LIKE many aspects of modern life, our response to climate change seems to be increasingly polarised. On one side, we have people saying that rising temperatures mean the world as we know it is just decades from ending and there is nothing we can do to prevent that. On the other, we have those who claim the very notion of human-made climate change is an international conspiracy.
Neither of these extreme positions holds up to scrutiny. Climate change caused by humans isn鈥檛 a conspiracy theory, but it is equally true that global catastrophe isn鈥檛 a foregone conclusion.
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What is certain is that the increasing levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are raising temperatures worldwide, and this process will continue until we stop emitting more of them. In other words, climate change is happening, and we can stop it if we choose to. What is uncertain is what we are actually going to do to combat it.
So we have both certainty and uncertainty to deal with 鈥� 鈥渒nown knowns鈥� and 鈥渒nown unknowns鈥�, to echo former US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld. Unfortunately, humans, both at an individual and societal level, are poorly equipped to deal with such a combination.
Take the known knowns first. Deniers aside, most people are aware that climate change is happening and we need to do something about it. The trouble is, this known is so well known that it has become part of the background hum of everyday life. Very few of us are able to spend an exactly proportionate amount of time worrying about climate change, given everything else that the world demands we pay attention to 鈥� whether that be our jobs, our families, rising inflation, poverty or even war.
鈥淧sychologically, we are completely unsuited to cope with long-term, steadily increasing problems,鈥� says Katherine Hayhoe at Texas Tech University (see 鈥淪preading climate doom may make it harder to halt global warming鈥�). And because public sentiment varies, so, too, does political will to tackle the issue: at the moment, very few governments are willing to have honest conversations with voters about the costs, risks and benefits of addressing climate change, beyond broad pledges to reach net-zero emissions without actually specifying how.
Climate activists, including Greta Thunberg and the Just Stop Oil movement in the UK, have used a variety of forms of protest in an attempt to raise awareness of climate change above the background noise of daily life. Yet despite their efforts, of UK adults found that they felt the environment was only the fourth most important issue facing the country, following the economy, health and immigration. Ironically, all of these issues will be massively affected by a warming world, which will harm productivity, cause early deaths and increase migration as people seek to get away from parts of the world that are becoming ever more unliveable.
Extreme events, as we have just experienced in July with the hottest month on record (see 鈥淲hat made July 2023 the hottest month ever recorded?鈥�), focus the mind more than dystopian predictions of the future, but even then reactions can be mixed. For example, record temperatures in Death Valley, California, have become a tourist attraction, in a bizarre form of climate rubbernecking.
One way of clarifying the link between such events and the long-term climate trend is the burgeoning science of climate attribution studies (see 鈥淲hy knowing how climate change contributes to extreme weather is key鈥�). While we might once have had to talk in generalities, saying that certain types of events will be made more likely by climate change, we can now be specific. According to the World Weather Attribution initiative, the heatwaves in the US and Europe this July would have been .
Let鈥檚 turn now to the known unknowns. For people already engaged with the risks of climate change, these are the biggest worries. Should we have predicted July鈥檚 extreme weather? Is global warming worse than we expected? How will we adapt to extreme heat (see 鈥淓xtreme heat: Inside the expedition to find out how humans can adapt鈥�)? Could we experience cascading 鈥渢ipping points鈥� that result in runaway warming? These are all valid questions, and ones we have attempted to address (see 鈥淚s climate change accelerating and is it worse than we expected?鈥�). But to focus on them to the extent of paralysing action, as some doom-mongers do, is the equivalent of letting fears of a deadly car crash prevent you from moving the steering wheel to avoid it.
Then there are the unknowns related to our actions. Can we decarbonise fast enough to avoid the worst climate scenarios? Will we be able to make unproven technologies like carbon capture and storage work? These are harder to answer and require much more crystal ball-gazing, but the good news is that the transition to renewables is happening faster than you might realise, with strong action from both the US and China. In fact, we may be just a few years away from the beginning of the end for fossil fuels (see 鈥淭he renewable energy revolution is happening faster than you think鈥�).
Finally, there is the unknown at the heart of all our climate anxiety: just how worried should we be? 快猫短视频 can鈥檛 answer that for you directly 鈥� a reader in a richer country with easy access to air conditioning is going to fare far better in the coming decades than one in a poorer island nation threatened by rising sea levels. What we can do, as we have attempted in this special issue, is to always provide you with a clear and sober assessment of the science. No doom. No denial. Just reality.
This story is part of a series in which we explore the most pressing questions about climate change. Read the other articles below听
What made July the hottest month ever? | The dangers of climate doom | Is climate change really accelerating? | The pace of the renewable energy revolution | Can humans adapt to heat? | Climate change and extreme weather 听
