Climate change has become an existential crisis of notable exactitude, its parameters mapped out by precise temperature rises, thresholds, deadlines and “tipping points” of no return.
The world should not warm more than 2C above the pre-industrial average; we have until 2030 to keep the rise in check; Earth has already passed the lower temperature thresholds of five out of 16 tipping points, with potentially ruinous consequences for coral reefs, permafrost and polar ice.
That last finding, revealed in an analysis published earlier this month in the journal Science, deepened the gloom around whether global efforts are sufficient to cap warming fast enough. But it also elicited a more provocative complaint: that scientists, activists, policymakers and the public have become too fixated on the numbers attached to the climate crisis, for no tangible benefit.