Comment: Code Red!

The planet is doomed, one way or another. It's just a question of time - and it's apparently coming faster than scientists have assumed so far. That's the drastic conclusion of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released Monday. And indeed, the news was full of it for a day, with politicians of all stripes eagerly standing in front of the microphones to stress once again that action must be taken quickly now, because it is high time.

Wrong, because in truth we are already past that and thus too late to prevent the great climate catastrophe. At least to its full extent. A potential ebbing of the Gulf Stream, which was identified only days earlier as a threatening tipping point, cannot simply be rectified with a few measures. Rebuilding the flood-damaged regions in Germany alone will take years and cost several billion euros. And what will happen after the fires in the affected regions on the Mediterranean is not yet foreseeable - first the fires have to be extinguished, which is not easy at 40 degrees in the shade.

Various large-scale forest fires are currently raging around the world (Image: Pixabay)

Meanwhile, it is already clear today - only three days after the publication of the report - that not all nations are pulling in the same direction anyway. For example, China and Australia, where coal power is still very popular and widespread, already announced that they are not planning any more acute climate protection measures than what they have already adopted anyway. In the case of China, that means continuing as before until 2030, after which climate protection can begin. The fact that the latest report assumes that the 1.5-degree mark can already be exceeded by 2030 - irrelevant.

These are great prospects for the world climate summit in Glasgow, which starts in a few weeks! Of course, it will not be possible to achieve great leaps such as the Paris climate agreement. But in any case, the question remains whether Paris really achieved as much as everyone hoped at the time. The governments of the countries are much too slow in implementing their measures, too many lobby groups and voters have to be satisfied.

In fact, there is only one thing that counts in "Code Red": Act immediately! Implement emergency measures!