From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Taken together, mass migration, mass starvation and mass extinctions are what we will see if we sleep walk into a future of unmitigated climate change. These stresses will ruin economies and drive competition over dwindling resources.
There is a strong possibility that the relationship between humans and their environment would be so fundamentally changed that hundreds of millions of people, perhaps billions, would have to move. History tells us that this carries serious risks of severe and extended conflict.
Everything is just crystal-clear and glowing. Our planet just glows with all the colours you know Earth to be made of, but in a way, that's almost transparent, iridescent. Seeing our planet from space is so much more than a visual experience, I think it's about feeling it, I think it really is about having a kind of spiritual connection to it, that you feel. Total awe, humbling.
This crisis is expected to trigger migration from these vulnerable regions to the more resilient Northern countries, with projections suggesting 80 million to 200 million people could be displaced by 2050 if we fail to mitigate the impacts.
Sustainability isn't a trend in our kitchen - it's a responsibility. We have to think about the future of our planet with every dish we create.
We are facing a global catastrophe, one which should be a bigger motivator for us to come-together around a common cause than even World War II. Climate scientists tell us we're facing an existential crisis, and unless we get emissions under control in the next decade, that climate change will be irreversible.
We are, in the early days of the 21st century, talking about the death of the living world as an environmental externality. That alone should be an alarm-bell that our framework doesn't serve our time.
We got to the point where, we are not on our grandparents' planet anymore. Meat has become less healthy for us – it's too available. There are too many calories, too much saturated fat. Animals are no longer 'free-rangy', they are growing in very tight confined conditions.
For the first time since life began, a single animal is utterly dominant: the ape species Homo sapiens. Evolution has equipped us with huge brains, stunning adaptability and brilliantly successful technical prowess.
It was her death that actually made us say 'right, that's it – we've talked a lot but we haven't done anything. Now we've got to do something'. And that's when Zoo Check began which is what we were called in those days.
I think that's why I've always felt comfortable in the arts where you are creating things that will hopefully be around for a long time and won't be transient.
If you view the world from a moral perspective, you have no option but to address climate change in a timely fashion. The good news is that the moral imperative is backed-up by economics, technological advance and capital shifts.