How the IPCC slipped into high spirits

Feasible, promising, effective: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change between horror and flowery awakening. In the new report, he wants to navigate the world out of the catastrophe with verve. For some, that doesn’t go far enough.

Ein a cookbook for climate rescue, something that was still missing in the long list of IPCC oeuvres. What the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC for short, had produced instead in its 35 years of expert expert work was always more accusation and disaster warnings than scientific mood lifters. Obviously, this time it was going to be radically different.

Presenting the Synthesis Report for the Sixth Assessment Report this week, the IPCC leadership outdid itself in its purposeful optimism: Hoesung Lee, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Council, repeatedly spoke of the “message of hope”. The press release that was delivered at the same time does not speak of the unprecedented urgency of action, but of “multiple, feasible and effective options” that we as humanity held in our hands to combat self-inflicted climate change. And one of the main German authors of the new IPCC report, Matthias Garschagen, repeatedly heard the remark: “We still have it in our own hands.” They wanted to be solution-oriented, constructive instead of destructive.