‘My 40-year journey with climate change…from idealism to realism’: Former UN IPCC scientist Mike Hulme: ‘I uncritically absorbed the notion that climate change represented the pre-eminent challenge facing humanity’ – Now declares climate is ‘perhaps not the most important thing’
Mike Hulme, Professor at Cambridge University & one of the world’s most accomplished climate scientists. Hulme participated in the UN IPCC second and third assessments & was part of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, where he subsequently founded the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at UEA. He has been at Cambridge University since 2017. ... Mike’s publication record is expansive.
Prof. Hulme: "For a long period I uncritically absorbed the notion that climate change represented the pre-eminent challenge facing humanity in the twenty-first century. ... I was easily convinced that the growing human influence on the world’s climate would be a reality that all nations would increasingly need to confront, a reality to which their interests would necessarily be subservient and that would be decisive for shaping their development pathways. For more than half of these 40 or so years, it seemed to me self-evident that relations between nations would forcibly be re-shaped by the exigencies of a changing climate.
But now, in the mid-2020s, I can see that I got this the wrong way round. ... Too often the language, rhetoric, and campaigning around climate change remains wedded to a world that no longer exists. ... Rather than geopolitics having to bend to the realities of a changing climate, the opposite has happened. ... In short, this optimism was fueled by the rise of globalism; thinking strategically about climate change was caught-up in this zeitgeist. ... Climate is not the only thing that is changing through our lifetimes, and perhaps not the most important thing. ...
https://www.climatedepot.com/2025/01/13/from-idealism-to-realism-former-un-ipcc-climate-scientist-mike-hulme/
