With carbon emissions, temperatures and extreme weather all increasing, humanity is failing to meet climate change threat – Ian Johnston

After 35 years of complacency bred by optimism that global warming can be stopped, a dose of ‘doomism’ may be required to spur the world into real action

Ever since the mythical Trojan princess Cassandra was cursed by the god Apollo to deliver accurate predictions about the future that no one would believe, prophets of doom have struggled to get their message across. Perhaps that’s why climate scientists have, for years, sought to strike an upbeat note. They stress global warming is a serious threat, but usually quickly insist the problem can and will be solved. ‘Doomism’ is shunned.

This has been the consistent message since the point at which real action should have begun: June 23, 1988, when James Hansen, then the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies, issued a warning to the world. Speaking to the US Congress, he laid out the situation in clear, simple terms: the Earth was warmer than at any other time in recent history; the cause was almost certainly greenhouse gases emitted by human activity; and the changes had already increased the chance of extreme weather events.

In 1988, energy production and industrial processes resulted in a total of 20.2 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. By 2022, that figure had risen by 80 per cent to 36.8Gt, a new record high. In 1988, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was at 351 parts per million; in May this year, it hit 424 parts per million, also a new record. In 1988, the average global temperature was 14.3 degrees Celsius. In 2020, one of the three warmest years on record, it reached 14.9C, about 1.1C warmer than the pre-industrial average.

The global consequences – the extreme weather events that Hansen and other leading scientists warned about – are increasingly hard to ignore. In the US, just over 10.5 million acres of land were burned by wildfires in the five years from 1983 to 1987, according to the US National Interagency Fire Centre. In the five years to 2022, the total area burned was more than 38 million acres.

There are those who insist, correctly, that there have always been wildfires. They say the “causes” of these fires are lightning strikes or unusual weather conditions or anything but global warming. All fires need some kind of spark; the role played by climate change is that higher air temperatures can dry out vegetation, providing a greater amount of tinder-dry fuel, and therefore making it more likely that wildfires will spread further. However, if this level of reasoning isn’t enough, multiple peer-reviewed papers have also been published that demonstrate, with scientific rigour, the link between climate change and bigger, more frequent wildfires.

Heatwaves are one of the deadliest forms of climate change. A study published in the journal Nature Medicine estimated there were more than 61,500 heat-related deaths in Europe last summer, when both Scotland and the UK saw new record-high temperatures of, respectively, 34.8C at Charterhall, near Duns, and 40.3C at Coningsby. In Pinhão, Portugal, the mercury reached 47 degrees.

The UK has not seen similar temperatures so far this year, but swathes of China, southern Europe and the southwestern US/Mexico have been hit. And, according to the World Weather Attribution group of leading scientists, the heatwaves in the latter two regions would have been virtually impossible to occur without global warming. The hottest day in the UK in 1988 was a mere 30.2C (although previous years saw higher temperatures).

Meanwhile, Pakistan has been experiencing two other predicted climate change consequences. Heavy rainfall last summer saw floods that killed more than 1,700 people and 800,000 livestock, and damaged an area of land almost as big as Wales. The cost to the economy was estimated at $30 billion (£23.7 billion). This came after a prolonged drought amid temperatures of more than 50C. The great flood’s effects have been long-lasting. In April, the World Food Programme warned 14.6 million people in Pakistan were experiencing severe hunger, after food prices rose sharply.

Nothing to do with global warming? Dr Friederike Otto, of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, said: “What we saw in Pakistan is exactly what climate projections have been predicting for years. It’s also in line with historical records showing that heavy rainfall has dramatically increased in the region since humans started emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”

Once climate ‘sceptics’ laughed at scientific models they didn’t understand, but today such mockery is less common. Why? Because the passage of time has proved the scientists right. Instead, bogus arguments that drilling more oil and gas is part of the solution or claims it does not matter what the UK does because other countries produce more emissions are advanced and, it seems, are gaining popularity.

I succumbed to doomism ahead of the 2021 COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. Its talk of keeping “1.5 alive” just seemed hopelessly optimistic, given the continued rise of emissions, but I consoled myself that I was not a scientist, so perhaps it was possible. Then, last month, the leading climate scientist Professor Bob Watson, former chair of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said he did not believe global warming could be kept to 1.5C, adding he was “very pessimistic” about achieving 2C.

To me, the track record of the past 35 years looks like abject failure. We are about to enter a world in which humanity will be trying desperately to suck carbon out of the atmosphere – as increasingly severe wildfires, floods, droughts, heatwaves and storms rage about us and despots like Vladimir Putin wage vainglorious wars – in the hope of avoiding the worst effects of dangerous climate change.

Optimism, it seems to me, has bred complacency about the threat we face. In order to lift Apollo’s updated curse on climate scientists – believed but not to anything like the necessary degree – it is perhaps time for a dose of doomism. It might just trigger humanity’s basic survival instincts. With nowhere to run to, our fight-or-flight response has only one option.