The Climate Emergency: A Q&A with Ariane Burke and Julien Riel-Salvatore

On the eve of the UN’s COP26 conference in Glasgow, two UdeM anthropologists discuss a new study they’ve co-written that’s become a must-read among climate watchers around the world. 

As world climate experts begin to gather in Glasgow, Scotland, for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), a provocative Canada-U.K. study co-authored by two Université de Montréal anthropologists is generating a lot of buzz around the globe.

In the study led by McGill University social scientist Christopher Lyon, UdeM’s Ariane Burke and Julien Riel-Salvatore and colleagues at four U.K. universities argue that if the 2015 Paris Agreement is ignored and climate warming not stopped this century, by 2500 “Earth will be alien to humans.”

To illustrate their climate model projections, the scientists include sketches of what parts of the globe will look like by then: a treeless Amazon, a subtropical American Midwest, an Indian subcontinent where rice is harvested by robots in the extreme heat. 

The paper was published Sept. 24 in Global Change Biology and reached a wider audience shortly after in a summary published in the academic not-for-profit online news magazine The Conversation, of which UdeM is a partner.

We asked Burke and Riel-Salvatore to expand on the study’s projections and how they could inform debate at COP26.

Publication: Christopher Lyon, et al., Climate change research and action must look beyond 2100, Global Change Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1111/gcb.15871.

Original Story Source:  University of Montreal