The summer of 2023 was the hottest in the Northern Hemisphere in 2,000 years. Such comparisons usually date back to the beginning of reliable measurements in the 19th century, but German researchers reconstructed temperatures long ago using annual tree rings. They found that the average summer temperature in 2023 was 0.5 degrees Celsius warmer than the warmest pre-industrial period. It’s another alarm bell to ring about our planet’s warming. We may remember the rainy July of 2023 mainly, but the United States and Japan were also suffering from heat waves and devastating wildfires raging in Canada and southern Europe.
Climate has not been a major issue in this exceptionally crowded election year, which has been filled with discontent. Voters are more concerned about purchasing power or the consequences of increased immigration. The average citizen can become somewhat despondent or even apathetic when faced with another story like the one above. And the blatant campaigns of Extinction Rebellion, including attacks on art or blocking highways, are off-putting to many people. It’s not the same as Greta Thunberg’s “good” school strikes for the climate. The 21-year-old Swede now regularly appears in XR promotions.
Whether or not it is conveyed sympathetically, the message that we must continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions remains compelling. Global warming, along with water scarcity, land use, and the nitrogen cycle, is one of the planetary boundaries that we must not cross in order to give the Earth and its inhabitants a sustainable future. Ecologist Johan Rockström’s 2009 concept is subject to criticism, but it offers guidance. Especially if scientists continue to refine it and think of better ways to define those boundaries.
One of them is the Dutch-Indian professor of environment and development in the Global South, Joyeeta Gupta. In an article in American scientificwhich we included in our climate dossier, formulated eight basic rules, which are broadly consistent with Rockström’s, and associate two types of boundaries with them. In addition to a safe limit for the planet itself, it proposes a safe and fair limit that does not harm people. Needless to say, the fair limits are more stringent and also take into account the most vulnerable regions in the South.
Last year, Gupta won the Dutch Spinoza Prize, worth €1.5 million. She wants to use the money to research a global constitution that encourages all countries to protect the environment and nature, within the limits of the system measured and defined by science. This should lead to a climate-just and safe world. Taking care of the Earth also means taking care of each other.
