Micro-Climate Blog: The Ongoing Necessity and Invisibility of Human Behavior in Climate Action

By Marcy Rockman, Lifting Rocks Climate and Heritage Consulting, for the SHA Climate Heritage Initiative

A compare and contrast today. Carbon Brief has summarized and assessed recent research about the current potential to limit global warming to 1.5℃. Key conclusion is that, in words of one of the authors, “the technological feasibility of climate-neutrality is no longer the most crucial issue…it is much more about how fast climate policy ambition can be ramped up by governments.”

I would need to hand in my archaeologist stripes if I didn’t note here that this parallels what I understand a century and more of archaeological research and theory to now say about human relationships with environmental change: that what we see as success, change, or so-called “collapse”  in relation to past environmental stress was not determined by that stress alone but rather was an outcome of what people, communities, and societies decided to do in response to that stress. And that such doing has included transitions not only in technology but in relationships between people, place, and power.

In comparison and an example of some of the challenges we face, at about the same time the New York Times published a summary of six major climate tipping points (MR will add gift link closer to time of posting: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/08/11/climate/earth-warming-climate-tipping-points.html). I tend to lose my power of speech when I consider the potential shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and the remaining gaps in governmental action in the same brainspace. Which connects this to the point above. Presentation of these physical environmental tipping points, gorgeous graphics aside, as separate from both the human actions driving them and the human action thresholds necessary to address them is itself a choice, and we should recognize it as such.

Featured Link: https://www.carbonbrief.org/meeting-1-5c-warming-limit-hinges-on-governments-more-than-technology-study-says/

For a listing of all blog posts in this series, visit our Climate Heritage Initiative page.

Photo credit: Closing ceremony of COP28 in Dubai, December 23, 2023. Photo by Mahmoud Khaled, shared at  https://news.mit.edu/2024/reflecting-cop28-progress-toward-meeting-global-climate-goals-0206