I’ve marked the calendar to indicate the US election cycle because I live in the US and we’re due for one in a few weeks so it felt like a relevant framing device. Typically elections are about incremental change, taking small steps towards a more just society. A calendar like this can help put our elections, and our choices generally, in their appropriate context. We have seven elections between now and the critical 2030 deadline. Three are presidential elections. It isn’t a lot of time to radically change the course of history, regardless of who is on the ballots.

No confidence 2028

Worse, as the deadline grows near these elections can’t be treated the same. If we aren’t already deep into a process of radical geopolitical transformation by the spring of 2028, if the headlines don’t read “Unbelievably, the climate is on course for a stable future” and “Holy cow, we just might pull this off” throughout the first half of that important year, then there’s no serious hope of initiating such a transformation with a fresh new candidate in the fall of 2028. There’s even less hope for a new crop of candidates in the 2030 midterms. It doesn’t matter which party might win or how inspiring their platform is. If there isn’t already an air of global celebration going into the 2028 US election, then we will know with some confidence that humanity has failed, and our options going forward have changed.

And again, there remains hope for recovery after 2028 with “overshoot” techniques. But the later and warmer it gets, the more likely that overshoot solutions will require risky, expensive geoengineering strategies that are just as likely to increase human suffering as they will decrease temperatures. If we aren’t deep into recovery by 2028, it raises the prospect of putting these risky geoengineering decisions into the hands of the very same political institutions that were unable to negotiate solutions today, when our options are far less severe and ethically complicated. If we can’t trust our political institutions to negotiate the challenges of 2018, it would be unwise, unethical, and profoundly irresponsible to trust those same institutions with continued power to make even riskier decisions in 2028.

So I propose that we collectively start thinking of 2028 as the critical deadline of political confidence. If we aren’t globally on target for staying below +1.5℃ by the start of 2028, we have some responsibility to recognize that our institutions have fundamentally failed us, and we should collectively declare a vote of no confidence. A declaration of no confidence would assert the people’s collective power to render the political framework in its current incarnation null, void, and inert. Perhaps we clean house and start fresh, perhaps we try some attractive alternative frameworks. If we suspect a no confidence vote going into 2028, we ought to be hard at work preparing alternatives beforehand. Regardless of which alternatives we advance, however, we should under no circumstances allow 2028 to pass without fundamental, sweeping political reform. One way or another, our political institutions after 2028 cannot resemble our political institutions before.

Interlude: a confession

If you’re still reading, I’ll suspend my central thesis of optimism for a moment of honesty. I lost confidence in our political process a long time ago. I personally don’t trust our political institutions to manage this challenge. At all. I don’t think there’s enough leverage in the system to counteract the fundamental greed embedded in every facet of global capitalism. If you want my opinion, we should have demanded these sweeping reforms decades ago.

But I’m not here to give my opinion. I’m here to interpret and understand the IPCC report, which condenses the wisdom of the world’s top climate scientists. I can admit that they probably know better than me. And contrary to my own cynical opinion, our best science says it remains possible to work a geopolitical miracle over the next decade. Science is fallible, of course. But I’m willing to take the report at face value and maintain optimism as long as possible. And the report conveniently tells us exactly how long it will be possible: until 2030. So instead of giving up during the closing moments of our last opportunity for humanitarian success, I would rather fight my own cynicism and believe the science and try to pull out the win.

And much as I fucking hate to admit it, the IPCC report simply does not suggest that we must completely dismantle global capitalism for victory, regardless of the clickbait headlines. Full communism is a compelling path to success, but it isn’t the only one. +1.5℃ can be achieved entirely by dismantling the fossil fuel industry and reorganizing global production to be carbon neutral by 2030. Eliminating capitalism would be my own preference, but we don’t have to seize your small business to restructure the energy industry. You can put your Gadsen flag down there, buddy.

In fact, it’s more than a little hasty to equate “dismantle the fossil fuel industry” with “end global capitalism”. Unless you’re a neckbeard arguing about the basic principle of free markets, there’s nothing inherently anti-capitalist about using government powers to prevent conditions that threaten the survival of the very populations which compose those markets. An empty market is only trivially free. It is in the interest of most capitalists to engineer a solution to climate change. The only big losers among the capitalists will be in the energy sector, because their business practices have triggered a global extinction event. If your primary concern is that a coordinated response to climate genocide is somehow anti-capitalist, perhaps your priorities are not where they should be. Any politician with this position is working for the energy industry, and should be treated as an enemy of the people and stripped of power immediately.

If you ask me: fuck the capitalists. Eat the rich. But with respect to our 2030 deadline, we are not faced with a crisis of capitalism. That is simply not the political hurdle we have to climb in the next decade to address climate change. Equating the two makes the task seem much harder than it actually is. And as much as I fucking hate capitalism, the task at hand is ultimately more important than our greater political ambitions. There will be plenty of time to dismantle capitalism in a +1.5℃ world, and in a +6℃ world capitalism will effectively dismantle itself amid the wailing and gnashing of teeth. So let’s please try to focus. Time is a factor.

Besides, when you get right down to it, it’s the oil industry that most desperately wants you to think this task is impossible. That’s really their only chance for surviving the next decade in tact. If the task is impossible, why bother holding them accountable? Why even try? Why not just give up now, and give the oil billionaires a pass to keep soaking up blood money and fucking the planet up?

OH RIGHT BECAUSE 100 MILLION LIVES