Buying Time (1/3): Climate change and the case for ‘global breakdown cover’

A month ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) told the world that we have just 12-years to avoid a catastrophic climate breakdown.

Believe it or not, this is actually a conservative assessment. At least this is the view of a growing chorus of scientists and academics that believe climate change is reaching an end game and that our very survival is uppermost.

To get a handle on the panic, take a moment to reflect over your next soya milk latte. It’s likely to be as well — if not better — travelled than you. The coffee beans, soya milk, and chocolate dust topping arrive in your mug through a complex weave of just-in-time cross-border supply chains. Think of your coffee as the refined outcome of a never-ending game of Tetris (the tile-matching puzzle video game) where the ingredients gently fall and snap together in orderly sequence.

This is a microcosm of today’s global economy — the most incredible and fragile feat of human civilisation. Because climate change has no truck with orderly sequence. Changes to weather — as a result of rising temperature — threaten to play havoc with global agriculture and crop yields. No more Tetris.

At the benign end of the spectrum, there might not be any more soya milk lattes. Of course…