I see we have finally acknowledged what was all too clear, that a goal of 1.5°C rise is really already out of our reach. Our new fantasy is 1.8°C, probably chosen to seem safely under 2°C by people who think these numbers mean anything at all to anyone. We are speaking only of physics as if politics and psychology did not dominate the calculus of ignoring the need to stay under 1.5°C. Until we realize that the dominant threat is our choices, that the physics of it has not improved but that we are ourselves our own worst enemy, we need to just say the real likelihood is 3°C or 4°C or worse, or whatever it is, none of which is compatible with human civilization as we know it. And can we stop speaking in terms of these teeny numbers? At least if we spoke in °F the tiny one-digit numbers would be bigger. Either way it sounds like less change than the weather forecasters predict in swing while we're out at work for the day. We need to speak in concrete effects of price spikes, killer storms, droughts, famine, mud slides, wildfires, broken supply chains, civil unrest, and global resource wars, all likely though not all in every place. Enough to be bad everywhere and scarily soon. We put energy into saving for a future that is not coming. We talk like we love our kids, like we'd do anything for them but we would not. And, increasingly, they know this and are bitter. We are selfish and unwilling to make the slightest sacrifice, preferring to find politicians who will lie to us, and we know it because we can see the creeping heat, wetness, dryness, spiking prices, volatility. It is not the new normal. It is the start of something unraveling that has not yet reason to level off even, only to worsen. It will not just be uncomfortable but deadly, for ever more of us, and with each day of inaction those deaths come sooner, not just for others afar, but for us, and our so-called precious kids. I spend a lot of my time lately trying to preserve history, but to what end if we do not preserve people to appreciate it and a world for them to live in. If a few do survive, I expect they will be preoccupied with the difficulty of continuing to do so in a harsher world where the ordinary niceties of civilization have crumbled and the luxury of concern for the finer points of history will not be high on their minds. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/oct/13/ipcc-pressure-delay-publication-climate-report-ar7-cop33 #climate #collapse