An environmentalist, activist and prolific author who has warned about global warming for decades, Bill Mckibben posted this information on Nov 19:
“It's So Hot
Maybe Cooling the War in Palestine Could Help”
Yesterday, Nov. 18, 2023, the planet’s temperature went past the 2.0 degree Celsius barrier for the first time. It’s temporary —but it’s a terrible reminder that we’re now in the desperate end game for global warming. And yet no one noticed because —unavoidably — the world’s attention is riveted on the horrors in Gaza.
billmckibben.substack.com/...
McKibben says 2023 “saw the hottest temperatures in 125,000 years” —
which is to say, we’re now experiencing in real time heating that outpaces anything from a very long ways before human history. We have almost no time to slow that heating — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we need to cut emissions in half in the next six years to have an outside shot at holding temperatures to anything like a livable level.
McKibben asserts: “on a rapidly heating planet the world cannot afford to have its attention endlessly diverted.” However, in his post on climate change in the Middle East, he also expresses his strong views on Gaza and Palestine. He speaks of “the macabre evil of the Hamas raid on Israel” and “the terror of Israel’s response.” He also has more to say about the current Israeli government:
The Netanyahu government, with its endless indulgence of settler extremists and its endless efforts to put off the legitimate demands of Palestinians, has failed its people and failed the world.
He then focuses again on climate change in the Middle East:
The land there, theoretically so sacred to all sides, is in danger of turning into an uninhabitable desert. At the moment, the region is warming twice as fast as the world as a whole.
McKibben provides the following data from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:
Since 1980 the average number of high fire-risk days per year in Israel increased by a factor of 2.5 and very high fire-risk days saw a three-fold increase.
In the last three decades, Israel saw a 3.4 percent decline in precipitation; in the coming decades, this is expected to increase to 24 percent less rainfall than the current annual average.
Large parts of the coast are expected to disappear due to the rising sea level.
McKibben also quotes from “Jordan Is Running Out of Water, a Grim Glimpse of the Future“ in the New York Times:
the flow in the Jordan River is less than 10 percent of its historical average, and the Yarmouk River, a major tributary, is greatly diminished. The Jordan’s once-rushing waters feed into the Dead Sea, a saltwater lake that is disappearing.
Turning again to Gaza, McKibben says “Not surprisingly, the outlook is even grimmer for Gaza.”
The Turkish news agency AA reported that a study found that the average annual precipitation in the region will fall 10% to 30% by 2100, temperatures will increase by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius, and it will affect the region's agricultural productivity and food supply, causing price instability and food shortages.
McKibben says “Israel has wealth and technology enough to keep agriculture up and running for a while,” but as Haaretz reported:
the country must urgently “examine ways of maintaining food security as the supply of many crops is likely to suffer” because “climate change will also cause changes in the development of pests and diseases – they will spread to areas where they didn’t previously exist.”
McKibben reports that one of the few Israeli ministries taking climate change seriously is the military. He quotes again from the Haaretz article:
There is a fear that military aircraft will have difficulty taking off in conditions of extreme heat, and operational activity will be affected by extreme weather more than anything else.
McKibben says again that climate change is the paramount issue but “we focus instead on the deep, sick attraction of war. It’s impossible to look away.”
And yet, “the most essential fight on earth right now is between people and physics.”
“Heat is pushing the temperature past the boundaries of human survival in ever more places.”
Finally, McKibben asks whether we can still “preserve a working planet.”