Guest post: A big shout-out to the laws of physics

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on A classic post-truth policy.

The orange incarnation of infinite stupidity and evil certainly deserves all the hate and contempt in the known universe and beyond, but let’s not talk as if everyone else were suddenly performing admirably on the climate issue. The truth of the matter is that there are no good guys in this story (or, if they exist, they’re as marginalized and on the fringe as you can possibly get).

If actions speak louder than words there is practically a universal consensus across the industrialized parts of the world that we are definitely going to emit more – a lot more – carbon than even the most optimistic scientific assessments deem compatible with the goal of limiting global warming to 2 °C. We are still going to reach the target, however, and the way that is going to happen is that the laws of physics are going to grant us a special dispensation for the sake of the economy. Of course nobody is going to come out and say that, but that’s what the prevailing view amounts to in practice.

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