Kevin Anderson on telling the truth

Kevin Anderson, one of the most aggressively truthful of the world’s climate scientists, is well known for his refusal to mince words. More specifically, he’s well known for his willingness to call out his fellows for soft pedaling their real views when they’re speaking publicly. E.g., “On mitigation and particularly cutting emissions in line with Paris, we’re all players in a grand unifying delusion – we’ve become mitigation-deniers.”

Usually, though, these comments are on-the-side. Recently, Andrew Simms, also an unusually productive and creative UK climate activist, sat down with Kevin for a deep dive. The interview, under the title Turning delusion into climate action, was published by Scientists for Global Responsibility. Read it for sure if you’re A) a young scientist, B) wondering about the strategic wisdom of supporting the 1.5C target, which we cannot possibly achieve.

Here’s a sample:

“Not all, but many [climate scientists] had been telling me for years that there’s no hope of staying below 2 degrees centigrade, that we’re heading to three or four degrees. I should add that I disagreed with this view, arguing that if we’re lucky on climate sensitivity and are prepared to grasp the nettle and make very difficult but doable cuts in emissions, then a thin thread of hope remained for staying below two degrees. Today, the chances are much, much slimmer and with the cuts in emissions completely unprecedented and far beyond anything in the public and political debate. What I find most disturbing, is that many of those who previously had told me, away from any microphones, that 2°C was not viable, are now coming out in support of meeting 1.5°C. Worse still, they repeatedly point to idealised technical solutions, yet often with little understanding of either the technologies or their practical delivery, let alone the timelines for making wholesale shifts in technologies and associated infrastructures. “