Creating the world we want is a subtle but more powerful mode of operation than destroying the world we do not want
Marianne Williamson
Abstract
Climate is one of the more complex physical systems in nature, its behaviour being fundamentally non-linear and chaotic. In assessing the potential risks from climate change and the costs of averting it, researchers and policymakers encounter pervasive uncertainty. Sceptics demand to get rid of the inherent uncertainties, and some experts, on the other end, keep sending out messages of catastrophic scenarios hoping that this will increase people’s awareness of the danger we face. The recent admission of a mistake in IPCC’s Climate change 2007 report (promptly broadcast by all the major media groups and newspapers from Jan. 20th 2010 onwards) made by the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 (the IPCC claim of 2035 is wrong by over 300 years.)—has already brought a damage to the IPCC’s reputation that is likely to be considerable. But in this paper, perhaps risking being provocative and paradoxical, instead of looking for the right answers to what we think are inevitable uncertainties, we intend to search for new questions that may lead to a new way of thinking and may bring about new lifestyles and behaviour for citizens and firms.
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Notes
It is important to say that this mistake was found not by sceptics, but by a few of the scientists themselves, including one who is an IPCC co-author.
Carbon footprint: the amount (expressed in units of CO2 equivalents) of greenhouse gases that enter the atmosphere as a result of a given activity or product.
Carbon offset: the counterbalancing of emissions via actions that reduce emissions elsewhere from where they are produced.
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Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Lorenzo Gallinari (G&G consulting) for the invaluable contribution and insightful discussions on the matter without which this article could not have been written.
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Kuhtz, S. Challenges posed by climate change: is environmental protection an ethical issue?. Environ Dev Sustain 13, 79–85 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-010-9249-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-010-9249-5