The point that global agreements and pledges are insufficient is v solid (though still totally baffling who this is arguing against, no matter how many times I ask).

But the way it's expressed here *really* bugs me. I'm....going to try and explain why it bugs me. https://twitter.com/dwallacewells/status/1331590427980521478

First of all: this climbing CO2 PPM curve isn't just saying "climate pledges don't work" - it's saying "literally nothing we have done so far works".

Supplant Very Serious pledges and global agreements and meetings with grassroots activism, documentaries promoted by Michael Moore, shiny new technologies, aggressive divestment movements...you get the same result.

It's all pointless, terrible, and therefore shouldn't be done.

Where pledges *are* treated like they alone are sufficient - take them down several notches. But to frame them as *ineffective* - based on the CO2 PPM curve - is extremely misleading. There are millions of other factors blending in here: confounding variables.

There have been herculean efforts for vaccines and implementation of COVID19 infec controls. But that tragic curve of lives lost keeps climbing.

This tells us we've failed to do enough, but it doesn't tell us vaccine research or those controls are dead ends we should ditch.

I think there is an ugly instinct behind things like this chart (not from @dwallacewells but in wider usage). I think it becomes a way to dismiss *any* effort as a multi-decadal dead-end, perhaps to offer the 'right' way, or just to enjoy stepping on ppl trying.

An example: When Michael Moore *did* release his film, he paired it with a really specific declaration: 'big environment groups have been trying for decades and they've failed - emissions keep rising!!'

https://ketanjoshi.co/2020/05/08/the-great-giving-up-and-the-film-that-made-it-worse/

Ditto for renewables: how many times have we seen the tiny sliver of renewables as a proportion of primary energy presented as proof they're a dead end, because they're not making a dent in that chart? https://twitter.com/csiroperfidy/status/885090401585070080

Yeah. We know renewables are insufficient. We know environment groups are insufficient. We know pledges are too, and so are climate marches and XR actions and divestment and corporate PPAs and me cycling my kid to childcare every day.

we
know
this

We also know that we don't see a signal in the noise until - after decades of hard work from people who accept insufficiency but sweat and work to the bone anyway - everything aligns, becomes greater than the sum of their parts, and momentum reaches a critical point.

It is extremely good to criticise things that are counter-productive, or things that are hailed as effective but are anything but (Hi Climate Pledge Arena), or things that #MustGoFaster but are held back purely by centrist hand-wringing.

This chart? This isn't that, imo.

And finally - putting aside the fact that logic of the graphic itself is kind of mean-spirited, it isn't mathematically accurate either. Because there is no baseline to compare a lack of the presence of that labelled action to. https://twitter.com/DrSimEvans/status/1331595213761114114

Dig into the historical predictions of fossil fuel trajectories, and you see one story: an industry that was set to balloon over the 2020s and 2030s has been nudged into decline (one that is still too slow: we are fucking working on it, give us a break!)

https://twitter.com/sustainablejohn/status/1331392032917446658

Another final point - it turns out the fossil fuel industry is massive, eye-wateringly rich, genuinely and properly evil and willing to use their power to crush efforts to stop their march towards the sabotage of our entire species??? Turns out it's hard to deal with that!!!

If you want to gauge whether something *works*, averaging out your metric of efficacy across *every action taken by every single living human across a whole bunch of decades amongst a whole bunch of natural variables* is a really, really, really, really misleading thing to do.

If you say "global climate pledges are both over-sold in their efficacy and frequently serve as places for inaction and cronyism to hide" - you are 100% correct. I spend much of my time arguing this. But I won't make my case by pretending like they're meant to fix climate alone.

Sorry, it's maddening. I see it everywhere, not just in this, and it's mostly done with little consideration of what deeper implications there are about making arguments like that. The end!

A random follow up question to this thread - why isn't success ever defined?

Because a levelling off would mean 0 fossil emissions. Is the Paris agreement bad because emissions didn't' drop to zero immediately? What was the *expectation* - and who formed it, and based on what?

Inspired by this important slide in the latest #CarbonBudget report, explaining why a big COVID19 dip barely had any impact on CO2 PPM. The land and oceans absorb and release CO2 as well: we need to cut CO2 to zero, for a sustained, noticeable impact on that metric.

^^ So yeah: pandemics, climate agreements, activism, tearing down capitalism, never flying again, never driving again, buying 10 shiny teslas, buying 20 hydrogen planes, planting 1bn trees: none alone will bend that curve, and none should be decried for that reason alone.