It’s gotten serious

It seems that every day we wake up to more and more news of more devastating cyclones and tornados; unprecedented heat waves in Britain, Europe, China, South East Asia and in the oceans; more homes jobs and life-destroying floods and bushfires around the world; unprecedented drought in the once reliable food bowls of Europe, seemingly never-ending droughts in parts of Africa. But still, we don’t really do anything about it.

Did we think that tarmacs would melt and close airports; roads would melt on the 2022 Tour de France route; that France would run out of mustard; that lavender fields and vineyards would dry up and die; and the output of nuclear power plants and their safety measures would be compromised because of unprecedented droughts around the world?   

These are not just due to “nature doing its thing”. They are due to human-induced climate change and its getting worse faster than we thought it would.

The experts that have been trying to tell us we need to do something for years, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), has released its sixth assessment report.

This tells us yet again that we are heading towards making much of our planet unliveable; that we have the solutions to turn this around; but we need to act on them now.

The IPCC Report sends a dire warning to us all.  This decade is our last chance and we have to make big changes from now.

Why do we just pretend it is not happening and mostly go on with business and life as usual?

We need stop opening new fossil fuel projects; stop logging forests and large-scale land clearing. We need to decarbonise our transport and energy systems, and make a massive investment in nature-based capture of Carbon. We need to stop consuming so much and producing so much waste. And we need do it soon.

We need to put up with an overall lower standard of living than what we have now - but if we don’t reduce our global emissions, we won’t have a standard of living at all.

It’s gotten that serious.