Making sense of the climate impasse, writes Jeffrey Sachs from Columbia University

ALL signs suggest that the planet is still hurtling headlong towards climatic disaster.
A “State of the climate report” from the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, covering January-May, said these first five months were the warmest on record going back to 1880. 

May was the warmest month ever. 

Intense heat waves are currently hitting many parts of the world. Yet still, we fail to act.
There are several reasons for this, and we should understand them in order to break today’s deadlock. 

First, the economic challenge of controlling human-induced climate change is truly complex.
Human-induced climate change stems from two principal sources of emissions of greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) – fossil fuel use for energy and agriculture (including deforestation to create new farmland and pastureland).
Changing the world’s energy and agricultural systems is no small matter. 

It is not enough to just wave our hands and declare that climate change is an emergency. We need a practical strategy for overhauling two economic sectors that stand at the centre of the global economy and involve the entire world’s population.

The second major challenge in addressing climate change is the complexity of the science itself. 

Today’s understanding of earth’s climate and the human-induced component of climate change is the result of extremely difficult scientific work involving many thousands of scientists in all parts of the world. 

This scientific understanding is incomplete, and there remain significant uncertainties about the precise magnitudes, timing and dangers of climate change.

The public naturally has a hard time grappling with this complexity and uncertainty, especially since the changes in climate are occurring over a timetable of decades and centuries, rather than months and years. 

Moreover, year-to-year, and even decade-to-decade, natural variations in climate are intermixed with human-induced climate change, making it even more difficult to target damaging behaviour. 

This has given rise to a third problem in addressing climate change, which stems from a combination of the economic implications of the issue and the uncertainty that surrounds it.
This is reflected in the brutal, destructive campaign against climate science by powerful vested interests and ideologues, apparently aimed at creating an atmosphere of ignorance and confusion.

The Wall Street Journal, for example, America’s leading business newspaper, has run an aggressive editorial campaign against climate science for decades.
The individuals involved in this campaign are not only scientifically uninformed, but show absolutely no interest in becoming better informed. 

They have turned down repeated offers by climate scientists to meet and conduct serious discussions on the issues.

Major oil companies and other big corporate interests also are playing this game, and have financed disreputable public relations campaigns against climate science.
Their general approach is to exaggerate the uncertainties of climate science and to leave the impression that climate scientists are engaged in some kind of conspiracy to frighten the public. 

It is an absurd charge, but absurd charges can carry public support if presented in a slick, well-funded format.
What is clear is that we are courting disaster as a result.
Nature does not care about our political machinations. And nature is telling us that our current economic model is dangerous and self-defeating.
Unless we find some real global leadership in the next few years, we will learn that lesson in the hardest way possible. –Project Syndicate

*Jeffrey D. Sachs is professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also special adviser to United Nations secretary-general on the Millennium Development Goals.