12 April 2023 - The fact that the IPCC incorporates in its core business, risks of failure to the Earth system and to human civilisation, that we would not accept in our own lives, raises fundamental questions about the efficacy of the whole IPCC project. If low risks...
Planetary Emergency - Related Content
Current EU commitments on the European Green Deal too narrow in scope
06 April 2023 - While many European countries press ahead with the clean energy transition, aiming to replace dependence on Russian gas with renewable energies, others such as Italy, seem more interested in signing new gas contracts with countries like Libya. The...
A desperate race to avoid locking in the pathway to human extinction
16 March 2023 - We are in a desperate race to avoid locking in a pathway to human extinction. This requires brutal honesty on the threats we face. Climate change, not China, Russia or the US, is the greatest threat the world faces; it will only be overcome with...
Why are non-scientists leading the world’s largest companies’ sustainability efforts?
08 March 2023 - Some 23% of Fortune 500 corporations claim to engage with the Sustainable Development Goals framework. Yet, a peer-reviewed study found that a measly 0.2% have developed concrete methods and tools to evaluate their progress toward relevant SDGs. This...
COP is not fit for purpose. Here’s how the UN can reform it.
08 March 2023 - The yearly COP is the highlight of the climate calendar. Yet, as emissions continue to climb and the impacts of climate change worsen, it is time we asked what the COP process is really achieving and how it can be overhauled to ensure it helps to...
How to make COP fit to deliver real climate action?
28 February 2023 - With an agreement on loss and damage, COP27 marked the end of negotiations on all essential components of the global climate agreement. It is now time to shift gear. The current COP and Presidency leadership process cannot deliver climate action at...
Why we need some long-term thinking at Davos
17 January 2023 - Europe needs to be leading the charge to a more sustainable world, but is being held back by short-termism and poor policymaking, argues Systemiq's Janez Potočnik. "Co-operation in a fragmented world" is the title of the gathering of the great and...
Leading economic thinkers sign open letter calling for tax on the richest 1% to avoid threat to democracy
13 January 2023 - As Davos kicks off, 30 world-leading economists and economic thinkers from 16 countries have signed an open letter to world leaders calling for bold steps to tax wealth, income and companies to avoid a dangerous threat to democracy. Jayati Ghosh,...
Transformation in the poly-crisis age: From permacrisis to positive peace
27 December 2022 - Since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the ESIR group advocated the need for the EU institutions to avoid relying exclusively on short-termism, and instead adopt a “protect, prepare and transform” (PPT) approach for resilience. “Protect”,...
End the circus of COP27 once and for all
22 November 2022 - We’re the clowns, smiling manically as weak pledges are presented as progress, amid mayhem. COP27 has ended. After more than two weeks of negotiations at the climate summit, there is a deal of sorts that keeps the climate negotiations ticking over,...