A Potpourri of Hope: COP27, Earthshot, Coral, Wheat, and Happy Computer Scenarios.
“This has never happened before”
We have seen several efforts that are new and groundbreaking this year that we posted about in this New and News section. There is the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States, the efforts to control plastic both internationally and in the Congress, and the Loss and Damage Fund agreed to by 200 nations at COP27 (see below).
None of these are all that we need, none are sufficient, but they represent an awareness by at least some powers that be that we need to move on these vital issues. They are truly something new under the sun. But as they stand they are just promises, aspirations. Now we have to make certain our leaders bring them to fruition despite the forces that will try to tear them down for profit.
Here are five hopeful stories as we leave November and enter December:
1. The Conference of Parties (COP) 27
COP 27 was controversial and did not deliver as many hoped it might. Some commentators and participants were at best ambivalent, others disappointed.
There was, however, some good news from COP27:
As we wrote in this post on this site, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the president-elect of Brazil, vowed to collaborate with other leaders on protecting rainforests.
There were a large number of adopted decisions hammered out.
Probably the agreement with the most promise, a new and potentially groundbreaking effort, is the establishment of a Loss and Damage Fund for nations suffering loss and damages from climate change. Two hundred nations signed on! The criticism is that it is insufficient and it isn’t clear the money will be there, but the reason it is lauded is that it is at least a recognition of the problem and responsibility of the polluters who profited the most to help the victims of their pollution. As a post from 350.org pointed out, “this has never happened before.” [their bold emphasis]
2. The Royals and Earthshot
Prince William and Catherine were in Boston, making a splash in the news in the United States. Some stories barely mentioned why they were here. They presented one million pound awards (about 1.2 million dollars) from the Prince of Wale’s Earthshot prize to five winners. These awards are seed money for wonderful projects from around the world that can be great steps in combatting environmental degeneration. Besides climate change there were efforts to help farmers, deal with waste, revive oceans, and clean our air.
3. Wheat: something new, something old
A new wheat named Jabal (mountain in Arabic) has been developed by the group Crop Wild Relatives Project that is a cross between a commercial durum wheat and a wild wheat from Syria. The goal is a drought-resistant variety. It will soon be grown in Morocco, where there has been a severe decades-long drought.
4. Rays of hope spawn for coral
National Public Radio had a presentation on November 29, 2022 about efforts to protect Florida’s coral reefs , and The Guardian reported on successful efforts that a researcher called “a beautiful milestone” to spawn coral in an offshore nursery in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. These are baby steps, but once again we are in the territory of “never been done before.”
5. Happy climate scenarios
The Washington Post on December 4, 2022 published a report on their evaluation of 1200 climate mitigation computer scenarios. They found 112 hopeful scenarios, though most include a period where the goal of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C is surpassed by a potentially dangerous amount that can result in tipping points (”high overshoot”), but the goal of 1.5 C is achieved by 2100. There were 26 scenarios with a low overshoot or none at all.
This is very hopeful! There are always many more ways something can go wrong than ways it can go right.
It reminds me of the famous first sentence of Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Here's hoping for a happy global family. It seems we have 26 ways to get there, not just one!
