I’ve been exploring the topic of climate change recently, and find the rate of change frankly scary. A New Scientist article this week is suggesting that El Niño in 2024 will probably cause the temperature increase to reach 1.5oC well before earlier forecasts. 1.5 is significant because it is the temperature at which change is deemed to be irreversible, a tipping point. Pictured is the cover of a collection of articles pulled together by Greta Thunberg. The book,’The Climate Book’, is much thicker than I expected but I recommend it. Knowledge is power and all that. The cover is simple but powerful, showing the average temperature progression over the last 200+ years. Greta comments ‘to solve this problem, we need to understand it’, and the articles are wide ranging, written by experts, and will help understanding.

I don’t have answers to the ultimate challenge of getting politicians and businesses to move from words to action, often very much against self interest, but if they don’t the consequences are very predictable. So predictable in fact that 50 years ago major chemical company scenario planning, recently disclosed, shows that their predictions were remarkably accurate, and basically ignored, or worse used to develop counter climate change narratives.

Is it too late? I don’t know, but it is certainly not the time for decision makers to be setting 30 year targets, ignoring the short term - which is all we have left to make a difference. Personally I’m as guilty as many of not seeing the need for urgent action, nor really prepared to radically change my way of living to do my bit… so I guess we’ll all get what we deserve and what future generations probably didn’t.