Id: N-PNlUkgfMs

Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023