Ecocentricity Blog: Not-So-Happy Reading

By: John A. Lanier
Aug 25, 2021 10:30 AM ET
Campaign: Ecocentricity Blog
Photo Credit: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Ecocentricity Blog: Not-So-Happy Reading

For regular readers of this blog, I’m sure you are well aware of what happened a few weeks back. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), which is the latest summary on humanity’s collective scientific understanding of climate change. AR6 caused quite a stir across a wide range of news outlets, and you likely heard some tagline summary of what it said - maybe something like, “It’s us, it’s bad, and it’s getting worse.”

But I’m not satisfied with consuming the entirety of AR6 in 240 characters or less, and I don’t think you should be either. We need as many people as possible to truly understand the climate crisis and its causes in order to solve it. So I would like to challenge you to actually sit down and read what the climate scientists wrote. Don’t worry - I’m not challenging you to read the WHOLE thing, but just the 41 pages of the Summary for Policymakers.

I spent about 45 minutes reading it straight through. I paid really close attention to the section headlines and to the graphical representations, and I pretty much skipped over the footnotes and any of the explanatory text for each graph and table. Feel free to take it at your own speed though. Yes, your eyes might glaze over at times, but I encourage you to press on. This is an unbelievably important document, and it deserves to actually be read from start to finish.

When you do so, there is a good chance you’ll come away more pessimistic about humanity’s future. If so, I want you to read more! Here is the latest newsletter from the All We Can Save Project, and this edition is dedicated entirely to resources for handling climate emotions. Consider subscribing to their newsletter if you find this one helpful - they are doing really great work.

Thanks for reading...and this week, I’m not talking about my blog!

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