The Climate Science Report Everyone’s Talking About - A Summary for Corporate Executives

Most people lucky enough to take a vacation this season have returned with tales like “my kids couldn’t go outside because of the wildfire smoke” or “the lake was at half-capacity and full of rotting algae” or “the river was eerily warm” or “the woods felt like kindling”. As The New York Times described the blistering heat waves across North America, floods devastating Germany and China, and wildfires raging out of control in Europe and Asia, "No One is Safe: Extreme Weather Batters the Wealthy World".

Even my husband, who has never been interested in these topics, is poring over sea level rise maps to find our children a safe place to call home.

Well, the world’s top scientists must be working very hard not to say “we warned you!” In fact, as one distinguished atmospheric scientist put it, “it takes children literally protesting in the streets for people to pay attention.”

This week the 100+ scientists of the Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued their 6th and most striking analysis of our planet’s health to date (Sixth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis). The findings, agreed to by 195 countries, show that humanity has delayed curbing our fossil-fuel emissions for so long that we can no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next 30 years. On a more hopeful note, they emphasize that a small window of opportunity remains to prevent the most dangerous levels of climate change. That window is closing but still ajar. 

Former Bank of England Governor and Vice Chair of Brookfield Asset Management, Mark Carney, called the report “a must-read for Boards, and its implications are an imperative for immediate strategic action”. Accounting consultancy giant PwC called the report “a stark warning that the impacts are stronger than previously predicted and are only likely to get worse with every fraction of a degree of warming” and “the most detailed analysis of where and how your operations, supply chains and markets are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Climate science should remain the hard basis for all decision making and target setting”. 

Climate scientists have been famously restrained about making bold statements, but the mountain of evidence is now so vast, and the hazard to humanity so high, they are “now rising up outside of our comfort zone to ring the alarm bell”, to quote Dr. Johan Rockström of the esteemed Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. One IPCC author from Texas Tech University, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, said "It's clear we're all in the same boat — facing a challenge that will affect every one of us within our lifetimes, not to mention future generations and most other life on Earth.

To me, three key words summarize the 1300-page report:

• UNEQUIVOCAL: Humanity is “unequivocally” responsible for climate change. Case closed.
• INEVITABLE: We have already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees F) since the Industrial Revolution, largely by burning coal, oil and gas. That is why we’re seeing wildfires, ocean acidification, coral reef bleaching, permafrost melting, and 100-year floods across inhabited regions on Earth. Much of these phenomena humanity must learn to live with from now on and possibly as long as thousands of years. That’s because, even if we sharply cut emissions today, total global warming is likely to rise to ~1.5 degrees Celsius within the next 20 years. That much is now inevitable.
• PREVENTABLE: 1.5 degrees Celsius is the optimal ceiling set out by 195 countries in the Paris Agreement because any higher than that, we trigger tipping points that put warming into a dangerous positive feedback loop (aka “runaway climate change”). So this means we have a small window of opportunity to keep the most ravaging effects of climate at bay.

“The scientists are yelling from the rooftops. While the rest of us are still in our basements... This unique moment in history is all about breaking boundaries. We know we have already broken, or are about to break, many of the planetary boundaries that keep us safe. Being spooked by this IPCC report, or by the relentless stories of disastrous real time impacts is absolutely understandable, but we cannot allow ourselves to get stuck. It’s critical that we train our minds now so that we can orient ourselves to land in relative safety: to deliver the emissions cuts and unleash positive systemic tipping points in the solutions that are already beginning to emerge.” - Christana Figueres, architect of the Paris Climate Agreement, in Outrage and Optimism, August 2021

So what does all this mean for corporate leaders?  

1. If you haven’t already, join the ⅕ of the world’s economy (representing half the world’s population) that have already set net zero targets. Set a target date of 2050 at the latest, but know that leading companies have target dates in 2040 or earlier. As part of that target, reduce your own company’s emissions and simultaneously tackle your supply chain in concert with your suppliers. 
2. Prioritize which of the many well-proven emissions reductions solutions your company is uniquely well-suited to lead on. Use this authoritative list of 80 solutions from the Project Drawdown multi-year scholarly effort, the authority on the topic. If nothing else, transition as quickly as possible to renewable energy sources for all electricity consumption. 
3. Support policies and politics at the local, state and national levels that are focused on driving rapid decarbonization in line with what the science says is needed: ~45 percent reduction by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050. Dr. Hal Harvey's Energy Innovation team offers this excellent priority list of policies already available to policymakers.

The President of COP26, the crucial meeting this autumn where 195 countries will strengthen their national climate targets said “Our message to every country, government, business and part of society is simple. The next decade is decisive, follow the science and embrace your responsibility to keep the goal of 1.5C alive.”

Dr. Kate Marvel offered an even more optimistic version.

[The IPCC report said] basically: “welcome. We need you.” This can has been kicked down the road for so long that there are bad effects already happening and certain things are already locked in. But that does not mean that action does not matter and it does not mean that we cannot partially turn this thing around. So I think the message of the report is complex. You can't procrastinate for as long as we have. But it also says, look, the climate cares about how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere and you can be part of the solution. You can be part of the enormous group of people who are going to need to turn this thing around.