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The risks of climate disaster demand straight talking
The risks of climate disaster demand straight talking - FT.com
By Howard Covington and Chris Rapley
our limitations and potential are regulated by the capabilities of the least among us.
The risks of climate disaster demand straight talking - FT.com
By Howard Covington and Chris Rapley
These pages often focus on how the eurozone crisis will play out. Yet within a decade, this crisis will resolve itself one way or another. Meanwhile, the more important climate crisis gathers momentum with hardly a word on where it will lead. This is partly because climate change has slipped from the public agenda. But there is also, we suspect, a concern that climate is too contentious and complex a topic for a non-expert commentator to tackle. There may also be a fear that any honest appraisal of the possible course of events risks the charge of alarmism.
In our view, the first is not the case and the second is a poor excuse...
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(massive snip of material that deserves to be read)
...The evidence suggests that humanity is locked into a course that it has limited capacity or appetite to alter. Modern economies are built on fossil-fuelled growth. Changing this model materially and quickly has proved to be untenable in the absence of a disaster. Business-as-usual emissions growth is the consequence. This may well produce a disaster that we will be powerless to redress.
Those with a more optimistic view of human behaviour or of the impact of new technologies and practices may see better prospects of meaningful action to prevent such a disaster. They must be encouraged. Yet we must also prepare for the challenging times ahead. The Science Museum in London plans to create a forum for the public to discuss the issues with leading climate scientists. Such efforts are essential. We must begin to discuss the risks and impacts of a climate disaster, since our institutions and processes appear incapable of preventing it.
The writers are respectively a trustee of Londons Science Museum and chairman of the UKs national mathematics research institute at Cambridge, and a professor of climate science at University College London.
our limitations and potential are regulated by the capabilities of the least among us.