Our Final Warning Quotes

“Unfortunately, one of the planet’s most biodiverse and important ecosystems will not survive two degrees intact. The science on corals and global warming has got steadily more alarming over recent years, in tandem with the accelerated destruction of reefs by rapidly rising temperatures around the world’s tropical coastlines, as has already been described. In 2018 the IPCC had to admit that ‘tropical corals may be even more vulnerable to climate change than indicated in assessments made in 2014.’ Marine biologists watched in horror as the Great Barrier Reef suffered back-to-back bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, losing fully half its coral cover in the process. The IPCC’s latest predictions for the two-degree world are dire: even if global temperatures stay under 1.5 degrees, 70–90% of reef-building corals will be lost. With two degrees of warming, this increases to 99%.”
― Mark Lynas, Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency

“Pessimists sometimes gloomily ask me whether they should still have children, or whether the future is now so bad that they must remain childless and lonely. My response is unequivocal: of course you should have children! Bear children, love them, and then fight for their future with every fibre of your being. To my mind merchants of doom are no better than merchants of doubt. By all means grieve for what is lost, but focus that emotional pain into determination, resolution and renewed hope. Never despair, because there will always be someone whose life it is not yet too late to save. That person might even be your child.”
― Mark Lynas, Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency

“There are also political reasons for increased pessimism. When I wrote the first Six Degrees, I did not imagine that the governing political party in the world’s most powerful nation (the US Republican Party) would adopt overt climate denialism as one of its core philosophies. Indeed the prospect would have seemed absurd. I assumed that climate denialism was just a flash-in-the-pan response to heavy political spending by fossil fuel companies. Nor did I expect that this bizarre phenomenon of science denialism would be accompanied by conspiracy theorising and broad-ranging assaults on the very concept of truth throughout the political system, including at the level of the presidency. If the trend towards populism continues throughout the world, overt denial of climate change may become consistently more prominent over future decades, even alongside worsening impacts of climate chaos. Humanity in aggregate, therefore, may not be as clever as many of us like to think. The proverbial boiling frog was at least just a passive and ignorant victim; we would be active and enthusiastic participants in our own demise.”
― Mark Lynas, Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency

“The Keeling Curve is a useful reality check, one that cuts through all the noise and confusion of the climate and energy debates. Unlike the slopes of the huge volcano on which it is measured, the initially gentle upward curve gets steeper the higher you go. That means that the rate of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere is steadily increasing, from roughly 1 ppm in the early years to about 2 ppm annually today. There is no visible slowdown, no sudden downwards blip, to mark the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, still less 2009’s Copenhagen ‘two degrees’ commitment or the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015. All those smiling heads of state shaking hands, the diplomats hugging on the podium after marathon sessions of all-night negotiating – none of that actually made any identifiable difference to the Keeling Curve, which is the only thing that actually matters to the planet’s temperature. All our solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, lithium-ion batteries, LED lightbulbs, nuclear plants, biogas digesters, press conferences, declarations, pieces of paper; all our shouting and arguing, weeping and marching, reporting and ignoring, decrying and denying; all our speeches, movies, websites, lectures and books; our announcements, carbon-neutral targets, moments of joy and despair; none of these to date have so much as made the slightest dent in the steepening upward slope of the Keeling Curve.”
― Mark Lynas, Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency