Despite the concerted international effort to stop climate change, it remains one of the most troubling and challenging issues that our societies have to address. Looking at the IPCC AR5 report in its entirety, it confirms and underlines what many scientists have been saying for some time: there is now certainty – more than ever before in the history of climate science – that climate change is happening and that humans are the main cause of it.
As global carbon emissions have reached record levels and keep rising, the IPCC AR5 confirms that climate change is already impacting all continents and the oceans, resulting in changes that are often unprecedented and could partly be – or soon become – irreversible.
In his book “Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed – and What It Means for Our Future“, Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy at NYU Dale Jamieson tries to explain what climate change is, why we have failed to stop it and, more importantly, why what we do still matters. Our failure to prevent or even to respond significantly to climate change, Jamieson says, reflects the impoverishment of our systems of practical reason, the paralysis of our politics, and the limits of our cognitive and affective capacities. An interview by Laura Caciagli.

Read the full interview  on Climate Science & Policy the free digital magazine edited by CMCC.