I can’t improve on a 17yo Greta Thunberg statement… I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is. It is a very clever expression of a frustration that a lot of people share. I would also add a voice from the Age of Enlightenment... we need to “dare to know”.

Climate change is accelerating. CO₂ in the atmosphere now exceeds 426 ppm and the rate of increase is worsening, not leveling off or dropping. Current projections put us on track for 2°C warming by 2050 and a real risk of 3-4°C by 2100. That will be catastrophic.

Just one example of the challenges is the AMOC (the Gulf Stream is part of this system) that is already weakening and it may collapse. Given current global warming trends, the latest estimated likelihood of this happening before the end of the century is between 50 and 70%. The consequences for the UK and Europe would be winters of -20C and blistering hot dry summers, affecting local and global food supplies, health … and social stability. This could happen to people we know now.

Also, a point that is often missed, is once the CO2 is up there, it will stay there, for 1000’s of years. Direct Air Capture methods to remove it would take about 1.5 MegaWatts per tonne… so to turn the clock back just one year would take about the same amount of energy the world uses in a year. It is not realistic. Nature Based Solutions are a lot cheaper but can only ever have a relatively small mitigating effect … and meanwhile 10.9 million hectares of forest are still being lost per year (that’s twice the size of the UK).

So, to quote Al Gore, “we need to stop using the sky as an open sewer”… and now.

Atmospheric CO2 concentration is now at a level that was last seen over 3 million years ago, in the Pliocene, long before Homo Sapiens exited. It was a complex period, but just for instance, some estimates of sea levels then, put them at 25m higher than today. This has not happened yet simply because of the inertia of global systems. It takes time for a glacier to melt. It takes time to warm 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of ocean. But they will melt and the oceans will warm, and it is already happening a lot faster than models suggested just 5 years ago. Even a rise of 10m over a few hundred years will change the world, displace millions and create violent chaos, and sea-level rise is just one of many devastating consequences for the world.

Atmospheric Methane concentration is also rising. It is a very very powerful Green House Gas. It is estimated to account for about 30% of global warming and humans are directly responsible for about 60% of that methane. But methane breaks down very quickly. It has a half-life of about 12 years. We could make a huge difference, and quickly, by just stopping the emissions of methane that originate from agriculture, the oil&gas industry, and landfill. It is in our power.

It is one thing COP30 recognised. But that is against huge resistance from the fossil fuel industry.

And … nature in the UK and beyond is collapsing, driven not only by climate-change but pollution, habitat loss and dare I say, some very bad farming. The 2023 Landmark Report states that 16% of species are at risk of being lost, for birds its 43%, and amphibians and reptiles its 31%. Since 1970, when I was a teenager, 19% of all species have been lost… and I see it and feel it when I’m out in the countryside.

It all sounds like some exaggerated disaster movie, but it is real, and it is happening to us, today. It is happening so fast that it will effect young people we know. This is not some future problem for generations we will never meet.

It is frightening, or it should be, yet I keep coming across this idea that we should talk in positive terms if we want to engage. There is doubtless a place for that, but in my view it is a symptom of a disconnection from the stark reality the world now faces.

And this is unfolding against a background of putrid politics in which apparently there is an alternative truth to science that is being censored by the Whitehall blob and the deep state. It is very easy to mock the copy-cat toxic mendacity of the likes of Farage and his Deform UK Party, and the lettuce, but they are a huge and dangerous distraction from what we all should be concentrating on… the enormous calamity that is slowly enveloping us all in a python like crushing grip.

I have always had great sympathy for the motives behind Extinction Rebellion (great name that says it all) and Just Stop Oil, and similar organisations. I have never thought their tactics would do anything other than annoy people, but I do share their frustration.

In contrast, the National Emergency Briefing is a considered science led plea to government, national and local, and to businesses and organistions to listen to what the science is telling us, which in a nutshell is; time is rapidly running out. It is a call to arms. And we should do all we can to make sure that cry from 1000’s of scientists is heard and continues to resonate across the land and it does not get muffled by the cotton wool of hopeful thinking or the outrageous lies of the far-wrong.

In December 2025, South Hams District Council passed a motion supporting the Ref(Nation Emergency Briefing) initiative and resolving to ask all Local Authorities to do the same and to lobby central government to take real decisive action that is commensurate with the dangers we face. There is a lot that can be done.