They told us to expect increasingly erratic and wilder weather but that if we planned carefully we could keep global temperature rises below 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial level before 2050 and that might enable us to avoid unleashing chaos. It now turns out that they were wrong. We’ve already smashed through that 1.5 degree level 26 years ahead of the plan. As I write air temperatures across the entire planet are 1.
Given the seriousness of this evidence it is surprising that many politicians are telling us that we can safely move slowly, whilst some are telling us to do nothing at all. Yet for many people the reality of the relentless challenge of trying to cope with the cost of living looms a lot larger than the kind of planet we are going to hand down to the next generation. Anyone trying to tackle the problems of global warming needs to recognise this harsh reality.