Wretched and not entrancing energy policy podcast

I won’t mention the name of it, but I just listened to an unusually vacuous podcast by Important And Serious People. No gory details, but this – in the discussion of whether 1.5 degrees target was dead, they didn’t even have the wherewithal to look at the history of it as a target (let alone the longer history of other targets). They didn’t seem to understand that pretty much no serious climate scientist thinks we are going to limit warming to 2 (and many privately use much higher numbers). They didn’t seem to be keeping an eye on the emissions data and the atmospheric concentrations data.

It was cringe hopey-changey stuff. And surely the host knows better? Or maybe, having the job they have, they have to go along with cringe hopey-changey? There’s such an optimism bias built into “responsible” and “elite” discourse on this stuff. It’s all fine, until a black swan starts hissing at you, and then you don’t know what the hell to do.

Anyway, the whole thing cast a pall over the other two topics on the podcast. I guess I can trust the guests to have analysed those two things – which were less emotionally-charged than the 1.5 thing, especially if you’re a breeder (at least one of them was) – correctly. But probably not gonna bother with that podcast again. They’ll live.