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"Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future"

Clarion call roundup of where we are and where we’re going with climate change. Sort of an Inconvenient Truth for 2021.

We report three major and confronting environmental issues that have received little attention and require urgent action. First, we review the evidence that future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than currently believed. The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms—including humanity—is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts. Second, we ask what political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action. Third, this dire situation places an extraordinary responsibility on scientists to speak out candidly and accurately when engaging with government, business, and the public. We especially draw attention to the lack of appreciation of the enormous challenges to creating a sustainable future.

Article for the general public:

The report itself:

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It is so difficult to think the “unthinkable”. And there is also this (one translation of) poem from Kobayashi Issa:

This world of dew
is only a world of dew –
and yet

the most under-appreciated ready to scale first step is right under our feet:

there is a window of opportunity to bypass the inertia of status quo by shifting the incentive systems encouraging the reduction of fossil fuel based chemicals in agriculture. A carbon tax to increase the input cost, and a credit for carbon sequestration into soil. That window will not stay open for long.

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