Letter sent to The Guardian and the NY Times on October 17, 2021
17 October 2021
We can still avert climate disaster
Dear editor,
Bill McKibben writes: “We’ve been very lucky. We can still avert climate disaster” (Guardian 16th October). We are indeed heading towards climate disaster with increasingly extreme weather events occurring worldwide. People are coming to realise that the strategy of mitigation and adaptation has failed and intervention to reverse climate change is needed in short order. Our natural prejudice against intervention, reinforced by well-meaning activists such as McKibben, has to be overcome if we want to avert climate disaster and offer a better future for our offspring and the rest of humanity.
The Planetary Restoration Action Group (PRAG) which I chair has identified not only the means to reverse climate change but also how to restore the planet to a healthy state. PRAG now wants action. The top priority is to reverse the Arctic’s rapid warming which is the main driver of ever more extreme weather events and ever higher sea levels. Damage costs could quickly rise to trillions of dollars. Only prompt intervention with the most powerful cooling techniques can possibly reverse Arctic warming and restore Arctic ice. But there’s no commercial incentive for this, so governments must collaborate in a programme with ambitious targets such as proposed by PRAG in a letter to COP26 Parties. There must be the same urgency, intensity, determination and focus as in a war effort, fighting to refreeze the Arctic. Only then can the planet be restored to the safe, sustainable, biodiverse and productive state that our young people deserve for their future well-being.
Yours sincerely,
John Nissen
Planetary Restoration Action • Group 