Decades of scientific evidence demonstrate unequivocally that human activities jeopardise life on Earth. Dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system compounds many other drivers of global change.
Governments concur: the science is settled. But governments have failed to act at the scale and pace required. What should climate change scientists do?
There is an unwritten social contract between science and society. Public investment in science is intended to improve understanding about our world and support beneficial societal outcomes. However, for climate change, the science-society contract is now broken.
The failure to act decisively is an indictment on governments and political leaders across the board, but climate change scientists cannot be absolved of responsibility.
The tragedy is being gaslighted into thinking the impasse is somehow our fault, and we need to do science differently: crafting new scientific institutions, strategies, collaborations and methodologies.
Yet, global carbon dioxide emissions are 60% higher today than they were in 1990, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its first assessment. At some point we need to recognise the problem is political and that further climate change science may even divert attention away from where the problem truly lies.
Was COP26 too little, too late?
The outcome of COP26, summarised in the draft Glasgow Climate Pact, makes some progress, including an agreement to begin reducing coal-fired power, removing subsidies on other fossil fuels and a commitment to double adaptation finance to improve climate resilience for countries with the lowest incomes.
But many of the world’s leading scientists argue that this is too little, too late. They note the failure of COP26 to translate the 2015 Paris Agreement into practical reality to keep global warming below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Even if COP26 commitments are fulfilled, there is a strong likelihood that humanity and life on Earth face a precarious future.
What are climate change scientists to do in the face of this evidence? The authors of this article see three possible options – two that are untenable, one that is unpalatable:
1. Collect more evidence and hope for action.
2. More intensive social science research and climate change advocacy.
3. Moratorium on climate change research that does little more than document global warming and maladaptation.
More information: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20220113111958155