Humanity is on the brink of cataclysm.

An unofficial extract from an IPCC report not yet validated by the international scientific community as well as by governments has been published. It concerns the evolution of climate change and the nightmarish future it holds for us.

No need to go to the cinema to shiver in front of a disaster movie. Today, the IPCC is doing better than Hollywood. In a study to be published in 2022, the climate experts of the IPCC paint a portrait of the future of humanity that shivers down your spine. They believe that "the worst is yet to come" and that temperatures exceeding the 1.5 ° Celsius collegially accepted are already synonymous with "serious consequences, for centuries, and sometimes irreversible".

The circumstances in which Agence France Presse was able to obtain and publish this draft report remain unclear. Especially since this study is not supposed to be officially published for several months. Anyway, experts and scientists speak of a "humanity at the dawn of cataclysmic climatic fallout", plagued by water shortages, exodus and malnutrition, in a world where species are extinct. massively ... "The worst is yet to come, with implications for the lives of our children and our grandchildren much more than on ours" , insists the IPCC, which adds that if "life on Earth can recover from a major climate change by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems ”,“ humanity cannot ”.

In reality, nothing that has been decided at the international level is sufficient. It would have taken a lot more courage and ambition. We mentioned in the previous article: Climate, human health is in great danger, the cascades that we have in store for global warming on a planetary scale. And to top it off, we already know that a majority of countries have done virtually nothing since the Paris Agreement signed in 2015 to move in the right direction and achieve the first objectives, namely to limit global warming. the planet at + 2 ° C on average compared to the pre-industrial era, and to tend towards 1.5 ° C if possible. And as if to drive the point home even deeper, the report stresses that: “ Even at +1.5 ° C, living conditions will change beyond the ability of some organisms to adapt. " An opinion corroborated by Jean-Pierre Gattuso, oceanographer research director at CNRS: " limiting yourself to this threshold "has never been sufficient. It is the result of a compromise, and of the principle of realism. Of course, even at +1.5 ° C there will be damage, which is why the Paris Agreement includes a whole component of adaptation to the changes that are inevitable. "

For Greta Thunberg, leader of the youth mobilization against global warming, this report is an excellent thing. She hopes that he will help the rulers and the populations to open their eyes and to take the full measure of the threats which weigh on humanity. " We cannot face this crisis without telling it as it is, until we are adults enough to speak the truth and face reality," she said.

Nevertheless, IPCC experts and scientists, for as disappointed that all this data was leaked, wish to weigh the results obtained. They specify that: “this provisional document has no value as long as it is not approved by the authors and the 195 governments of the IPCC. Obviously, most of what is said will remain there, but the report certainly does not present things in such a catastrophic way, because we always compare at least two scenarios, one pessimistic and one compatible with the Paris agreement, in a way. to show that, if we act, we can minimize the risks. There, we only have an alarmist extract from the analysis on impacts and vulnerability, a part taken out of context in an artificial way, with the risk that this will be counterproductive, because a little discouraging. "

What is rather distressing, in reality, in this story, it is not so much the revelations of the contents of a report which, at bottom, does not teach us anything more fundamentally new than we do not already know, than the disturbing and dangerous torpor of nations; an inability to act fast and strong. If governments agree on small comfortable climate compromises, nature will not compromise with us. It won't care about the economy, stimulus plans, double-digit growth rates and another consumer boom. She will not grant any sales. So how many times will experts and scientists have to warn us? How many international summits and COPs to move up a gear?