Humans are great adapters, but climate warnings are not hyperbole

$100trn needed by 2050

After two years of relentless effort to keep their economies afloat during the pandemic, European governments are now rightly devoting a significant amount of their attention to supporting Ukraine.

For many, the immediacy of this threat has relegated the urgency of another, global warming, prompting a rethink about the energy transition and reinvigorating interest in fossil fuels. While this is understandable, we cannot afford to address one crisis at a time. The IPCC's reports are increasingly alarming. The latest, published in April, estimates that if the global peak in CO2 emissions is not reached before 2025, there is no chance of limiting the temperature increase to less than 1.5°C by 2050. We will then have failed, in a decade since its signing, to achieve the goals of the Pa...