'I think we are fucked' - Prof Stephen Emmott

by Robert McLean

Exploring the realities of climate change is difficult to do without “scaring the horses”.

Addressing climate change psychologically is unquestionably going to be more difficult for most of us than making the unavoidable physical changes, making it nearly impossible to not "scare the horses".

Stephen
Emmott's
 book,
"10 Billion".

The impacts of climate change will be physically felt mostly, and initially, by those in the less developed parts of the world, but oddly, and because of their existing circumstances, they will be best placed to deal psychologically with the unfolding changes.

The causes of climate change can be attributed to many things, but one undeniable factor is the exploding human population growth on earth and already our numbers exceed seven billion.

Earth’s human numbers have tripled in my lifetime from more than two billion in 1947 to a number just beyond seven billion today and if growth continues on its present trajectory and nothing intervenes, then there will be nearly 20 billion people sharing the planet by the end of the century.

For understandable practical reasons that is an obvious impossibility and those who have considered and studied earth’s carry capacity, considering our existing behaviours, put the upper limit at about half (3.5 billion) of what exists.

The head of Computational Science at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, Stephen J. Emmott, who is also a visiting professor at the University College London and the University of Oxford, has written about and put considerable thought into population and written about it in his 2013 book, “10 Billion”.

Discussing the difficulties associated with the broad acknowledgement of and acceptance of climate change, Prof Emmott wrote: “It used to be a case of, ‘ we need to wait for science to prove climate change is happening’. This is now beyond doubt”, he wrote.

Earth's present population
trajectory simply
 means 'trouble'.  

Then he added: “So now it’s, ‘we need for scientists to be able to tell what the impact will be and the costs’. And, ‘we need to wait for public opinion to get behind action,” he said.

Pointing to what he described as “token gestures” such as switching off mobile phone chargers, weeing the shower (his favourite), buying and electric car (no don’t, he says) and using two sheets of loo paper instead of three, Prof Emmott said on “10 Billion” that these things “miss the fundamental fact that the scale and nature of the problems we face are immense, unprecedented and possibly unsolvable”.

He said: “We urgently need to do – and I actually mean do – something radical to avert a global catastrophe. But I don’t think we will.

“I think we are fucked,” he wrote.