A few things about climate change I believe

The changing climate of the planet and the remarkable growth in human numbers and riches both stem from the combustion of billions of tonnes of fossil fuel to produce industrial power, electricity, transport, heating and, more recently, computation.

Three-quarters of current emissions come from 12 economies.

Almost half the atmosphere’s extra, human-made carbon dioxide was put there after the turn of the 1990s, when scientists sounded the alarm and governments said they would act.

Climate change is not just an environmental problem alongside all the others.

It is a dire threat to countless people—one that is planetary in scope.

It will displace tens of millions, at the very least; it will disrupt farms on which billions rely; it will dry up wells and water mains; it will flood low-lying places—and, as time goes by, higher-standing ones, too.

It is not a problem that can be put off for a few decades.  It is here and now.

The damage that climate change will end up doing depends on the human response over the next few decades.

Delay means that humankind will suffer more harm and face a vastly more costly scramble to make up for lost time.

By no means all the effects of climate change can be adapted away.  The further climate change goes, the less adaptation will be able to offset it.

The longer humanity takes to curb emissions, the greater the dangers and sparser the benefits—and the larger the risk of some truly catastrophic surprises.

The climate responds to the overall level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not to a single country’s contribution to it.  If one government drastically reduces its own emissions but others do not, the gallant reducer will in general see no reduced harm. This is a huge obstacle.

International agreements stress the need to support the poorest countries in their efforts to adapt to climate change and to grow wealthy enough to need less help.  Here the rich world is shirking its duties.

Today’s efforts, which are too lax to keep the world from two or even three degrees of warming, can be vastly improved.

Because the processes that force climate change are built into the foundations of the world economy and of geopolitics, measures to check climate change have to be similarly wide-ranging and all-encompassing.

To decarbonise an economy is not a simple subtraction; it requires a near-complete overhaul.

It is foolish to think all this can be done in ten years or so.

Competitive markets properly incentivised, and politicians serving a genuine popular thirst for action, can do more than any other system to limit the warming that can be forestalled and cope with that which cannot.  But so far, the market economy has done very little to help.

However, climate change is not the end of the world.

Humankind is not poised teetering on the edge of extinction.

The planet itself is not in peril; though much may be lost, most of the wondrous life that makes Earth unique will endure.

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If you think this doesn't sound like my usual way of writing, you're right.  All these statements (with a bit of a paraphrase here and there and a lot of re-ordering) come from the leading article in September 21st's Economist.  That edition of the paper had a number of climate change-related features, all of which are worth reading.  There are the usual excellent graphs and tables.

What I like about the Economist's coverage of the climate crisis is that it keeps a critical eye on developments and is grounded in the difficult and complex reality of the actual world.  There is no bowing before politically opportunistic fantasies such as a zero-carbon economy by 2025 or 2030, and it understands that technological and social evolution will be needed if we are to succeed.  It also sees, as I do, that climate change is the biggest challenge that humanity has ever faced; and it understands (as I also do) that when we put our minds to it, humans are quite good at responding to challenges where socio-economic systems enable it.