Why Saving the Earth Needs To Become Our Primary Political Obsession: Medium

Greenhouse gases

"Will Steffen, one of the authors of the Hothouse Earth paper, puts it like this:

“Absolutely no new fossil fuel developments. None. That means no new coal mines, no new oil wells, no new gas fields, no new unconventional gas fracking. Nothing new. Second, you need to have a rapid phase-out plan for existing fossil fuels.”

He also goes on to make the point that we need to be on something like a “wartime footing” in order to re-align the trajectory of the planet.

I mean, imagine if climate change, and all the other existential threats we have created, were a giant asteroid hurtling to earth — what resources we’d muster to save the planet! But in disaster movie scenarios, no-one ever objects to being rescued on the grounds that it might negatively affect their profits.

And there’s the crunch.

We need to outlaw fossil fuels."

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