Where do we stand?

We are speechless and do not know how to overcome it in order to make reality comprehensible, to adequately describe the seriousness of the situation.
George Marshall. Book: Don't Even Think About It - Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change. 2014

An entire society is stuck between the feeling of impending catastrophe and the inability to admit this feeling.
Quote from: Joanna Macy (1929 - 2025), Eco-philosopher, Activist and System Scientist.

We can no longer pretend that we are sleepwalking into climate catastrophe. We are doing it consciously, with our eyes wide open, and hang the consequences.

We either slash emissions now or we are in deep, deep trouble.
According to: Bill McGuire. Our world is hurtling into climate disaster and what do politicians give us? Oilfields and new runways. The Guardian 30.09.2025

The highly industrialised modern world has pretty much reached the end of its wisdom - be it the tangible climatic changes, the creeping increase in ecological destruction, the conflict between rich and poor, the collapsing social and healthcare systems, the empty state coffers, the seemingly unmanageable increase in unemployment, the rapid growth in mental and allergic illnesses.

We are increasingly experiencing first-hand, on our own wallets, on our own quality of life, that we are at a turning point.
According to and translated from: Geseko von Lüpke. Book: Politik des Herzens. Nachhaltige Konzepte für das 21. Jahrhundert. Gespräche mit den Weisen unserer Zeit. 2015

Wallpaper © ittipon | Shutterstock, Inc. [US] 2018

The past decades have brought unprecedented prosperity to many people. However, our planet and a huge number of people are paying a high price for this.

This is the historic novelty of the current situation: As we run ever closer to the edge of the environmental envelope – the conditions within which our species can thrive – the development of the rich world systematically undercuts the conditions for survival of billions of people in the climate danger zone.

They are not so much exploited or bypassed as victimised by the climatic effects of economic growth taking place elsewhere. This violent and indirect entanglement is new in its quality and scale.
Adam Tooze. The climate emergency really is a new type of crisis – consider the 'triple inequality' at the heart of it. The Guardian 23.11.2023

The pressure of the global middle and upper classes on our planet's vital ecological systems has now become so strong that a climatic and ecological destabilization of the Earth has begun. This destabilization endangers the ecological foundations of life, which include a stable climate, a functioning biosphere, sufficient availability of clean water, healthy soil and clean air. 

We need a discussion about sufficiency as a «Strategy of the Enough» - the hitherto neglected dimension of future policy.

Sufficiency as a «Strategy of the Enough» - A Necessary Debate. German Advisory Council on the Environment. 2024. PDF

From «More» to «Enough»: Over the past fifty years, global resource use has more than tripled. Without urgent intervention, it is set to double again by 2060. That trajectory will push us well beyond planetary boundaries – undermining climate goals, destroying ecosystems, accelerating inequality and threatening future wellbeing for all.

What is needed is a shift from extractive, growth-oriented economic models toward sufficiency, circularity, and intelligent and just provisioning systems.
Monika Dittrich and Peter Hennicke. Beyond efficiency: why sufficiency must lead the resource policy agenda. Earth4All. 29 July 2025

Wallpaper © Mr.Nikon | Shutterstock, Inc. [US] 2024

The question arises: What philosophy of life is behind the insatiability of us wealthy people who live so stubbornly and so dispassionately and morosely at the expense of others and the environment?
Translated from: Gabriela Simon: Mehr Genuss! Mehr Faulheit! Mehr Schlendrian! Die Zeit Nr. 42/1992

The world's wealthiest 10% are responsible for two thirds of observed global warming since 1990 and the resulting increases in climate extremes such as heatwaves and droughts.
International Institute for Applied Systems Anlaysis. The world's wealthiest 10 % caused two thirds of global warming since 1990. 07 May 2025

Living off the fossil fuel deposits of the carboniferous era for more than two centuries gave us a false sense of an open-ended and unlimited future where everything was possible and with little price to pay. 

We called this era the «Age of Progress». Climate change is now the bill come due. 
Jeremy Rifkin, economist and journalist. Book: The Green New Deal. Why the Fossil Fuel Civilisation Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth. 2019

© studiostoks | Shutterstock, Inc. [US] 2023

Our way of life and our economy are causing major environmental impacts and are increasingly endangering our livelihood and living together on Earth. 

Even in the Global Risk Report 2022 of the World Economic Forum WEF, five of the six biggest global risks are ecological - climate crisis, loss of biodiversity, water scarcity, environmental pollution, natural disasters - and the sixth is weapons of mass destruction.

We don't know how much carbon will be in the future atmosphere, we don't know what the tipping points will be or when the thresholds will be crossed. But the biggest reason we don't know the future is simple: We have no idea what humans will do. If we continue to put greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the risks increase. If we don't, the world will be safer.

It doesn't look likely that we will ever stop. But the science is clear: human beings are responsible for climate change, and human beings can choose to stop it. We're the first species in the history of Earth to be faced with this decision.
Kate Marvel. Book: Human Nature. Nine ways to feel about our changing planet. 2025

The irreversibility of change in ecological systems in terms of restoration has simply not yet been understood:

If we reach these tipping points where the climate tips, where biodiversity tips, where the oceans tip, then we will have completely changed living conditions for humanity, for future generations.
According to and translated from: Maja Göpel. Pressekonferenz Scientists for Future zu den Protesten für mehr Klimaschutz. 12. März 2019

© Andrey_Kuzmin | Shutterstock, [US] 2023

No coming catastrophe has ever been studied as thoroughly as global warming. And none has ever been so thoroughly ignored. 

The first World Climate Conference was held in Geneva back in 1979. World Climate Conferences have been held annually since 1995 and nonetheless global greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing every year. Never since modern measurements began in 1957 has the increase in global CO2 concentrations been as great as from 2023 to 2024.

At the 2021 climate summit in Glasgow, the states agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030, compared to 2010 levels. The aim was to limit global warming below 2°C.

However, studies on the effectiveness of the existing nationally determined contributions to reduce their emissions have now revealed: if they were implemented to this extent, global emissions in 2030 would not be lower, but around 9 % higher than in 2010.
According to United Nations – Climate Change. New Analysis of National Climate Plans: Insufficient Progress Made, COP28 Must Set Stage for Immediate Action. 14 November 2023

The gap between the climate challenge and climate action, between ambition and commitment, is growing rapidly. This development justifies speaking of a planetary emergency.
Translated from: Hans Joachim Schellnhuber - Founding director and long-standing head of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK. Kurze wissenschaftliche Stellungnahme zur sich verschärfenden Klimakrise. WissenLeben 14.02.25

For the young people who show up in the statistics as concerned or extremely concerned, the reports about the climate crisis are not nearly as depressing as the fact that these reports are ignored.
Translated from: Daniel Graf. Ja, Zukunftslust, verdammt! REPUBLIK 14.02.2023

In a major international survey in 2021, 10,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 25 around the world were asked about their attitudes to climate change:

More than half of young people believe that humanity is doomed due to climate change. 

More than a third of young people are reluctant to have children because of climate change. 

Climate anxiety and distress correlate with perceived inadequate government response and associated feelings of betrayal.
Caroline Hickman et al. 2021: The Lancet Planetary Health. Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey.

© klublu | Shutterstock, [US] 2023

The inequality in wealth, resource use, CO2 emissions, etc. between countries and also within societies is enormous.

Inequality is a problem on the scale of climate change.

Over 600 economists and scientists call in an open letter for a new «International Panel on Inequality», the creation of a body akin to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to coordinate action against what it saw as disastrous effects on modern society.
Open letter. Economists and inequality experts support call for new International Panel on Inequality. November 2025

The imbalances in the global division of labour lead to an outrageous level of dishonesty in the climate debate: the countries of the global South are held responsible for the overexploitation of their natural resources, even though the benefits largely accrue to the global North, which also makes the extractions possible in the first place with its technology and financial capital.
Beckert Jens. Book: How We Sold Our Future. The Failure to Fight Climate Change. 2025

The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency.  

A report shows that in 2019 Africa, which is home to about one in six of the world population, was responsible for just 4% of emissions. 
According to: Jonathan Watts. Richest 1 % account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66 %, report says. The guardian, 20.11.2023. Data based on the report of Osfam International Climate Equality: A planet for the 99 %. PDF

It is understandable why emission-reduction policies that ignore these vast inequalities are unlikely to gain widespread support and may meet with strong opposition.
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. From inequality to sustainability. Earth4all. 2022. PDF

Without decisive action to drastically reduce socio-economic inequalities, there is no solution to the environmental and climate crisis.
Piketty Thomas. Book: Brief history of equality. 2022

If we want to take the fight against climate change seriously, then it surely follows that the rich in particular must drastically reduce their consumption. The global rich also include the middle classes in industrialised countries. The climate issue is a class issue.

But it is also an issue of economic inequality between countries: the old and new industrialised countries and those that want to become industrialised. In this respect, climate change and the process of reorganising the world order are interlinked.
Translated from: Daniel Marwecki. Buch: Die Welt nach dem Westen. Über die Neuordnung der Macht im 21. Jahrhundert. 2025

The goals for a sustainable development are set [UN 2030 Agenda with 17 goals]. However, we currently do not know the conditions under which humanity can implement the measures to achieve these sustainability goals globally.
Christian Berg. Book: Sustainable Action. Overcoming the Barriers. 2020

Sustainability is on everyone's lips, in politics, business and in private life. Everyone has an idea of what the term means and sets different priorities. The term is therefore in danger of meaning «everything and nothing».
Translated from: Agentur für Forschung. 2019. Wahrnehmung von "Nachhaltigkeit" - Bericht zur qualitativen Studie. Mannheim, 05. September 2019

Greenwashing: A research project funded by the European Union (2023) revealed that more than half of the environmental claims made regarding products and services - 53% to be exact - are either ambiguous, deceptive, or unfounded, with 40% of claims lacking evidence altogehter.
Alexandra Walker and Hélène Guadin. Paint it Green: Strategies for Detecting and Combatting Greenwashing in ESG Ratings. Sustainability Institute. 2024

The 2030 Agenda progress report shows at the mid-term that just 12 percent of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) targets are on track. Progress on 50 percent is weak and insufficient. Worst of all, we have stalled or gone into reverse on more than 30 percent of the SDGs.
Antonio Guterres. Secretary-General's remarks to launch the Special Edition of the Sustainable Development Progress Report. 25. April 2023

© PX Media | Shutterstock, [US] 2023

As long as man was small in numbers and limited in technology, he could realistically regard the Earth as an infinite reservoir, an infinite source of inputs and an infinite cesspool for outputs. Today we can no longer make this assumption.
K.E. Boulding May. Earth as a Space Ship. Washington State University Committee on Space Sciences. 1965

Today's belief and thinking patterns all come from the time of a world almost empty of people and are not suitable for today's world full of people.

Today, actually since the mid of the twentieth century, humanity lives in a full world. A hundred years ago there were around 1,700, by 1950 around 2,500 and today around 8,000 million people live on our planet.

The limits are tangible, palpable in almost everything people do. And yet the world continues to pursue a policy of growth, as if we were still living in the empty world of that time, when the abundance of natural resources on Earth seemed endless.
According to Weizsäcker v. Ernst Ulrich and Anders Wijkman.Book: Come on! - Capitalism, Short-Terminism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet. 2017

Our institutions and governance have been designed for a world characterised by relative stability and progress, but they have not been designed to steer our society in times of rapid change, when widely held assumptions, such as the pursuit for growth, are turning against us.

We need policymakers to take bold and ambitious action that embraces the urgency and interplay of overlapping crises while ensuring a truly just and inclusive transition.
Katy Wiese, Senior Policy Officer at the EEB. In: Andreas Budiman. The tricky path to financing our way out of the climate crisis. Meta from European Environmental Bureau EEB. April 5, 2023.

We are looking for a grand narrative that will overcome the present gloom. But we forget that many a grand narrative from the past has led to disaster.

For the moment, we have to accept that there is not yet a good answer to the great challenges of our time, perhaps there cannot even be one.

We do not know whether and how major disruptions caused by climate change can be avoided; for the time being, we can only experiment with small interim solutions.
Translated from: Jürgen Wiebicke. Book: Erste Hilfe für Demokratie-Retter. 2024

© andriano.cz | Shutterstock, [US] 2019

All of us seem to be sleepwalking towards disaster with almost zero change in our consumption habits or lifestyle. Companies are walking back from their commitments, cheered loudly by their shareholders as they do so. Climate summits are falling short. 

The tragic thing is that we have so many ideas, solutions, technologies and even the resources to address climate change substantially. What we lack is the leadership and collective will to implement them at scale and with speed.
Ravi Venkatesan. Social Entrepreneur and Writer. Post on LinkedIn. 30.12.2024 

In the fight against climate change, the dilemma here is obvious.

On the one hand, consumption in an economy dependent on fossil fuels increases CO2 emissions and also causes other environmental damage, such as biodiversity loss. The more people consume, the greater the impact on the environment.

On the other hand, the social system is based - economically, politically, and culturally - precisely on this consumption and its continued growth.
Beckert Jens. Book: How We Sold Our Future. The Failure to Fight Climate Change. 2025

Modern societies have more detailed knowledge than ever before about the state of and changes in the environment and about the causes, consequences, connections and interactions of these changes.

However, their political will and their political ability to stop and possibly reverse these changes has not grown as a result of this knowledge, but has perhaps even shrunk.
Translated from: Ingolfur Blühdorn. Book: Die Gesellschaft der Nicht-Nachhaltigkeit. Skizze einer umweltsoziologischen Gegenwartsdiagnose. In: Nachhaltige Nicht-Nachhaltigkeit. 2020. Seiten 83-160 

When climate change moved from a comfortable future issue in the 1990s to an issue that we had to do something about now, that is when the political polarisation began.

It's when science implies societal action that people beginn to reject science in order to avoid the need for action.
Amanda Buckiewicz. Prominent climate scientist argues it's time to ditch the 'myth of neutralitiy'. CBC News posted Jan 17. 2025

© Danilo_Designer | Shutterstock, [US] 2024

That leaves the justified question:

Do we really want to achieve the climate protection goals or are we content with climate protection goals?