Groucho Marxism

We are currently in a period of unprecedented warm weather here in the UK. Temperatures of 35°C or higher have now been recorded in May, June and July of the same year for the first time in Britain since records began. And it’s not just the UK that’s suffering in the heat. With temperatures spiking across the world, it seems likely that 2026 will be the hottest year on record globally. Moreover, this year is not an anomaly. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the 11 years prior to this one were the 11 hottest on record. In the past, climate change deniers could claim there was no evidence that the world is getting warmer. Up until the 1990s, and even into the 2000s, evidence that global warming was taking place was strong but not conclusive. That is demonstrably not the case anymore.

The science tells us that this global warming is being caused by human activity. More specifically, it is being caused by increased greenhouse gas emissions creating a strengthened greenhouse effect. This is the process by which the earth’s surface temperature is kept around 30°C higher than it would be otherwise, a difference necessary to support life. The strengthening of this effect has led to global mean surface temperatures increasing by over 1°C since the 1850s. This might not sound like much but it represents a massive shift in the Earth’s total energy balance and masks huge local variations, whereby the hottest temperatures in regional climates can spike by 5°C or more. That is why countries like the UK are experiencing increasingly dangerous summer heatwaves.

The greenhouse gas emissions which drive global warming have been rising steadily since the mid-1980s and reached a record level in 2022, according to the WMO. This suggests that things are only going to get hotter. Precise forecasts of future warming are difficult and tend to be based on a range of scenarios. But even the most sanguine forecasts predict that temperatures will continue to rise. The existence of so-called ‘tipping points’, which occur when a positive feedback effect reinforces global warming, means that the temperatures will not necessarily increase in proportion to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. One such tipping point might occur if methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, starts to be released from melting permafrost.

Just as there is a wide range of forecasts for temperature rises, there is a wide range of forecasts for the resultant environmental impacts. But again, even the most sanguine forecasts predict that these impacts will be severe. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a 1.5°C increase in global mean surface temperatures could put around 15% of species at risk of extinction, put around 1 billion people at risk of drought, put around 2 billion more people at risk of floods, and cause around an 80% decline in the extent of coral reefs. These forecasts are based on a 1.5°C increase above the baseline 1850 level, and we have almost reached that point already. The impacts will become even more severe if the global temperatures increase further than that, as they almost certainly will.

These forecasts point to a rapidly worsening environmental situation and raise the question of whether it is already too late to do anything to mitigate these impacts. Some argue that because greenhouse gas concentrations and global temperatures will remain high for the foreseeable future and some climate impacts are already irreversible, there is no point taking action. This is fatalistic nonsense. In reality, the severity of the impacts with vary enormously depending on what action is taken. According to the IPCC, we can limit the global mean surface temperature rise to 2°C with immediate and deep action to cut greenhouse gas emissions. This undermines the free-market theory that it will only be possible to tackle global warming at some unspecified point in the future when incomes have risen sufficiently.

If nothing is done over the coming years and environmental disaster results, the ruling class will inevitably resort to trying to find a quick fix for the problem. One such fix, known as carbon capture and storage, involves removing CO2 directly from the atmosphere and storing it away where it can’t do any harm. Indeed, the scenario proposed by the IPCC under which we can limit the global mean surface temperature rise to 2°C assumes that some CO2 is removed from the atmosphere in this way. But at present this technology is unproven and has not been developed on the scale needed to make a significant impact. Another potential fix is reforestation, which would also remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but this is unlikely to make a significant impact even if implemented on a global scale.

There is now overwhelming evidence that global warming is happening, is being caused by human activity, and is having a negative impact on the environment. Despite this there are still those who deny some or all of these facts. These people question not only data but also the motives and integrity of climate experts, and have been given more confidence with the election of far-right wingnut and climate change denier Donald Trump. This is to some extent understandable and is an example of the so-called ‘ostrich effect’: the cognitive bias whereby people ‘bury their head in the sand’ by avoiding learning of potentially negative but useful information to prevent psychological discomfort. We must always be mindful of this effect when laying out the case for action on global warming.