Focus on Arts and Ecology

Dear Grist reader,

I wouldn’t blame you if you needed a break from the out of control news cycle, especially after the intensity that surrounded the recent Supreme Court confirmation. Heck, I’m the executive editor at Grist and some days I want to curl up in the fetal position. But earlier this week, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a startling report that, I’m afraid, is too important for any of us to ignore.

The main conclusion: Earth is warming more rapidly than expected. In 12 years, average global temperatures will crest over 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels. That’s the new threshold considered safe for society as we know it.

After that, well, we need to do our best to ensure we never find out. “There is no documented historic precedent” for the scale of changes necessary to stop climate change in its tracks, as Grist’s columnist Eric Holthaus wrote this week. “Several hundred million lives are at stake.”

A startling climate report by the IPCC isn’t exactly a new thing. But the amount of time this installment says we have to act makes it more urgent than its predecessors. Turning back to my colleague Eric: “Without heroic action, the world is on course to reach warming severe enough to destabilize key societal and planetary systems as soon as 2030.”

We can’t afford to ignore the klaxon call amid the here-today-gone-tomorrow news cycle. To be clear, we can change course to avert the worst of what climate change has in store for us. (Think WWII-level mobilization at a global scale.) In our daily email newsletter, The Beacon, we shared a few of the IPCC’s recommended remedies:
Invest $2.4 trillion in renewables every single year from now until 2035 — that’s seven times more than we invested in 2017.
Eliminate coal by 2050. Yeah, like, all of it.
Future investments in natural gas should be switched to renewables instead. Given the new data, the so-called “bridge fuel” has become a bridge to nowhere.In response to the IPCC report, The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan wrote in a column, “The best minds in media should be giving sustained attention to how to tell this most important story in a way that will create change.” Thanks for the kick in the ass, Margaret. We hear you. Grist already fights to keep this story fresh on the daily. But with you cheering us on -- and with the support of our readers -- we’ll take our efforts up a notch or two.

From Grist’s perspective, the U.N. report’s message is clear and simple: It’s time to be focused and ambitious. We cannot afford anything less.

With urgency,

Nikhil Swaminathan
Executive Editor, Grist