Just Tell Us the Truth BBC

**This article is based on the incredible work of my colleague Jon Fuller and the Extinction Rebellion "BBC Tell the Truth" campaign**

There are 5 Truths about the climate and ecological emergency that Jon sets out, that the BBC and most other media outlets will not convey.

The 5 truths. 

1. Black lives matter – people are dying Now.

Gail Bradbrook often refers to 400,000 people killed by climate breakdown every year when she gives public talks. This is taken from ‘DARA International’ research commissioned for the UN. Within that figure are 360,000 infants – killed per year by the increased spread of disease in our 1.1 degree C hotter world. Disease is a terrible way to kill a person, a child; it can take days or weeks to kill. And every tonne of CO2 emitted increases the number killed. Every flight, car trip, etc, contributes to killing more infants.

When a rep of a polluting industry, (e.g. Heathrow) appears on the media arguing for expansion, no interviewer will ever mention the number of children being killed and demand to know how it can be justified that more be killed. 

Never.  It Never happens.

It is too embarrassing and risks exposing how immoral most lifestyles are, including those of virtually every journalist. Talking in terms of moral outrage about the slow killing of black and Asian kids in the poorest countries on the planet is something most people cannot do. It is a truth that cannot be spoken. Jon argues the public must be told, because Black Lives Do Matter. It should be our first demand.

2. Severe climate breakdown is already locked in. 

Even if we turn off the CO2 tap today, we have already committed future generations to at least 2C of additional heating. 

The last time CO2 concentrations reached 415ppm was in the Pliocene Era, 3 million years ago. During that era temperatures were between 2-3C hotter and sea levels were around 50 feet higher. 

If we turn off the CO2 tap now, the pace of global heating will slow down significantly, but we have now locked in significant heating.  

The only way to stop that is to stop emitting greenhouse gases incredibly quickly and begin the task of climate repair – removing everything we have dumped into the atmosphere since around the year 1980, getting CO2 concentrations back down to around 280ppm. 

3. COP21 represents the greatest act of inter-generational theft in history. 

The Paris COP21 agreement stipulates that temperatures by 2100 must be “well below 2C” of heating and adds another ambition - to stabilise temperatures at a 1.5C threshold. 

The COP21 plan is to develop negative emissions technologies and deploy these at vast scale in the second half of this century. The politicians who negotiated COP21 were damn certain they weren’t going to pay for negative emissions and damn certain they wanted their lifestyles to remain unchanged, so they said the young must pay over the 50 year period between 2050 and 2100. 

Most people are probably aware that despite COP21 being agreed by nations we are not on track to hit the target. But, what most people do not know is that COP21 puts the financial burden of stabilising climate on the young. 

The young deserve to know. 

The young deserve to know that this debt is bigger than anything ever planned in history. The UK share could be around ￡8 Trillion. 

4. Runaway climate change has already begun 

The media and campaigners often warn of ‘runaway climate change’. People mean different things by the expression, but Jon argues that runaway climate change has already begun – it just hasn’t yet overwhelmed us

The key is Arctic sea ice and what people refer to as the ‘blue ocean event’. This is when virtually all sea ice has retreated in the summer (in the summer the Sun does not set for around 4 months). At this point, instead of 90% of the Sun’s energy being reflected back into space by white sea ice, the clear ocean will appear black from space, with 94% of the Sun’s energy being absorb by the oceans. Just 6% of the Sun’s energy will be reflected into space. 

Over the last 20 years scientific predictions for when the ‘Blue Ocean Event’ will occur have been brought forward, with a recent study by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) warning the most likely year is 2034, but it could be sooner. So, in around 14 years time, a vast amount of additional solar energy is going to enter the oceans; this will dramatically increase the rate with which permafrost is melting, releasing ever more of the trapped CO2 and methane. This additional heating will also cause the release of methane stored in methane clathrates on the ocean floor. Quite how much methane will be released from a range of sources is unknown but this is likely to transform all life on Earth.

This 4th Truth means that we are now out of time for 2050, 2040 or even 2030 targets. Only drastic, lifestyle changing actions, plus a vast effort to repair climate, can now save us from being overwhelmed by a series of feedbacks. WE have to stop all greenhouse gas emissions And repair climate. The task of repairing climate cannot be understated – this will be the largest industry and endeavour on the planet- ever! 

Here is the NOAA report: - https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/arctic-ice-study 

5. We in the UK could suddenly face food shortages. 

UK food security is poor, we import around 50% of our food. The risk of very abrupt climate change is our greatest national security threat and we need to change the way we feed people now. 

These are the 5 Truths Jon demand's from the BBC. I hope in the coming weeks and months more and more people will make the same demands.

Jon's talk on these issues is here: -

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=2278361929132116