Flipping the environmental narrative
Christiana Figueres, founder of Global Optimism and former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
March 12, 2023
As we hurtle dangerously toward climate tipping points, we must muster the collective courage to close the gap between science and policy. That starts by acknowledging recent milestones and incorporating them into a new shared narrative of empowerment and possibility.
—Christiana Figueres
We are already a third of the way into the decisive decade for bending the curve on greenhouse-gas emissions and biodiversity loss. Scientific warnings about the irreversible planetary changes that we are causing are growing clearer and more certain. Yet emissions continue to rise, and vast sums of money are still flowing toward investments that will expand fossil-fuel production and drive mass deforestation.
The gap between the urgency of the science and the dilatory policy response is so stark that no policy or technological breakthrough would be “enough.” But every fraction of a degree of warming we can ameliorate and every inch of nature we can protect is crucial.