The UN’s new climate chief has cautioned against claiming that a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius will destroy the planet, arguing that such statements are untrue and simply “paralyse” the public.
Last week Professor James Skea, a Scottish academic at Imperial College London, was elected as the new chair of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). And speaking to German magazine Der Spiegel later the same week, he urged against placing too much value on the stated goal of limited global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures.
Skea said that “we should not despair and fall into a state of shock” if the average global temperatures increased to this level, as reported by DW News – Germany’s state broadcaster.
Expanding on this in a subsequent interview with German press site DPA, the Professor explained that messages of constant doom may be counterproductive to the climate cause.
“If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyses people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change,” he said.
“The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees. It will however be a more dangerous world,” he told Der Spiegel.
The statements came just days after UN head Antonio Guterres issued strong warnings about the future of the planet, claiming that “the era global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived.”
‘Era of global boiling has arrived,’ says UN chief as July set to be hottest month on recordhttps://t.co/habVQG6UO6
— The Guardian (@guardian) July 27, 2023
The 1.5 degree Celsius target was established as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Today 193 countries, plus the European Union, are members of this agreement. The collective goal is to keep the global temperature increase “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably 1.5 degrees. These numbers were derived from scientists’ estimates and computer modelling, based on the projected impact of various levels of global warming on the earth.