The “State of Climate Action 2025” report from the World Resources Institute found that the world’s governments are failing on all 45 indicators of progress towards limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees. Of these, 29 indicators are “well off track”, meaning at least a twofold and for most a fourfold acceleration of progress is needed to meet end-of-decade targets.
Five indicators—the carbon intensity of steel production, the share of kilometres travelled by passenger cars, mangrove loss, share of food production lost, and public fossil fuel finance—are heading in the wrong direction.
There is not even enough data to analyse the trend for the remaining five: the rate of retrofitting buildings, the share of new buildings which are zero-carbon, peatland degradation, peatland restoration and food waste.
You: what does this word mean?
Them: five paragraphs of explanation.
You: I dunno… seems fishy.
Me: The Earth is round.
Them: Several seemingly legitimate paragraphs, patiently explaining that it’s flat.
Me: …
Someone else brought up the term “neoliberal” and I might have gone along with that. A prefix can do a lot of heavy lifting in allowing the rest of a word to mean something else entirely, even opposing the original meaning.
What I’m gathering is that economists have redefined the original word, and what I think of as liberal, they call progressive.
Liberals have never been progressive.