• Reflections

The climate choice

What happens next is up to us

Last month the United Nations released a report that should have been given a lot more attention than it did, warning that we have now reached a point at which it will no longer be possible to limit global warming to the 1.5 oC above pre-industrial levels agreed upon in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Less than a week prior to that a massive glacial collapse – almost unanimously agreed to have been brought about by climate change – triggered landslides and flash floods in the border region of Tibet and Nepal that resulted in the death of thousands of people, with many thousands more still missing at the time of writing, some presumably never to be found.

This year also saw catastrophically intensified wildfires in the United States, Canada, and large parts of Europe, where an area of over 6,000 km2 burned in the first eight months of the year, which is far above the 20-year average. Numerous warnings have meanwhile been issued about the 2026-2027 “Godzilla-level” El Niño that will likely make 2027 the hottest year on record, impacting weather patterns across the globe and potentially pushing 50 million people into acute hunger.

What is disheartening is that this is not something that snuck up on us – scientists have been warning for years that this is exactly the future we could expect if we did not do something to stop it.

I was fortunate enough to get to interview then US Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change, Prof. Jonathan Pershing, PhD, when he was in Namibia in September 2021. At the time, the world was preparing for COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland and he was touting the Biden administration’s renewed commitment to the fight against climate change, having rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement earlier that year, and the fact that the US was planning to put “substantial new resources into the global community”.

Prof. Pershing told me at the time that he saw “a bright future” but warned that “it’s a choice we’re going to have to make pretty soon, because the damages that we might end up with if we don’t change are very substantial”. While it is not fair to lay all, or even most of the blame on the United States, things did of course change since then.

“What is disheartening is that this is not something that snuck up on us – scientists have been warning for years that this is exactly the future we could expect if we did not do something to stop it.”

Donald Trump issued an executive order in January 2025 to withdraw from the agreement for a second time, and we are beginning to see the damages Prof. Pershing warned of in real time.

With the United Nations now calling for the world to work together to limit the “overshoot” and “duration of the exceedance”, and then eventually try to cool the planet back to below the 1.5 oC mark, there are some promising signs though. China has dramatically increased its renewable power generation targets and, since the outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Iran, saw a 1% decrease in its carbon dioxide emissions due to a drop in oil consumption of about 1 million barrels per day – signs that the world’s largest emitter may be nearing a tipping point in decarbonisation. Electric vehicle sales reached record highs in over 50 countries in the second quarter of this year, outselling petrol and diesel vehicles in Australia and accounting for 98.7% of all vehicle sales in Norway. And even fuel-free, electric short-haul commercial flights are being predicted within the next five years.

It is easy to become fatalistic in the face of a problem that seems (and in fact is) too large to solve individually, but Dr Steve Westlake, a PhD Researcher in Environmental Leadership at Cardiff University, says the “debate about personal vs collective action … is a false dichotomy” because “individual action is part of the collective,” explaining that “while you won’t save the world on your own, you might be part of the solution”.

This should be enough reason for us to all carry on trying to “do our bit” and pressuring our leaders, be they political, business, religious, or otherwise, to focus their attention, decisions, and efforts on fighting climate change in whatever way they can. After all, even if, regardless of all the evidence and scientific consensus, you don’t “believe” in climate change, as American cartoonist Joel Pett puts it in his famous cartoon of an attendee at a climate summit, “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?”…

Until next time, enjoy your journey.

From the October 2026 issue

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