SCNCC Perspective

As China struggles to recover economically from the impact of the pandemic, it is set to deal a painful blow to global efforts to fight climate change. The party has often sacrificed environmental regulations as soon as GDP targets and economic growth have been threatened, thus industrial or trade decline paradoxically produces soaring pollution. But even in normal times, China’s soaring carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are a massive part of the dire threat to all life on earth posed by climate change.

“Let the virus not infect our souls,” pleaded the message on the church sign in my neighborhood. 

As a member of System Change Not Climate Change, this morning I received links to a couple of YouTube videos about stresses on 2019 crop production. Produced by climate scientist Paul Beckwith, the videos portray the world as teetering on the brink of a profound food shortage. Like so many articles and videos these days, Beckwith’s videos suggest that we’ll all be starving come September.

It’s not hyperbole to say that the accelerating climate emergency, which is getting closer to spiraling out of control, is the most serious crisis that humanity has faced in its entire history. Two reports came out at the end of 2018 that ought to have put aside any doubt that we are facing an existential crisis that threatens the continued survival of advanced human societies and possibly even our continued existence as a species.