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 latest 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.
The scientists, and the Guardian, have every good reason to raise the alarm.
And that means it's up to all of us to double and triple down on climate solutions.
Read the rest of this commentary here.