02 December 2019

Leading climate researchers: we are in a climate emergency, facing existential risks

Tipping points and potential domino effects
by David Spratt

Last week a new paper in Nature caused a stir and world-wide headlines, and for good reason.

“Climate tipping points - too risky to bet against” by Lenton, Rockstrom, Gaffney, Rahmstrof, Richardson, Steffen and Schellnhuber look at the “evidence on the threat of exceeding (climate system) tipping points, and whether we still have any control over them” because this “helps to define that we are in a climate emergency.”

Now this will be familiar territory to regular readers of this blog. Philip Sutton and I used this language almost 12 years ago in the book “Climate Code Red”, and we have witnessed a recent mass engagement in this idea, including climate emergency declarations by more than 1200 councils around the world, the Oxford Dictionary naming “climate emergency” its word of the year, the resolution last week by the European Parliament, and much more.