California Wildfires & the 1.5°C Barrier: Is Humanity Headed for Collapse? || Acharya Prashant (2025)
Video Information: 14.01.2025, Vedanta: Basics to Classics, Goa
Description:
The recent California wildfires have highlighted the devastating impact of climate change, particularly on affluent communities. With the breach of the 1.5°C temperature threshold, the potential for severe feedback cycles increases, exacerbating climate issues. Despite ambitious targets set by the Paris Agreement, current plans project only minimal reductions in emissions, indicating a significant gap between goals and reality.
The prevailing philosophy that equates happiness with consumption drives carbon emissions, contributing to the climate crisis. Effective solutions to climate change cannot be achieved solely through political agreements or technological advancements; instead, a fundamental shift in human values and wisdom is essential. Without this transformation, the exploitation of the planet is likely to continue, leading to further environmental degradation and crises. The urgency of addressing these issues is paramount, as the consequences of inaction will affect future generations.
🎧 Listen to Acharya Prashant on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2QmVEAAnsNE7Xs0MW0Li8Y?si=09fbcbc7c99c469b
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Video Information: 14.01.2025, Vedanta: Basics to Classics, Goa
Description:
The recent California wildfires have highlighted the devastating impact of climate change, particularly on affluent communities. With the breach of the 1.5°C temperature threshold, the potential for severe feedback cycles increases, exacerbating climate issues. Despite ambitious targets set by the Paris Agreement, current plans project only minimal reductions in emissions, indicating a significant gap between goals and reality.
The prevailing philosophy that equates happiness with consumption drives carbon emissions, contributing to the climate crisis. Effective solutions to climate change cannot be achieved solely through political agreements or technological advancements; instead, a fundamental shift in human values and wisdom is essential. Without this transformation, the exploitation of the planet is likely to continue, leading to further environmental degradation and crises. The urgency of addressing these issues is paramount, as the consequences of inaction will affect future generations.
🎧 Listen to Acharya Prashant on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2QmVEAAnsNE7Xs0MW0Li8Y?si=09fbcbc7c99c469b
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Mankind has silently decided, voted in favor of a collective suicide.
00:07We are headed towards a mass extinction.
00:11And we don't want to talk about it because it's our own choice.
00:15Don't be surprised by individual instances of wildfires, etc.
00:19These are going to become daily occurrences, sometimes twice a day.
00:24Once in the US, in the morning, in the evening you hear something from France or Australia.
00:29Why talk of a localized event like the US wildfires?
00:33Residents flee for their lives. Homes are destroyed.
00:37It just looks like some sort of apocalypse.
00:41All 29 fire departments in our county are not prepared for this type of widespread disaster.
00:53The symptoms might be local. The problem is planetary.
00:56Forget about meeting the problem effectively.
00:59Most of us avoid even looking at the problem.
01:03And this hunt for pleasure is the wildfire that you are seeing.
01:07There can be no political, legal or technological solution to climate change.
01:13Climate change is the final crisis.
01:17It is the endgame. And it requires a final solution.
01:27Namaste Acharya ji.
01:30Recently, the Californian wildfires were in the news.
01:34And I was reading about them. And they have been quite devastating.
01:38And probably for the first time, I am seeing that climate change is actually knocking at the doors of the affluent ones.
01:45As of now, I see that there are 12,000 homes that have been destroyed completely.
01:50Around 200,000 people have been displaced.
01:54And the damages are being expected to be around 275 billion USD.
02:04And at the same time, I also saw one of the news that last year, 2024,
02:10we have exceeded the 1.5 degree temperature limit as the scientists were predicting for the climate change, if you want to control it.
02:19So, looking at all these news and everything that is going around,
02:23I was just thinking that where are we heading?
02:26And what's going to happen for the future of this planet?
02:34My guess is as good as yours.
02:38The writing is on the wall.
02:42I don't think any of us need any special assistance now in reading it.
02:56It's not just about the 1.5 degree centigrade threshold being breached.
03:04In fact, they are going to take at least one decade and a half more to officially admit that as a climate pattern.
03:16Two or three successive years of average temperature rise do not suffice by meteorological definition.
03:30Do not suffice by meteorological definition to be called a trend.
03:40Statistically, it can still be called an exception, a fluke.
03:48So, it is only by 2035 or 40 that it will be officially admitted that we have breached the 1.5 degree limit.
04:01The problem is we do not have 15 more years.
04:08At some point between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees, as I have often said,
04:16the feedback cycles, they get activated.
04:22By the time you come around to admitting that you have truly crossed the 1.5 degrees barrier,
04:36you will find that you have already reached 3 degrees or 4 degrees or who knows 6 degrees.
04:44There is so little discussion on feedback cycles in the climate discourse that it astonishes intelligence.
05:02The Paris Agreement stipulated that we will reduce carbon levels by 45 degrees by 2030
05:24and we will come to a net zero position by 2050.
05:34And if we are able to do this much, then we will be able to limit temperature rise to 1.5 or 2 degrees centigrade.
05:50This was the ambitious target. Mind you, we were not targeting to reverse climate change.
05:59The target itself was quite lowly. The target was to do something to limit the rise to just 1.5 degrees.
06:11And even to limit the rise to that point, you need to cut down emissions by almost 50%, 43% to be exact, by 2030.
06:22Now if that is the macro target for 2030, then all countries were required to come with their own national deliverables.
06:39Because if the entire planet's emissions are to be cut down, then each country has to come up with a plan for reducing their own emissions.
06:53So all countries prepared their own plans for 2030 and you know even if we stick to those plans, all that those plans would give us is a 2.6% reduction by 2030.
07:11First of all, we set a very low target and then what we are doing or what we propose to do with respect to that target would take us only to the extent of 2.6% compared to the 40% reduction that is needed.
07:38And that is needed just to halt the rise to 1.5 degrees.
07:43And the way we are today as we enter 2025, we are all set to exceed the emission levels of 2010 and 2019.
08:10These are the two reference points that the Paris Agreement uses.
08:15Forget about reduction, forget about 43% reduction, forget out even 2% reduction.
08:22We are actually increasing our emissions and the increase will be even more substantial by 2030.
08:31So I do not know how the future is anymore a surprise.
08:37I said the writing is on the wall loud and clear.
08:41Mankind has silently decided, voted in favor of a collective suicide.
08:55We are headed towards a mass extinction and we do not want to talk about it because it is our own choice.
09:07Why talk about it?
09:09You talk about something when there is still something left to be decided.
09:14All that needed to be decided has been done and frozen and there is nothing to be thought of.
09:38Are you getting it?
09:421.5 degrees is a very very sensitive point.
09:50It is not that arbitrarily some figure was chosen.
09:551.5 degrees was chosen.
09:57An important reason was this is the point after which the feedback cycles will set in.
10:07We do not know exactly when 1.6, 1.8, 2.0, 2.1 but the risk substantially increases after 1.5.
10:18In fact some feedback cycles start even before 1.5.
10:22So those feedback cycles are there and once they start operating there is no limit to temperature rise.
10:34And it becomes irreversible and uncontrollable.
10:38Then carbon addition to the atmosphere does not depend on anthropogenic carbon emission.
10:48You enter a situation where carbon will keep being added to the atmosphere even if human beings through their activities are not emitting any carbon at all.
11:02Still the planet on its own would keep adding carbon to the atmosphere and therefore there would be resultant temperature hike.
11:13We have come to that point now.
11:17Don't be surprised by individual instances of wildfires etc.
11:23These are going to become daily occurrences.
11:29Sometimes twice a day.
11:32Once in the US, in the morning, in the evening you hear something from France or Australia.
11:47What are these feedback cycles?
11:52I have repeatedly spoken about them because they are the most dangerous thing staring at us today.
12:01They pertain to ice, they pertain to water and they pertain to wood.
12:08You can classify them this way very simply in three.
12:15What are the feedback cycles pertaining to ice?
12:20Ice being white in color is a great reflector of radiation.
12:27But when ice melts it exposes the dark soil, stone or sediment beneath and that being dark absorbs radiation.
12:43Since it absorbs radiation its temperature rises.
12:47When its temperature rises more ice melts.
12:50When more ice melts more stone is exposed or soil.
12:55It absorbs more temperature, more radiation and more ice melts and that way a very troublesome, very dangerous cycle starts.
13:10Similarly, the soil beneath the ice contains a lot of trapped carbon and that has remained historically trapped beneath the ice.
13:31In the Arctic, in the Antarctic, on other glaciers in the world, even in the tropics.
13:45When the ice is removed then the carbon that was trapped in the soil, the soil is organic matter, it contains carbon, that carbon is released.
13:57Often that carbon is not just carbon dioxide but methane. Why?
14:02Because below the ice there is not sufficient oxygen available.
14:08So carbon does not turn into carbon dioxide.
14:12Instead there is an anaerobic reaction leading to formation of methane.
14:20And the global warming potential of methane as you know is 80 times more than that of carbon dioxide.
14:30Then we know of permafrosts.
14:36They are beyond the Arctic and the Antarctic.
14:41The soil is there but the water in the soil remains frozen.
14:50It is not as if there is a layer of ice.
14:53There is the soil but the temperatures are so low that the water in the soil at least in the top layer remains frozen.
15:07Since it remains frozen it does not allow the carbon in the soil to escape.
15:14But the permafrost is receding very rapidly and it is again releasing carbon dioxide, methane.
15:27And the more methane is released the more temperature rises.
15:33The more temperature rises the more ice or permafrost melts.
15:39The more it melts the more methane is released.
15:42The more methane the more temperature, the more temperature the more melting, the more melting the more methane, that's the cycle.
15:50It's just that when the ice melts, mind you, it's not just carbon that you release.
15:55You also release very very primitive kinds of virus.
15:59They were lying dormant beneath the thick ice sheets.
16:08Viruses as you know, they do not die.
16:12Just by being dormant they do not die.
16:15They are in that sense like chemicals.
16:18Water does not die.
16:19In some sense similarly virus too does not die.
16:23For thousands and millions of years viruses can remain safely stored like a chemical beneath ice or just below surface soil, topsoil.
16:41The ice is gone. What happens to the virus?
16:44Out. No, that doesn't have much to do with the virus.
16:46Out. No, that doesn't have much to do with global warming.
16:50But just, you know, as a side, as an appetizer I am serving it.
16:58Then comes to the feedback cycles associated with water.
17:06Water vapor by itself is a greenhouse gas.
17:12You increase the temperature of the oceans and there is more evaporation.
17:21And that water vapor traps more heat and that leads to more temperature and that leads to more evaporation and that leads to more water vapor.
17:32The oceans absorb 90% of atmospheric heat. They are the biggest sink.
17:38So when you trap more heat in the atmosphere it is the oceans that get heated up.
17:46The sea level rises on two counts.
17:49One melting of ice, second thermal expansion of water.
17:54Warm water expands so the sea level will rise.
17:58Additionally ice is melting so sea level will rise.
18:02Another phenomenon.
18:05Warm water absorbs less CO2 compared to cold water.
18:10So the capacity of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide reduces.
18:18So more carbon dioxide remains in the air.
18:24This is what happens at the surface of the ocean.
18:26This is what happens at the surface of the ocean.
18:29You come to the belly of the ocean.
18:32What do you find there?
18:39You know of the coral reefs right?
18:43They are very very temperature sensitive and they are organic in nature.
18:48When the sea temperature rises the reefs they decompose and when they decompose what do they emit?
19:01Again carbon dioxide.
19:03So a big quantity of carbon dioxide that was lying trapped in the reefs that is released into the atmosphere.
19:10Again relating to water, peatlands, the coastal areas or sometimes the inner areas that are always inundated.
19:33So there is soil but there is a column of water always above that soil.
19:40So that soil was never directly getting exposed to the air.
19:50When there is temperature rise or due to human intervention the water is cleared away.
19:57Then the soil after hundreds and thousands of years suddenly gets exposed to air and what does that soil release? Methane.
20:07Because that soil was covered with water so it never got to react with oxygen.
20:14So again it turned into methane rather than carbon dioxide.
20:19And then you clear the water because you want to build a township there or because the water is anyway receding.
20:29Again tons of carbon dioxide gets released from there and tons is a small number you always measure it in tons.
20:39It's a figure of millions of tons.
20:44Then you go to the bottom of the ocean.
20:50You have methane hydrates there that are again very temperature sensitive.
20:59Now methane hydrate is not dangerous but the moment it gets heated up methane hydrate decomposes to give methane.
21:11And the more methane is liberated the more the temperature rises the more the methane hydrates decompose.
21:17Then there is wood. We talked of ice, we talked of water then there is wood.
21:30Wood is a wonderful thing. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and turn it into something extremely beautiful called wood.
21:41What is wood? Carbon dioxide plus soil.
21:49You take soil from below and carbon dioxide from above and the result is wood.
21:57So wood is carbon sequestered. Carbon has been absorbed and turned into wood.
22:03What a beautiful way of reducing carbon dioxide from atmosphere.
22:06But the same wood turns very dangerous when climate change intensifies.
22:18Because now there will be extreme weather events.
22:21More heat, more cyclones, more logging, more felling.
22:26And when wood falls then it becomes an emitter of carbon dioxide.
22:37Because wood is organic material.
22:40When wood would decay it would release carbon dioxide.
22:48Instead of becoming an absorber it becomes an emitter.
22:51And the more the trees are felled, the more the trees, that is the fallen trees emit carbon dioxide
23:03and that intensifies climate change and that leads to the falling of even more trees.
23:22Are you getting it?
23:26Why talk of a localized event like the US wildfires?
23:32The symptoms might be local.
23:37The problem is planetary.
23:41Forget about meeting the problem effectively.
23:51Most of us avoid even looking at the problem.
23:56Because looking at the problem would involve questioning the very center humankind operates from.
24:03What is carbon?
24:07Carbon is a result of the flawed life philosophy mankind has.
24:14As long as we are conditioned, trained, educated to believe that we exist to be happy
24:26and that happiness is a product of consumption, there would be carbon emission.
24:32I often say it's not emission, it's emotion.
24:37The more we are told that there is value in having pleasurable experiences and emotions,
24:50the more there would be emissions.
24:55Our happiness, our emotions, that's what emissions are.
25:02The more prosperous you are, the more you emit.
25:08The more you chase happiness, the more you emit carbon.
25:17Unless we are educated to find right avenues of joy,
25:28we will continue to hunt for pleasure.
25:33And this hunt for pleasure is the wildfire that you are seeing.
25:43There can be no political, legal or technological solution to climate change.
25:54Climate change is the final crisis.
26:03It is the endgame and it requires a final solution.
26:09A solution that cannot come by the cheap methods
26:18of tinkering with matter and creating new technologies.
26:25It is also not something that can come with political leaders parlaying and signing agreements.
26:37If you want to address climate change really, you will have to inculcate wisdom in human beings.
26:51When I say that, a lot of people find that utopian, impractical.
26:57Might be utopian, might be impractical, but that's the only feasible solution.
27:05Call it impractical if you would, but that would not help your case.
27:10If it sounds impractical, make it practical. It depends on you.
27:19Unless we are educated in the right philosophy of life,
27:35why will we stop being exploitative towards the planet? There is no reason.
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