By David Spratt
The eminent Australian climate scientist, and former Labor government advisor and head of climate at ANU, Will Steffen, who died early this week from complications following cancer surgery, will be remembered for some of the big, crucial ideas he and his collaborators contributed to the understanding of the Earth System, particularly planetary boundaries, climate tipping point vulnerabilities and cascades, risk and nonlinearity, and the “Hothouse Earth” scenario.Particularly in the last few years, Steffen was very clear and forthright in communicating the threat and the dynamics of the climate system, and the trajectory towards collapse:
"Given the momentum in both the Earth and human systems, and the growing difference between the ‘reaction time’ needed to steer humanity towards a more sustainable future, and the ‘intervention time’ left to avert a range of catastrophes in both the physical climate system (e.g., melting of Arctic sea ice) and the biosphere (e.g., loss of the Great Barrier Reef), we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse … That is, the intervention time we have left has, in many cases, shrunk to levels that are shorter than the time it would take to transition to a more sustainable system.”