Less Time to Spare

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. It just recently released its sixth report, which confirms that we are running out of time. The message of the IPCC report pulls no punches: “We have to raise the ambition level of mitigation for the coming COP26 meeting in Glasgow,” says Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.

It’s hard to get people focused on this issue as a rule, but a summer of forest fires, floods and heat waves may help. Thomas Berry, a theologian who preferred to call himself a geologian, noted the problem in 1978 when few were paying attention. Since the last Paris conference, young activists like Greta Thunberg and the Sunrise Movement have helped spread the word.

One of the things that helps is when scientists sound confident in what they are saying. During the pandemic, for example, tentative messages have created anxiety or distrust when the detractors don’t realize that dealing with a new virus is an exploration. Generally scientific language is conservative. But this time, according to the following Time magazine chart, there is considerably more confidence in their assertions:

The world is undoubtedly more aware. What is required is a real change of how those in the most prosperous part of the world live, especially when our behaviour impacts those in the least prosperous places even more severely. Scientific consensus will be necessary to ward off the very real campaigns of those who have the most to lose - the fossil fuel industries. It’s good to see the confidence of the scientists gaining ground.