For several years, I have pointed out that Earth is amid abrupt, irreversible climate change. Even the designed-to-fail Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded, with two reports, that Earth is experiencing the most abrupt event in planetary history and climate change is irreversible as a result of humans collectively burning fossil fuels.

Princeton Professor Michael Oppenheimer wrote that the IPCC was designed to fail when it was created during the Ronald Reagan administration. Oppenheimer reached this conclusion with an essay on the Environmental Defense Fund website published 1 November 2007.

Eleven years after Oppenheimer’s essay was published, the IPCC concluded climate change is the most abrupt in planetary history with its 8 October 2018 report, Global Warming of 1.5°. The IPCC concluded climate change is irreversible with its 24 September 2019 IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. The IPCC concluded an overheated ocean was responsible for the irreversibility of climate change. You could look a long time before discovering a paid climate scientist, corporate media personality, or governmental official who would admit Earth is amid abrupt, irreversible climate change.

One of the consequences of abrupt, irreversible climate change was reported, surprisingly, by BBC on 30 September 2024. The headline reads Switzerland and Italy redraw border due to melting glaciers. Here’s the lede: “Switzerland and Italy have redrawn part of their border in the Alps due to melting glaciers, caused by climate change.”

Yes, really: “caused by climate change.” That’s a rarely reached conclusion, at least among corporate media outlets.

The article in BBC continues: “Part of the area affected will be beneath the Matterhorn, one of Europe’s tallest mountains, and close to a number of popular ski resorts.

Large sections of the Swiss-Italian border are determined by glacier ridgelines or areas of perpetual snow, but melting glaciers have caused these natural boundaries to shift, leading to both countries seeking to rectify the border.

Switzerland officially approved the agreement on the change on Friday, but Italy is yet to do the same. This follows a draft agreement by a joint Swiss-Italian commission back in May 2023.

Statistics published last September showed that Switzerland’s glaciers lost 4% of their volume in 2023, the second biggest loss ever after 2022’s record melt of 6%.

An annual report is issued each year by the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network …, which attributed the record losses to consecutive very warm summers, and 2022 winter’s very low snowfall. Researchers say that if these weather patterns continue, the thaw will only accelerate.”

Of course, “if these weather patterns continue, the thaw will only accelerate.” How could we expect otherwise on a rapidly warming planet?

The article at BBC indicates that boundaries will be changed in several areas. It also indicates that the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Research Network “warned that some Swiss glaciers are shrinking so fast that it is unlikely they can be saved, even if global temperatures are kept with the Paris agreement’s 1.5C target rise.”

As I have pointed out many times in this space, 1.5 C is behind us. Also behind us is 2 C, according to governments of the world. In other words, “Swiss glaciers are shrinking so fast that it is unlikely they can be saved,” because global temperatures definitely will not be “kept with the Paris agreement’s 1.5C target rise.”

Changing the border of two countries is hardly the only negative result of abrupt, irreversible climate change. Of far greater importance is the rate of environmental change exceeding the ability of biological entities to keep up. These biological entities include species. Even our favorite species, Homo sapiens, could join eight previous species in the genus Homo in going extinct. How could we expect otherwise? In driving other species to extinction, in changing the environment at an ever-increasing, exponential rate, and in demanding economic growth instead of the retention of habitat for our species and others, we are collectively altering the planet in myriad ways. As with other species, humans are poorly adapted to rapid rates of environmental change, even if we are the source of change.

Imagine you are at a carnival, riding a rapidly moving roller coaster. You can barely keep from vomiting. The roller coaster increases speed just as it hits bigger hills. Try as you might, you cannot maintain your calm demeanor. You and your lunch go separate ways.

Project your experience on the roller coaster to our species. We are in the midst of the most abrupt event in planetary history, caused by the collective behavior of billions of humans for a long time.

It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. Yet, it is your fault. It is my fault.

If you were to change your behavior, we still wouldn’t have a chance. That goes for me, too. The rate of environmental change is too great. The collective actions of too many people for far too long have committed us to extinction. Does this mean I’m giving up? Or does it mean I am accepting reality?

I spent a long time living off-grid after I determined the rabid human pursuit of more was driving us to extinction. It still is. My personal actions had no positive impact on abrupt, irreversible climate change.

The beat goes on. And on. We cannot escape the reality in which we are embedded. We can accept it, though. We can treat others with respect. We can live with dignity, and assure the same for others.

We can accept our mortality, just as we can accept the mortality of others. Along the way, we can accept our imminent extinction as we find ourselves within a Mass Extinction Event.

We will all die sooner than we’d like. Probably not today, though. Probably not tomorrow. Imminence aside, we will die. Everyone does. One of the issues associated with being a living organism is the guarantee of death.

Amor fati. Memento mori. Live as though your time is short. After all, it is.

You were never guaranteed another day. Or, for that matter, another breath. Make the next breath count. Make the next moment count. Make your life count, and not only to you.

Author

"Dr. Guy McPherson is an internationally recognized speaker, award-winning scientist, and the world’s leading authority on abrupt climate change leading to near-term human extinction. He is professor emeritus at the University of Arizona, where he taught and conducted research for twenty years. His published works include 14 books and hundreds of scholarly articles. Dr. McPherson has been featured on TV and radio and in several documentary films. He is a blogger, cultural critic, and co-host of his own radio show “Nature Bats Last.” Dr. McPherson speaks to general audiences across the globe, and to scientists, students, educators, and not-for-profit and business leaders who seek their best available options when confronting Earth’s cataclysmic changes." ^source

Latest Peer-Reviewed Journal Article:

McPherson, Guy R., Beril Sirmack, and Ricardo Vinuesa. March 2022. Environmental thresholds for mass-extinction events. Results in Engineering (2022), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rineng.2022.100342.