Global heating has brought us to an alarming moment, and climate scientists are doing their jobs by saying so. Doubling and tripling down, not giving up, is the only way to respond.
This mid-May post was one of our most widely-read ever. It connects powerfully to the United Nations Emissions Gap Report published October 24—for the grief and rage it captured from climate scientists, and for the call to action in the post. As former UN climate secretary Christiana Figueres said at the time, giving up in despair is exactly the wrong conclusion to draw from what the scientists are seeing, hearing, and saying.
May 12, 2024 — Climate scientists poured out their hopelessness and grief this week, and it’s important that everyone listen closely. And then do more than just mirror back their despair. For the scientists, and for the rest of us, everything depends on how we build their latest dire warning into the momentum we need to win.
The news that many of the world’s top climate researchers are left “hopeless and broken” by their work comes from an exhaustive survey of the scientific minds behind the planet’s most authoritative source on global heating, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Guardian approached the 843 “contactable” lead authors and review editors involved with IPCC reports dating back to 2018.
Nearly half of them, 380, answered the call. Many of them “envisage a ‘semi-dystopian’ future, with famines, conflicts, and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods, and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck,” Guardian environment editor Damian Carrington reports.
• Just under 6% of the scientists believe countries will meet the internationally-agreed goal of holding average global warming to 1.5°C. Another 18% place the threshold at 2°.
• 77% expect a temperature increase of at least 2.5°C.
• 61% foresee a rise of 2.5 or 3°C.
• 15% predict an increase between 3.5 and 5°C.
“The 1.5°C target was chosen to prevent the worst of the climate crisis and has been seen as an important guiding star for international negotiations,” Carrington recalls. “Current climate policies mean the world is on track for about 2.7°C, and the Guardian survey shows few IPCC experts expect the world to deliver the huge action required to reduce that.”
empowerment & inner transformation... 