The Need for Speed, and Being Clear

I don't know about you, but it has been hard to get news that the IPCC released another report that had important information about our shared future.

Even my Twitter feed has not been as good a source.

But then a few days ago, Michael Flammer @Jumpsteady asked this:

Translate this quote from the IPCC report into easy language:

Any further delay in concerted anticipatory action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a briefly and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all (very high confidence).

Most of the responses tried to literally translate it into simpler words, word for word. But this from @Educators4F was the best one, in my opinion:

"Delay in climate mitigation means death"

They followed it with these words, and this image:

leaders who spread mitigation denial and delay fossil-fuel phase-out, act against humanity and have to be removed from office

A day or so after I saw that, I read a tweet by DoctorVive (Genevieve Guenther), one of my regular climate change follows. She posted an image of an FAQ from the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report. It said this:

Targeting a climate resilient, sustainable world involves fundamental changes to how society functions, including changes to underlying values, worldviews, ideologies, social structures, political and economic systems, and power relationships.

This may feel overwhelming at first, but the world is changing anyway and will continue to change so Climate Resilient Development offers us ways to drive change to improve well-being for all — by reducing climate risk, tackling the many inequities and injustices experienced today, and rebuilding our relationship with nature.

I want a pithier, more accessible translation of that as well.

Then I saw a link to a Guardian article, which reported that leaving fossil fuels in the ground would not financially affect the general public. The costs, instead, would be borne by the wealthy. And even for the rich,

because the wealthiest people tend to have a “diverse portfolio of investments”, [researchers] found, any losses would still make up less than 1% of this group’s net wealth.

Alex Steffen, who shared the article, said:

Most people's climate interests are "fast" — they lose little from action being as fast as possible, and gain considerably from a safer world. In terms of both humanity's common good and the self-interest of most people now alive, there is already no such thing as going "too fast" on climate action and sustainability.