The infrastructure that 1.5°C overshoot pathways depend on has no political constituency, and the people most motivated to see it built are currently its most effective opponents. Political economy remains the biggest and least acknowledged challenge to CO2 removal. Read more in the comments.

How do we prevent extreme weather from fuelling political paralysis? @laurielaybourn.bsky.social Executive Director of the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative (SCRI), warns that we are facing a dangerous political paradox.

"The conditions that we've seen with the heat waves and now these wildfires are beyond what many governments have identified as being the worst case scenarios that are possible." @laurielaybourn.bsky.social Executive Director of the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story.

"We cannot rule out 2027 becoming the first year where global temperatures remain above 1.5°C without dropping afterward". And as conditions worsen, the politics of climate could soon be decided by the politics of protection. Read more from SCRI ED Laurie Laybourn in Al Jazeera: shorturl.at/u1izn

عاصفة في فنجان أم كارثة عالمية؟ ظاهرة النينيو تعود لتهدد طعام العالم

العودة القوية لظاهرة "النينيو" تنذر باضطرابات مناخية متطرفة وارتفاع قياسي في درجات الحرارة، وهو ما يهدد العالم بأزمات حادة في الأمن الغذائي والاقتصادي.

aljazeera.net

Your pension is funding its own destruction. The assumptions used to model climate risk are "ridiculous" - and the people responsible for billions of pounds don't seem to see it. To find out why, check out - www.overshootpod.com

Climate risk can erode the social contract. New evidence from sub-Saharan Africa shows droughts and extreme heat lower tax morale via inequality and trust erosion. For flooding, more visible responses reduced this effect. Protecting state legitimacy may be a key policy challenge in the coming years.

We missed our climate goals, the world is changing faster than we expected. So what happens next? Listen to Overshoot podcast - www.overshootpod.com

🔥 'Really bad stuff happens when you hit 40 degrees.' Former BBC Science Editor, David Shukman, explains how unprepared we are for climate change. Listen to Overshoot podcast to understand the extreme weather events we are now living through - www.overshootpod.com

What should we do when we pass 1.5°C of warming? Double down with stubborn optimism? Pivot to national security? Accelerate adaptation? Pile investment into carbon dioxide removal and solar geoengineering? Or just close our eyes very tight and hope AI will solve it all? luma.com/xbjxedgd

Overshoot: What's the climate strategy above 1.5°C? · Luma

The world missed its goal for tackling climate change. What happens next? Overshooting 1.5C creates profound challenges, including what a new goal should be…

luma.com

"Wouldn't it be nice if the banks and insurers stopped facilitating the activities that are probably going to have such severe impacts on their industries within the next 30 years?" Actuary Louise Pryor explains how economic models systematically underestimate climate risk.

Lieutenant General (retd) Richard Nugee CB CVO CBE spent 36 years in the British Army. He oversaw the MOD's landmark Climate Change and Sustainability Review and he is unequivocal: climate change is the most insidious security threat we face, and we are wholly unprepared for it.

The Finnish Social Democrats recently voted to make AMOC tipping point risk a national security and preparedness issue. To our knowledge, that's a world first at the party political level.

We missed our climate goals, the world is changing faster than we expected. So what happens next? Listen to Overshoot podcast - www.overshootpod.com

"You could see an increase in poverty, malnutrition, conflict, indebtedness, and all of the domino effects that come from that." @laurielaybourn.bsky.social spoke to The New York Times about the powerful El Niño pattern currently forming in the Pacific Ocean. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/c...

A Powerful El Niño Is Forming. If History Is a Guide, It Could Hit Hard.

nytimes.com

Britain is sleepwalking into a food crisis without urgent action. SCRI Executive Director, @laurielaybourn.bsky.social, was part of a group of nine signatories that wrote to ministers to highlight the lack of consistency on food security Read more: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Britain ‘sleepwalking into a food crisis’ without urgent action, experts say

Industry figures warn of national security risk and call for ministers to address impact of extreme weather, inflation and Iran war

theguardian.com

The UK isn’t ready to survive global heating, but right-wing politicians are ready to exploit the fallout @laurielaybourn.bsky.social writes on derailment risk for @labourlist.bsky.social labourlist.org/2026/05/righ...

'The UK isn’t ready to survive global heating, but right-wing politicians are ready to exploit the fallout' - LabourList

Labour should focus more on adaptation and be ready to win the narrative during climate tragedies.

labourlist.org

The evidence base for derailment dynamics is growing. A new report highlights "epistemic stress" of crises in the Indo-Pacific; partisan disputes, blame and denial narratives corroded emergency coordination during major fires and floods. Worsening impacts eroding the capacity to respond.

Are businesses drastically miscalculating climate risk? Our Executive Director, @laurielaybourn.bsky.social , recently joined climate scientist Professor Tim Lenton (@exeter.ac.uk) to unpack these complex issues for the United Nations Global Compact @globalcompact.bsky.social

1/ The new CMIP7 scenarios are a major shift. But interpreting this as evidence that climate risk was overstated would be a mistake. Here's what's happened, and what it means:

Fiscal constraints from disaster reconstruction can crowd out mitigation spending, even as public concern peaks. A Grantham Institute paper empirically models what SCRI calls derailment risk: climate consequences frustrating climate action.

Planning for a super El Niño as a temporary deviation from normal misses the real risk. A 2025 study found these events can persistently shift climate baselines. If one forms this year, the impacts could extend far beyond short-term disruption, however extreme. Link to the paper in thread.

"This is part of what we see as a whole spectrum of products that you deploy at various points along the way, changing the very story that people have in their minds." @laurielaybourn.bsky.social joined Federico Spiezia on his podcast to discuss why the SCRI decided to launch a narrative podcast.

Nordic discussions have cited stable regional ocean circulation as evidence against AMOC collapse. New research reframes stability as a precursor to coupled failure. Nonlinear dynamics create security blind spots; we need strategies and early warning systems that account for them. Paper in thread.

IR scholars have called for risk research around SRM to move beyond purely comparing geophysical risks, to also factoring in conflictual geopolitics. This is the only way to ensure research can support effective governance discussions around this world shaping technology. Paper linked in thread.

Governments are planning for war. Meanwhile, two new studies show AMOC collapse could be the bigger threat. Weakening of over 50% by 2100 is expected, with an irreversible tipping point as early as mid-century. As we noted in the Security Blind Spot report, security infrastructure isn't prepared.

A new study by PIK shows AMOC collapse would flip the Southern Ocean from carbon sink to carbon source, adding ~0.2°C of warming. That's on top of wherever temperatures already are when it happens. Tipping points risks cascade in ways that are often under-appreciated. Link in thread.

“Chaos caused by climate extremes and worsening consequences of climate change can actually begin to get in the way of acting on climate change.” SCRI Executive Director @laurielaybourn.bsky.social spoke on PBS Weathered about derailment risk.

El Niño already causes floods, droughts, and crop failures worldwide. A new paper shows warming makes each shock stronger, not (just) because El Niño changes, but because a hotter world is more sensitive. Link in thread.

"Climate change is not this slow moving thing that will evolve smoothly - it is now." SCRI Executive Director @laurielaybourn.bsky.social spoke with We Don't Have Time after the UK National Emergency Briefing.

1/ A global food crisis from simultaneous maize droughts doesn't need any region to break its own record. Moderately severe stress across several regions at once is enough. A new paper puts those odds above 50% this century.