What is the difference between a 2°C world and a 4°C world? Human civilisation!
Interpretation
The quote highlights the significant impact of temperature increases on human civilization and the environment.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber emphasizes the profound consequences of climate change by contrasting a 2°C rise in global temperatures with a 4°C rise. The implication is that even small increases can lead to drastic changes in conditions that sustain human civilization, suggesting that climate action is crucial to preserving our way of life.
In practice
This quote can be used in a climate change awareness speech to emphasize the importance of limiting global warming.
Either the Earth System would undergo major phase transitions as a result of unchecked human pressure on nature's capacities and resources or a "Great Transformation" towards global sustainability would be initiated in due course. Neither transitions nor transformations will be manageable without novel forms of global governance and markets.
Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there's no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science.
Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls, as a golden link into the great chain of order.
For centuries, magicians have intuitively taken advantage of the inner workings of our brains.
Strange as it may sound, the power of mathematics rests on its evasion of all unnecessary thought and on its wonderful saving of mental operations.
Doctors, dressed up in one professional costume or another, have been in busy practice since the earliest records of every culture on earth. It is hard to think of a more dependable or enduring occupation, harder still to imagine any future events leading to its extinction.
Psychological factors are critical in supporting immune function. If you suppress this psychological support by telling someone he's condemned to die, your words alone will have condemned him.
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