What Lies BeneathTHE UNDERSTATEMENT OF EXISTENTIAL CLIMATE RISK
BY DAVID SPRATT & IAN DUNLOP | FOREWORD BY HANS JOACHIM SCHELLNHUBER
Revised and updated August 2018
From the introduction:
In his book 1984 , George Orwell describes a
double-think totalitarian state where most of the
population accepts “the most flagrant violations
of reality, because they never fully grasped the
enormity of what was demanded of them,
and were not sufficiently interested in public
events to notice what was happening. By lack of
understanding they remained sane.”
Orwell could have been writing about climate
change and policymaking. International
agreements talk of limiting global warming to
1.5–2 degrees Celsius (°C), but in reality they set
the world on a path of 3–5°C of warming. Goals
are reaffirmed, only to be abandoned. Coal is
“clean”. Just 1°C of warming is already dangerous,
but this cannot be admitted. The planetary future
is hostage to myopic national self-interest. Action
is delayed on the assumption that as yet unproven
technologies will save the day, decades hence. The
risks are existential, but it is “alarmist” to say so.
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