Book Review: Our Final Warning by Mark Lynas
Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency paints a vivid and terrifying picture of six potential future paths for our planet and finds that each degree increase leads to cascading disasters.
1,2,3,4,5,6. With each degree Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, more of our natural world and consequently human civilization will be imperiled. Our Final Warning is divided into these six milestones of warming and a thorough, compelling breakdown of the impacts each one will likely hold for the planet and its occupants. This book is both painstaking and highly disconcerting, given that many of these impacts are already being felt before their originally scheduled appearance or are now likely to transpire much sooner than previously thought. A theme emerges midway through: much of the breakdown thought to be a consequence of a five degree rise might actually take place at three or four; the damages of a three or four degree rise might be seen at two, potentially decades earlier, and so on for every milestone. We are still in the process of learning about the environment and our deleterious effects on it—we may in fact be unaware of more crucial and relevant facts than we presently do know, a lack of awareness which should urge any of us who intend to reside on this planet much longer to adopt an appropriate level of humility. Nature, as Lynas repeatedly reminds us, is both unpredictable and too large and all-encompassing to thoroughly model, especially given the tendency of man-made changes to be much more rapid than putatively equivalent natural ones. There is no longer any reason to forego reasonable caution in matters of ecology, to cease reacting out of the kind of ignorance and rationalized greed which results in even minor, token “green” actions by companies being punished by fascist politicians—they are fascist in this case because, as noted in two recent entries, the capitalist strategy is to occasionally pay empty lip service to ecological concerns while overreacting to these small movements (prevention of harm is reduced to overreactive preemption). One recent example:
Florida will pull $2 billion worth of state assets managed by BlackRock Inc., accelerating Republicans’ fight with the world’s largest money manager over its ESG investing practices.
The state treasury will immediately have Florida’s custody bank freeze about $1.43 billion worth of long-term securities and remove BlackRock as the manager of approximately $600 million worth of short-term overnight investments, Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said in a statement on Thursday. The pullback is the latest step in a broader fight led by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis against corporations that embrace environmental, social and corporate governance values.
“I need partners within the financial services industry who are as committed to the bottom line as we are – and I don’t trust BlackRock’s ability to deliver,” Patronis said in the statement.
“Using our cash, however, to fund BlackRock’s social-engineering project isn’t something Florida ever signed up for,” he said. “It’s got nothing to do with maximizing returns and is the opposite of what an asset manager is paid to do. Florida’s Treasury Division is divesting from BlackRock because they have openly stated they’ve got other goals than producing returns.”…
Republicans are ratcheting up attacks on environmental, social and governance investing this year. BlackRock, which oversees $8 trillion globally, is a major proponent of the strategy and has been a prime target for the GOP. Louisiana and Missouri have pulled a combined $1.3 billion from BlackRock this year. And in August, Texas included the firm on a list of those it says boycott the energy industry.
To further pass along the looming costs of disasters onto the consumer and protect large insurance companies, Republicans in Florida have also moved to eliminate a longstanding law which protected policy holders who had to sue to force the payout of a claim:
In most lawsuits, each side usually pays for their own lawyers. But Florida’s one-way attorney fee law allows a policyholder who successfully sues an insurance company that refused to pay a claim to make that insurance company pay their legal bills, too.
This law is essentially a slingshot that David can use to fight Goliath. It’s meant to discourage insurance companies from dragging their feet when a policyholder files a claim — and to ensure those policyholders aren’t punished if they must sue to collect.
“It is an undue hardship upon beneficiaries of policies to be compelled to reduce the amount of their insurance by paying attorney’s fees when suits are necessary in order to collect that to which they are entitled,” the Florida Supreme Court once wrote in another opinion addressing Florida’s one-way attorney fee law.
Not surprisingly, insurance companies detest this law. They have been lobbying against it for many years, arguing that the prospect of one-way attorney fees encourages people to sue their insurance company unnecessarily, which drives up costs for everybody else.
The insurance industry has had a lot of success with that argument lately, amid Florida’s latest property insurance crisis. Industry lobbyists had already successfully persuaded DeSantis and the Legislature to weaken the one-way attorney fee law twice in the past two years. (Campaign contributions have helped.)
But now they’re just eliminating the law altogether.
It’s hard to overstate how momentous a change this is. Florida has had some version of its one-way attorney fee law on the books since at least 1893, according to research by legislative staffers.
Now, this legislation (HB 1A, SB 2A) only eliminates one-way attorney fees in lawsuits involving property insurance policies. But you can bet that lobbyists for auto insurers and health insurers and all the rest will soon be pressing lawmakers to give them the same break, too…
Taken together, the changes in this insurance legislation amount to the most significant new restrictions on civil lawsuits in Florida since Jeb Bush’s final year as governor. That’s when Bush and the Legislature eliminated a legal doctrine known as “joint and several liability” — a change that business lobbyists gloatingly referred to as the “Holy Grail” of lawsuit reform.
Ron DeSantis is about to bring Florida into a brave new world in property insurance — without any assurance that these changes will actually reduce prices for policyholders.
These are the desperate actions of those who, privately if not publicly, sense that massive changes are imminent and are attempting to guard traditional sources of wealth derived from exploiting the working poor. Increasing deprivation is soon going to drive increasing exploitation, rather than a mitigation of it. The weight of evidence that climate change is already underway and is going to prove itself utterly transformative is now undeniable, and Lynas’ book is an important document which, even taken by itself, proves that these changes will result in catastrophic outcomes for those who had the least to do with incepting the famines, droughts, fires and floods that will turn them into refugees or outright kill them by the hundreds of millions. One degree is bad enough, two is unacceptably dangerous to these vulnerable masses, and anything beyond that is likely to lead to much more: an ever-expanding holocaust targeted at every living creature on the planet. As Lynas notes, the planet has warmed before, but our current Anthropogenic heating is both more rapid and potentially more severe, setting an unprecedented level of transformation within which the adaptability and migration capabilities of human and animal alike will be put to the test. Just as there is little reason to believe that a significant number of species will be able to pick up and move to more favorable climates (as the author notes, this is particularly difficult for plants, whose seeds can only spread so far in response to changing conditions), human refugees will likely not be met with open arms from the places they find themselves forced into, if the totality of recent history is any indication. Natural barriers are, if anything, more vicious to the many species who lack human knowledge and willpower and will therefore mostly perish. Perhaps this will prove to be a preferable fate to that which is likely to be suffered by refugees in the camps and jails they will soon occupy.
There is also the underexamined question of living space for climate refugees even in welcoming sanctuary nations, which Lynas notes will further strain the biosphere. Invasive species, forced to move away from the equator toward more temperate climates in most cases, will likely wreak havoc on their new homes and any occupants who haven’t themselves moved away. The worst invasive species is of course humans; hundreds of millions will be forced to flee even under relatively low warming scenarios, and many will find themselves desecrating once-pristine wildlife preserves out of necessity. Unless utmost care is taken to transfer and settle these masses in a fair and ecologically friendly way, this migration will constitute yet another cascading feedback loop which will hasten further destruction. History has shown that when comfort, let alone survival, is on the line, even prudent long-term considerations are readily abandoned. The rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment in developed nations, which is closely tied to anti-“woke,” anti-abortion, and anti-protester forms of fascism, is set to dominate the latter half of the 21st century.
Six Degrees is not an optimistic read, nor should it be. Lynas presents a text which is one of the few appropriately “alarmist” predictions of our potential futures, given that we are already more and more rapidly approaching the cutoff point previously considered to be the safe boundary (1.5 degrees) and are procrastinating and prevaricating with regard to real solutions. The most startling lesson contained in the text is not simply that each degree of heat we allow is far worse than the last (it is) but that each degree is accelerative and cumulative: one degree of increase raises the likelihood of a two degree rise and so on, leading the reader to conclude that the lackadaisical current approach has opened the door to potential runaway warming and environmental extinction. Similar processes have occurred in the past, but as Lynas notes, never this rapidly in terms of heating, leading to a series of changes the planetary ecology itself has never experienced, let alone the human race. Melting permafrost releases even more previously-suspended planet-warming gasses; the burning and clearcutting of forests presents both an opportunity loss (in terms of CO2 they would have absorbed) and raw carbon emissions; rising temperatures increase the need for energy-intensive indoor climate controls and restricts the time workers are able to spend outside in unbearably hot weather, etc. Once we take a purposeful step in the direction of imprudent pollution and overconsumption, the next step is easier and some level of runaway complications are therefore inevitable. Ceasing this deadly sojourn now therefore presents a consequently massive opportunity for this generation, and a greater rather than lesser chance for future ones to stop potentially exponentially more severe outcomes. The lateness of the hour is therefore a powerful argument against inaction, rather than for a sort of “doomer” resignation to our fates. That we continue to ignore warnings from authors, climate scientists, and UN officials despite the overwhelming evidence that action is both necessary and effective is evidence of a widespread delusion and denialism on our parts—our susceptibility to easy, often comforting propaganda will be our cause of death.
Lynas notes repeatedly throughout the text that scientific predictions and studies have thus far been insufficiently pessimistic and failed to adequately consider the multiplicative effects of feedback loops, tipping points, and other wildcard factors which will overwhelmingly serve to exacerbate climate degradation rather than mitigate it. As noted in “Always More, Always Worse, Always Sooner Than Expected,” climate reporting, even relatively unskeptical and responsibly accurate articles from concerned scientists and journalists are regularly shot through with declarations of surprise at the magnitude and swiftness of the natural world’s Anthropocene transformations. Lynas puts this hesitation down to politicized fears among scientists of coming across as too “alarmist,” which is a damning charge when civilization itself is on the line and the price of balking at raising awareness is mass death. Would we not rather err on the side of alarmism, given that those who would be alienated by sufficiently pessimistic predictions are hardly staunch allies in the movement to hold polluters accountable and salvage what is left of our shared future? The price of ignoring the warning signs is assured destruction; the price of being too cautious is the loss of some profits and the momentary inconveniencing of the rich.
At the same time, denialist propagandists will point any overly pessimistic prediction which has not come true as evidence that the science is still unsettled, fueling the echo chamber propaganda empire which is already unduly persuasive and startlingly well funded. But as has been well established, these propagandists do not need any actual inaccuracies to correct in order to score imaginary points with their readers, who will happily cite any misinformation they’re fed as proof of the validity of their preferred unscientific theories, their lack of relationship to observable reality notwithstanding. There is therefore little reason for scientists to to hold back.
The lack of action taken to prevent climate change is a manifestation of the anti-life modus operandi of the free market, which for centuries has been happy to consign those who were unable to pay to an early grave in the service of disproportionately rewarding those lucky few who were able to game the system or exploit others to their own benefit. These early days primed a significant majority of us to unquestioningly accept this abrogation of our natural collective right to life, and this deadly logic is currently being expanded to include all other forms of life on the planet—like the underclass, it exists to be exploited and is expendable in the end. The difference between killing a few and killing many is one of degree alone (especially if the killing is carried out via indirect means, which takes place in the market-based US healthcare system every day, or via pollution, which once emitted is treated as no one individual or company’s problem in particular despite air pollution alone leading to millions of early deaths each year); accepting a few deaths out of expediency or greed predisposes one to accept many and to turn a profit-obsessed blind eye to even irreversibly suicidal economic policies. That this now a widely known yet largely unheeded recklessness is evidence of the pervasiveness of this noxious ideology and of the necessity of abandoning the free market wholesale along with its transparently false promises of a “greener capitalism.” The market has not saved us yet, and there is no reason to believe it will:
Lynas ends this powerful book as many climate scientists do, with a rote obligatory statement of optimism likely motivated by the same fears he earlier cited to explain scientists’ reticence to publish “alarmist” predictions. After painting such a vivid picture of our likely futures, and finding geo-engineering projects and other “green tech” solutions appropriately unlikely to save us in the end, he rejects anti-natalism as a potential solution, arguing that having children endows us with more reason to fight for climate justice (page 285):
My one insistence would be that sacrifices made must be fairly shared—we cannot demand carbon cuts at the expense of entrenching or worsening human poverty and inequality.
Pessimists sometimes gloomily ask me whether they should still have children, or whether the future is now so bad that they must remain childless and lonely. My response is unequivocal: of course you should have children! Bear children, love them, and then fight for their future with every fibre of your being. To my mind merchants of doom are no better than merchants of doubt. By all means grieve for what is lost, but focus that emotional pain into determination, resolution and renewed hope. Never despair, because there will always be someone who life it is not yet too late to save. That person might even be your child.
Setting aside the first paragraph’s clear incongruence with the second (urging the predominantly white, Western readers of this book to have children does direct damage to developing nations in terms of emissions, future economic exploitation in their name, and even crowds out potential refugees), the argument that having children is necessary for or even conducive to the development of an environmental consciousness, given that those who are apprehensive about having children in the first place are already clearly concerned, is specious and implies that we are incapable of caring for one another or the children of those who have already had them. To end such a rich, devastating work with this obligatory message which undermines much of the text is another example of the dangers of climate optimism, which has been explored on this site many times previously.
One recent example of the optimism pitfall: it was recently revealed that mature trees can store twice as much carbon as previously thought, but this presents both an opportunity and a more powerful cause for alarm.
UK forests lock away twice as much planet-warming carbon as previously thought, a new study reveals.
The study using lasers and 3D scanning showed that old trees in particular were critical to fighting climate change.
The research mapped almost 1,000 trees in Wytham Wood in Oxfordshire.
"We've found significantly more carbon stored here," said Dr Kim Calders, from Ghent University….
As well as being important ecosystems, healthy forests remove planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Prof Disney says the new findings show that, for every square kilometre of woodland lost, "we potentially lose almost twice the carbon sink capacity we thought".
Seedlings might replace these established trees, which are being felled, burned, and desiccated at an accelerating rate, but these seedlings require time to grow and are often planted out of obligation to carbon offset schemes which do not even require the seedlings be protected. From The Nation, an article concerning the mismanagement of our natural woodland resources and the impact this is having on both carbon release and potential sequestration:
If my small backyard fire was a personal wake-up call, the 2021 Dixie fire was a four-alarm blaze. On its rampage from the Feather River Canyon through Lassen Volcanic National Park and beyond, it destroyed my adopted town of Greenville, 160 miles northeast of San Francisco. In fact, it torched close to a million acres. Nearly half of them burned so intensely that the once-majestic, now blackened pine and fir forests there may never again support the biologically diverse ecosystems that drew me here so long ago.
The single-largest fire in California’s history, Dixie was part of a record-breaking fire year globally. Around the world, fires burned nearly 23 million acres, an area almost the size of Portugal. Dixie contributed to the worldwide loss to fire of more than a third of the tree cover that disappeared in those 12 months, according to a report from the World Resources Institute. And this is only a preview of what’s to come. Scientists believe that there may be a 30 percent increase in extreme fires globally by 2050.
Such an acceleration of forest fires will, it seems, spare few parts of the world. Fires, burning longer and hotter, are already flaring in unexpected places, shattering assumptions about what’s safe, let alone normal. Even the Arctic, that remote expanse of sea ice, treeless permafrost, and minus-40-degree Celsius temperatures, home to polar bears, lemmings, and snowy owls, is now beginning to burn. After July 2019, the hottest month on record so far, fires erupted across the Arctic Circle in Alaska, Greenland, and Siberia. As temperatures soared to as much as six degrees Celsius above normal, flames spurted across an expanse of tundra larger than England.
Arctic fires are particularly worrisome because of the vast amounts of carbon locked beneath that frozen soil. Much of it, after all, is peatlands, largely formed at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago. Although it covers just 3 percent of Earth’s surface, peat sequesters 42 percent of the carbon stored in all other types of vegetation, including the world’s forests. Global warming is now drying out that peat, making it ever more susceptible to fire. As it burns, of course, it releases that carbon.
This rapid, unrelenting loss of existing forests is all the more terrifying given this new knowledge about mature trees’ sequestration capabilities. The kind of optimism Lynas relies on to adopt a pro-natalist position is the kind which would take the first article as proof that the environment is more salvageable, not less, given that we only have to plant trees which is a simple enough endeavor. It is likely that he will soon come to amend his arguments on this topic.
Still, disregarding the blinkered final thought, the various ‘degree disasters’ Lynas predicts in Our Final Warning are crucial reading, and many aspects of each milestone are underexplored in other works (for example, on page 95 he discusses glacial meltwater loss at two degrees and the profound impact this will have on hundreds of millions of people across several continents who depend on this regular supply of fresh water; on page 139, the three degree scenario will result in a staggering loss of food crops, which are more sensitive to temperature than is generally known and are currently mostly located in zones predicted to soon experience sharper than average heat spikes). In any case, finding a work without these misplaced optimistic overtures is nigh impossible, outside of this Substack.
If the human race is indeed living on borrowed time, the question then becomes one of long-term survival of other life on earth. It is likely that if humanity is to vanish, we will take most of the rest of life with us in our struggle to stay afloat. Past a certain point, the sooner and more quietly we disappear, the better for every other life form sharing this planet. An uncomfortable truth: if we were to disappear in 2023, the biosphere would likely be more than capable of rebalancing and restoring itself. As Lynas notes towards the book’s conclusion, life itself emits and sequesters carbon, often in response to environmental ebb and flow, acting to stabilize the climate and ensure the requisite conditions for complex life remain. The human animal fancies itself above above this simple climatic truth, but in the absence of any reasonable long-term survivability concerns, our attention should be paid exclusively to the planet’s remaining life forms to ensure that we do not cause them catastrophic harm on the way out.
This palliative focus should be our new impetus for action, to preserve what is left of our civilization and our race, and this necessitates preserving what is left of the natural world which sustains both of these things. A cursory reading of our history indicates that we lack the self-awareness and long-term collective wisdom to prevent our flailing death throes from taking the rest of life itself with us as we circle the drain, however. Some of these death throes will be destructive to nature yet necessary to preserve the lives of the innocent indigents who had the least to do with our current predicament, such as increasing use of air conditioning by those who can still afford it. Do we ask these bystanders to forego their right to life to preserve some part of the biosphere in our absence, or do we allow the wholesale exploitation of what nature remains in order to prolong our dying breaths? There is an easy answer, and that is found in abstaining from procreating, which costs nothing and allows the human race to ease itself out of existence, with our final act amounting to an atonement, a protest against the kind of instincts which led us to both our hegemony and our downfall.