Climate Change

The journal Nature Climate Change has today published new research about the threat of global warming. They call a lack of international will the main reason that bringing global warming under control may be slipping out of reach. In other words, we as a species cannot be really bothered about doing something collectively about this issue.

The industrialized nations need to institute a swift cut in their emissions if we want global temperatures to remain at less than 2C higher than before we discovered oil and steam power. The target had been previously agreed at the 2009 UN conference in Denmark. However, this target now seems unlikely to be met because we simply cannot organise ourselves on a global basis.

Another study in the same journal suggests that this threshold may well be crossed within thirty years and places the date between 2040 and 2060. That is, of course, if we haven’t bred ourselves out of existence by then – and pushed other species out of the way by so doing.

That brings me to these amazing pictures by artist David Blackwell who draws attention to the plight of these species in a way that a thousand words could not. Perhaps some international environmental agency could ask him if they could use these – it might help, even just a little.