When the IPCC becomes a liability, endangering all of us
Escaping paralysis before collapse becomes irreversible
In 2023 and 2024, global temperatures smashed through historical records, surpassing climate model projections and alarming even the most seasoned scientists. Yet, amid this planetary emergency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), our supposedly leading authority on climate science, offered no urgent explanation, no mobilizing alert, no adaptive response.
The silence was systemic.
Why?
Because the IPCC was never designed to act. It was created to “provide regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation.” It compiles past peer-reviewed knowledge, not current planetary signals. It does not conduct original research.
Let’s be clear: the scientists in the IPCC work tirelessly, unpaid, and deserve our deepest respect. It's the leadership that’s asleep at the wheel. But its process, built on multi-year consensus and political review, cannot keep pace with accelerating ecological breakdown.
This structural lag is no longer just a limitation, it’s a liability.
A Crisis of Institutional Inertia
The IPCC’s reports continue to shape global policy and climate negotiations. But what happens when the framework itself lags behind unfolding planetary reality? When critical ecosystem feedbacks, such as Amazon drying, cloud loss, Atlantic current weakening, ocean heatwaves, and forest-rainfall collapse, are overlooked, downplayed, or delayed in their inclusion? This isn’t just a scientific gap, it’s a failure of risk management. By omitting, underestimating or slowwalking high-impact systemic risks, the IPCC undermines our ability to anticipate, respond, and adapt in time. And in the context of a fast-moving climate crisis, that failure is not neutral, it’s dangerous.
The world is starting to notice. Not just activists, but actuaries, insurers, and financial regulators.
In January 2025, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries released “Planetary Solvency: Finding Our Balance in Nature,” co-authored with Tim Lenton of the Global Tipping Points initiative. These are not radical voices, they are fiduciaries. And their warning is clear: by omitting systemic risks and biosphere feedbacks, the IPCC’s reports no longer capture the full scope of threat. Consensus inertia is now a form of reckless endangerment.
We Don’t Need More Caution. We Need Coherence. And Much More Action!
As a climate regeneration strategist, I see it in the field: rainfall patterns breaking, local cooling systems collapsing, forest-water feedbacks failing, all largely absent from the IPCC’s reports. Not because the science isn’t known, but because it doesn’t fit the consensus process.
This isn’t a personal critique. It’s structural. But that structure is now part of the problem.
If the IPCC cannot evolve, we need something that can. A parallel or successor process that offers:
Real-time planetary dashboards, not just decade-scale synthesis
Restoration of ecosystems as core to climate stabilization, not an afterthought
Integration of biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmospheric science into one system model
Co-creation with Indigenous leaders, systems scientists, and risk modelers, not only climate physicists
We at Cooling the Climate are calling for a science that operates from the living planet perspective, understanding the Earth as a huge super organism that has created metabolisms to create homeostasis when it is not damaged. We need to redefine climate and indeed the atmosphere as a property designed throughout evolution by the biosphere as a way to protect life on Earth. And we need institutions that move at the required speed. We need courage, not consensus. And we need actions at the size and speed that fit the planetary emergency! We need:
A Global Mutirão
a worldwide collective effort where people unite across borders to restore nature, regenerate ecosystems, and cool the planet, together.
Delay is no longer neutral, it is reckless endangerment by design and a betrayal of future generations. We don’t have the luxury of another assessment-cycle to waste.
Onward!
Rob de Laet
Project lead of Cooling the Climate,
a project supported by Brand Intelligence and Buckminster Fuller Institute
It’s an important time to keep walking, one foot in front of the other, with open eyes, courageous hearts snd skillful intellect. Thanks for this article
Spot on, Rob. Despite good intentions and lots of effort, the old paradigm is failing us miserably. And you are right, it is dangerous, leading us doggedly down the industrial solutions path, which got us here in the first place.