Future Timeline

19 March 2024



Scotland's flagship 2030 target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is now out of reach, the government's independent advisers have warned.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) said the measures that would be needed to achieve the target by the end of the decade were "beyond what is credible".

It accused ministers on "failing" on ambitious goals and urged them to focus instead on hitting the target "at the earliest possible date".

The Scottish government said the target was always challenging and that it was decarbonising faster than the UK average.

Scotland has missed eight of the past 12 annual targets for cutting planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

(Bulletin of Atomic Scientists) n January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that its Doomsday Clock was remaining at an ominous 90 seconds to midnight. The Clock is an annual clarion call for the threats—nuclear weapons, climate change, biosecurity, and disruptive technologies—that, if left unchecked, could destroy humanity. These threats form a combined level of global catastrophic risk, the potential for human death or suffering on a massive scale.

A month earlier, the Global Challenges Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness about global catastrophic risk, released their seventh annual report on the risk. It pointed to the same threats as the Bulletin and added “ecological collapse” onto the pile for good measure. The World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risk Report also chimed in: More than half of those surveyed believed that the risk of global catastrophe was high or extreme over the next decade.

Despite these warnings, if one were to turn to government officials anywhere in the world and ask for their view of the risk of global catastrophe, the response would be thunderous silence. These worst-case scenarios receive little attention from policymakers because they are out of the realms of imagination and the time frames of politics.

To properly prevent and prepare for the risk, governments must admit there’s a problem. Such an admission can only come with proper effort to assess and monitor global catastrophic risk, develop potential future scenarios, build and analyze intelligence, and invest in scientific and technical expertise.

Until that happens, governments won’t be able to see beyond their current conceptions of what the future might hold. Such tunnel vision could have catastrophic consequences.

Wed 27 Mar 2024 11.37 GMT

Two of the world’s biggest aid agencies will host an inaugural global summit on extreme heat on Thursday as directors warn that the climate crisis is dramatically increasing the probability of a mass-fatality heat disaster.

The conference will highlight some of the pioneering work being done, from tree-planting projects to the development of reflective roof coverings that reduce indoor temperatures.

After last year’s record-shattering temperatures, when 3.8 billion people – half the world’s population – sweltered in extreme heat for at least one day, the organisers hope the event will prompt governments to prepare for a “silent killer” that rarely gets the attention it deserves when compared with hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) have come together to stage this virtual conference, in which they will urge national governments, local authorities, humanitarian groups, companies, school and hospitals to develop heat action plans.

They will float the idea of naming heatwaves in the same way that typhoons or hurricanes are labelled to make them more prominent.