We may or may not have hit the physical point of no return. It doesn't really matter, because we obviously hit the point of political no return a long time ago.
In too much of the world, nobody with any kind of power cares. (My own country included.) It's the prisoner's dilemma yet again: why should any of us who might care cooperate, when everyone else is cheating?
We hit that point a long, long time ago.
The situation isn't hopeless, I think, but this talk of "point of no return" doesn't work because it doesn't acknowledge the reality that, as ever, it's political and some people actively do not want to address it.
And articles like this are just making it worse. What’s the takeaway? “It’s too late to fix it, so there’s no point in trying.” The outcome can always be made better, or worse. We need to focus on that if we want to aim for “better.”
The critic’s lament: describe the situation in mild terms, the public concludes it’s not a big deal and takes no action; describe it in stark terms, the public concludes there’s nothing to be done and takes no action
"Making it worse? Gemini! Gemini! Gemini!"*
*AI meets Life of Brian
The problem is not just temperature, is speed. The idea was to avoid the 1.5°C mark, by 2100, but we are reaching it now, while still having the feet on the pedal, while the reached compromise by most nations were to try to be carbon neutral by 2060.
And while that, positive feedback loops get powered up, and adaptation gets harder because the speed of change. Even if we manage to do something to i.e. protect the crops we directly depend on, the rest of the system may fall down, or adapt in harmful for us directions.
We got lucky in the Holocene, with predictable enough climate to develop agriculture and civilization after it, but it was not the norm in Earth history, and we are ending that opportunity.
So, what can individuals do? I can stop using airplanes, stop eating meat, switch to bev and heat pumps, vote for green parties, go to rallies against fossil energy and tell my friends to do all that as well. Yet I still have a government (German), that reverses everything its somewhat progressive predecessor did with regards to climate change. And other countries are in an even worse spot. It just looks like everyone need to accept that we will simply not doing enough and that everyone under 20 will face 3°C global warming.
The German goverment of the late 90's and early 00's, along with a very small number of contemporaries such as Denmark can claim a large portion of the credit for the good climate news that we do have.
Today, solar & wind power are the cheapest form of electricity generation, and form the vast majority of new electricity capacity being built. That's likely the primary reason why CO2 emissions have flat-lined and may even start decreasing in 2026. (China's emissions are down 1% in the first 6 months of the year). Worst case scenario is now 6 degrees rather than 8 degrees.
And why are they so cheap? Because Germany and a few others installed a large amount of wind and solar in the 90's and 00's at stupidly ridiculous prices. This volume kickstarted the production learning curve that resulted in the actually reasonable prices we enjoy today.
Germany and others spent billions a couple decades ago, and probably have saved millions of lives and will be responsible for trillions of GDP a few decades in the future.
So yes, voting matters. It matters a lot.
Nothing. Nothing can be done except hope the accelerationists are right and we have some massive technological breakthroughs that fix it.
It is simply impossible to have humans voluntarily reduce consumption at scale. The only way forward is up and out.
Darn shame - seems we clawed back some time during the peak of the pandemic lockdowns (a surprisingly high amount IIRC)
But we really do seem to have been intent on doubling down since then
We're frogs in a pot of water on a stove.
As George Carlin said, all we can do at this point is sit back and watch the freak show.
This cartoon is from 2012:
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
14 years later and the most politically powerful person in the world spends a lot of time yapping about "clean coal" and the evil of windwills because he feels wronged by Scotland for allowing them to be installed near his golf course.
Peter Thiel (also politically powerful, even if unelected, due to immense wealth) unironically calls a young woman a "legionnaire of the Antichrist" because she peacefully protests for positive change in this area. Instead of thinking he is a dangerous sociopath many people worship him, because, well, he's very wealthy.
I'm nearly 53. We've known about this longer than I've been alive, and have made very little to no significant forward progress, with the slight exception of there being a shift to solar power, but even this was only done because it happened to become more economical than dirty alternatives. And even this small positive concession (that we got lucky on the economics of) is still being strongly resisted by the current US government for political reasons (as increased solar power usage is seen to benefit China):
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sbvp4ULD6GI
So, yeah, unfortunately I don't think anyone with the power to effect change is coming to save us here. And as individuals we're pretty much powerless to do anything about it.