Climate Scorpion - the sting is in the tail
The Earth is warming up much faster than expected
Authors: Sandy Trust, Oliver Bettis, Lucy Saye, Georgina Bedenham, Timothy M. Lenton, Jesse F. Abrams, Luke Kemp
The main takeaways are: (these are the key findings in the report)
Urgency of Risk Assessment:
There is a pressing need to conduct a realistic risk assessment of climate change promptly and take decisive actions based on the findings.
Planetary Solvency Framework:
We have now hit 1.5C on a 12 month rolling average.
Climate Sensitivity Concerns:
The Earth’s climate is much more sensitive than we thought.
Tipping Points and Cascades:
Tipping point risks increase significantly above 1.5C – meaning we risk losing control of the climate.
More and worse stings:
Extreme weather and related events will increase further with more warming.
These key points highlight the critical nature of climate risk assessment, the importance of proactive risk management strategies, and the need for coordinated global efforts to address the challenges posed by climate change.
The report on Climate Scorpion addresses the interconnectivity of risks associated with climate change by highlighting the following aspects:
Risk:
Complex Interactions: Climate change drives a complex basket of interconnected risks that could threaten society and the economy. Failure to consider these interconnections may lead to an underestimation of risk.
Risk Cascades:
The report explores how various risks, such as extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, sea level rise, infrastructure failure, and political instability, are interconnected and can trigger or exacerbate each other, leading to systemic effects with global implications.
Causal Loop Diagram:
A causal loop diagram presented in the report illustrates how climate change acts as a driver for interconnected environmental, social, and economic risks, emphasizing the need to understand the interactions and responses that may influence risk outcomes.
Multi-Sector Impacts:
Risks arising from responses to climate change can have multi-sector impacts, affecting areas such as healthcare infrastructure, population growth, economic inequality, and water, food, and energy security. Considering these interconnections is crucial for comprehensive risk management.
By recognizing and analyzing the interconnections between various risks associated with climate change, the report underscores the importance of a holistic approach to risk assessment and management to effectively address the complex challenges posed by climate change.
The report on Climate Scorpion outlines several recommended management actions for achieving a stable climate:
Conduct Realistic Risk Assessment:
Urgently carry out a comprehensive risk assessment of climate change in line with best practices, considering various outcomes, tipping points, and worst-case scenarios. This assessment should be informed by up-to-date information on global warming and material factors influencing temperatures.
Educate and Accelerate Positive Tipping Points:
Invest in educating the public and policymakers about tipping points and realistic climate risk assessments. Positive socio-economic tipping points can drive rapid adoption of low-carbon technologies with the right policy framework, leading to economic benefits and mitigating climate change risks.
Develop a Planetary Solvency Framework:
Establish a Planetary Solvency framework to support long-term policy decisions and human prosperity. This framework should consider the interconnected societal, natural, climate, and economic risks we face and recommend actions to address them.
Revisit Carbon Budgets and Assumptions:
Financial services institutions should reassess carbon budgets and related assumptions, moving towards decarbonization activities and ensuring that net-zero approaches support real-world decarbonization efforts.
Support Policy Action for Positive Tipping Points:
Financial institutions should constructively support policy actions that accelerate positive tipping points in the transition to a low-carbon economy, aligning their strategies with sustainability goals.
By implementing these management actions, stakeholders can work towards achieving a stable climate, mitigating risks associated with climate change, and fostering sustainable development for the future.
Read the full report here
Report published March 2024
An Educational Revolution is essential for preparing for the unfolding global crises’
Our education model is 400 years old and unsurprisingly doesn’t adequately equip students for the future. It
continues to prepare students for the world that was; and not the world that is imminently going to be.
“... the idea of the future being different from the present is so repugnant to our conventional modes of thought and behaviour that we, most of us, offer a great resistance to acting on it in practice.”
John Maynard Keynes, economist, 1937
Our education model is 400 years old and unsurprisingly doesn’t adequately equip students for the future. It continues to prepare students for the world that was; and not the world that is imminently going to be.
In practical and technical terms, we are capable of delivering an educational revolution facilitated by AI which could better develop the potential of every individual - including the neurodivergent. The starting point for the design of a new educational system must be to consider the life challenges likely to be faced by tomorrow’s students. Climate change, pandemics, financial crises, geopolitics, and disruptive technologies such as AI, have irreversibly changed our world. Humanity’s problems are complex, global, and interconnected like never before; and they are developing at an accelerating rate. Most experts concur that climate change and AI development is accelerating at an exponential rate which is something humankind struggles to conceptualise - this results in failure to react appropriately.
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”
Albert Allen Bartlett, 1969. Physicist. University of Colorado.
In 2023, the UN has declared that the world is likely to reach a “hellish” 3C of global heating within many of our lifetimes. ‘Hellish’ relates directly to the faltering of global food supply chains, large swathes of the earth becoming uninhabitable, millions of climate refugees fleeing from equatorial to northern regions, intense competition for land, water and food, and conflict erupting across the globe - all happening before a child born today turns 30. Lloyd’s of London reported in 2023 a 1:300 risk of a single extreme weather event within the next 5 years which would cause economic losses of $17.6trillion - a fifth of the global economy.
For all the benefits of democracy, we must recognise its failings. Short electoral cycles make it hard for democratic governments to enact legislation that is essential but would impose dramatic and uncomfortable change. Instead, and facilitated by social media, these cycles encourage the adoption of short term, risk averse, populist policies which severely limit our capacity to respond to imminent, potentially cataclysmic, global challenges. The institutions that we relied upon in the 20th century to keep us safe and to guide us toward national prosperity are increasingly impotent in the 21st century. Climate change is the main case in point; governments across the globe have failed to protect us from impending catastrophe. The Annual Meeting of World Leaders, most recently COP 28 in Dubai, gives no cause for optimism.
We, the authors, presented a vision 15 months ago of what we believed education and assessment would inevitably look like, climate change aside. We envisioned that governments will harness AI to facilitate the separation of education from assessment, freeing teachers and educational institutions to pursue a personalised, appropriate, and more successful education for all.
In the intervening time, the threats posed by climate change have become even clearer. James Hansen, of NASA Goddard, states that the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C target is ‘as dead as a doornail’. He appears correct: on November 17th 2023, global mean surface temperatures breached 2C above pre industrial averages for the first time ever. This inability to act is echoed in the widespread inertia within the institutions of government and education which, we conclude, will not control the nature or rate of educational development.
However, if the public imminently demands an education that prepares children for the life challenges they will face, making it a critical topic in future elections, governments may yet be able to influence the type of education that the technologists will provide. We may be able to shape the market demand.
Technologists are transforming the shape and nature of education at a rapidly accelerating pace. We need look no further than the meteoric growth and game changing impact of Open AI’s Chat GPT to see evidence of this. There is going to be a quantum leap over a very short space of time in which the technologists will become the dominant force shaping education. We have little time left in which to influence where that leap lands. Humanity’s biggest challenge will not be in adopting a new educational paradigm but, rather, in adapting to a ‘hellish’ future. It is this future upon which a 21st century education system must focus.
We must all question what opportunities will be available for people in the future in order that they can sustain, as a minimum, a tolerable quality of life. What opportunities will exist to “make a living”? Certainly AI will take a myriad of traditional opportunities from us, initially impacting the professional roles most. Of course, as already happens owing to an excessive number of university graduates in disciplines such as accounting, law or sports science, these graduates take the opportunities previously the preserve of the less well educated. The “working class” will again be subjected to a loss of opportunity; much as they were during the Industrial Revolution.
How do we prepare young people for the collapse of major fishing stocks and farming systems; extreme and regular floods, droughts, and forest fires; and mass involuntary migration; all of which are considered ‘high probability’ outcomes by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? How do we educate to prevent societal collapse associated with unabated climate change? How do we utilise powerful new technologies to prepare young people for their future which will be so different from our own? What skills, character attributes, knowledge and systems will be most appropriate? A collective understanding of this is essential to giving future generations some chance of a decent future.
Civic society needs to recognise that we are in a new era of rapid change, uncertainty, and climate breakdown. We must demand that our governments urgently enact more ambitious, anticipatory, systemic, and inclusive policy. Governments need to design policy portfolios that enable transformative innovation and new markets to emerge, challenging outdated systems, and creating windows of opportunity for new, more appropriate systems to break through.
We must move on from the three principal functions of education for the world past - custody, control and sorting - to inspiring adaptive, resilient, skilful and self aware young people to take on the hideously challenging legacy we shall leave them.
Our education must embrace AI, and equip our young people with the skills to overcome the hellish challenges that they will surely face. This is the moment to act collectively, decisively and with a revolutionary vision for education that extends well beyond the democratic cycle and prepares students for the future to come.
Authors: Andrew Paterson, Naill Dolan and Professor Hugh Montgomery
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