In the lead-up to the ongoing COP talks, Ethical Corporation Magazineinterviewed Johan Rockström:
Action is critical because the world must stay within a “ridiculously small” remaining carbon budget of just 250 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, if we’re to have any hope of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees.
But Rockstrom is not just deeply worried about the climate impacts of failure.
“I’m very nervous, as many are in the scientific community, that we’re losing the trust from citizens across the world, and particularly from young generations (so) that we may not even have more than one COP meeting remaining, but certainly very few, where we can continue giving beautiful promises with basically zero delivery.”
Science says the window to keep to 1.5 degrees is still open, “but as soon as you integrate that with a discussion on political leadership, on the ability of economies in the world, of industry to really deliver – that’s when stakeholders across the entire world say ‘we’ve lost it, it’s impossible, we will simply fail’.”
