ROCKSTROM, John: "It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that [at 4C]"

Johan Rockström (director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany) on a hotter world (2019): “We will have lost all the [coral] reefs decades before 2100 – at somewhere between 2C and 4C … A combination of climate change and deforestation could push it [the Amazon rain forest] into a savannah state … It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate eight billion people or maybe even half of that. There will be a rich minority of people who survive with modern lifestyles, no doubt, but it will be a turbulent, conflict-ridden world… The reason is primarily making enough food, but also we would have lost the biodiversity we’re dependent on and be facing a cocktail of negative shocks all the time, from fires to droughts” (Johan Rockström quoted in Gaia Vince, “The heat is on over the climate crisis. Only radical measures will work”, Guardian, 19 May 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/18/climate-crisis-heat-is-on-global-heating-four-degrees-2100-change-way-we-live . )