But where there is danger, the salvation also grows. Sunflowers and wind turbines in Brandenburg
Image: Getty
Climate researcher Johan Rockstrom believes global warming is on a disastrous path. Nevertheless, he warns against resignation. If Germany and the EU don’t make it, everyone else will be discouraged.
Mr. Rockström, the UN Environment Program has determined that the atmosphere will probably warm up by 2.4 to 2.5 degrees by 2100 if all countries only do as much for the climate as they have promised so far. There is a school in front of my house. The students there will then be ninety. What will their world look like?
The honest answer is: we don’t know. And why not? Because we haven’t had temperatures like this in three million years. In the entire Quaternary era, the warmest periods were only two degrees above today’s reference values. And if you look at the earth’s four and a half billion years, only the Quaternary is good as a benchmark. Beyond that period there was either a significantly different composition of the atmosphere, or you had different continents or different ice sheets. And we haven’t had temperatures of plus 2.4 degrees for more than three million years. That’s why we don’t know exactly how school children will be doing in the year 2100. But one thing is certain: beyond two degrees, we will be in completely new territory. It has not existed since the emergence of the planetary condition that gave birth to modern man. I would see 2.4 degrees warming as a disaster.
