Member-only story
Countries as distinct entities have outlived their usefulness
A primitive tribalism must give way to the reality that our planet is having a climate emergency. This isn’t a local problem — it’s a global crisis. The nation-state is inadequate to dealing with this crisis and is, in fact, making it worse.
After decades of doing nothing, the countries of the world signed an agreement in 2015 to limit emission of greenhouse gases and to try to keep the temperature rise to below 2 degrees celsius, ideally below 1.5 celsius. The 196 nations then proceeded to fail to make any credible attempt to meet those objectives.
In effect, they were posturing.
To make the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy should have begun in 1988 at the latest when leading NASA scientist James Hansen issued a warning about the climate crisis. This wasn’t the first warning, but it was a clear and definitive one. That countries around the world failed then and continued to fail every year for decades establishes that the nation-state is incapable of meeting the challenge.
But who is?
We have three groups of people who have the moral standing and ability to rescue the planet from climate abuse.
- Scientists
Climate scientists have worked diligently to…
