On 20 March 2023, the summary – also known as the synthesis report – of the sixth assessment report cycle of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, was published. There will be no others until at least 2030. And perhaps that is just as well, since they say nothing new. Always the same things. We already know where we are headed. What is the point of continuing to do research on a subject that nobody cares about? What is the point of proposing solutions and mapping out the road ahead – even stepping outside the scientific field and into the political one – if nobody follows it? Yes, this is a provocation.

The IPCC's sixth assessment report cycle (AR6) was a monumental piece of work that engaged hundreds of scientists, delegates, observers and reviewers. All of them, without exception. Each one contributed to outlining, in the best and clearest way possible, the scenarios we face depending on whether we choose to confront the climate crisis or carry on not caring, as we have done so far.

Where do we stand with the climate crisis?

What does "now" look like? Now is a rise in average global temperature of 1.1 degrees compared to the pre-industrial period average; now is more than 3 billion people already suffering serious consequences, from floods to drought. We saw it last summer in Pakistan, we saw it a few days ago in Malawi and Mozambique, and we are seeing it today in Milan, where the air quality is dreadful because it has not rained properly for months – precisely because of a temperature rise that (we will come back to this) also affects cloud formation and has led to persistent drought. There is no snow on the mountains, no water in the rivers, and the lakes look like puddles.

"This report is a clarion call to massively speed up efforts by every country, every sector, at every moment we have available. In short, the world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once." That is how António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, put it, quoting the film that has just won seven awards at the Oscars, including Best Picture: to save the climate, every solution must be put into practice, immediately. Because, let us not forget, solutions exist – t-h-e-y e-x-i-s-t.

What are the solutions to the climate crisis?

• We must stop burning – all at once – oil, coal and gas;
• we must invest massively in renewable energy, such as water, solar and wind;
• we must invest money – a great deal of money – in research and technology to find medium-term solutions. Nobody has ever said we should not invest in nuclear fusion or in the storage of excess CO2 – quite the opposite. We must invest, but we cannot wait for these to become a reality; we need to act first, now, to reduce emissions as quickly as possible;
• we must improve the energy efficiency of buildings and industries;
• we must focus on climate finance and climate justice – yes, because we still spend billions in public money on oil and far too little on helping to reduce the inequalities caused by the uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources, starting with land.

We have done none of this – n-o-t-h-i-n-g. We have been pretending. And indeed, despite decades of scientific warnings (the last major IPCC report on how to keep the rise in average global temperature within 1.5 degrees dates back to 2018, a full five years ago), the volume of emissions we pump into the atmosphere continues to rise, relentlessly, year after year. And for this reason, still according to what we are told, we are heading straight towards a rise – God forbid – of 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Three times the current increase that is already driving us to distraction. We used to complain that climate was not talked about enough; now we are already tired of hearing that it is not raining. And the less it rains, the more it is talked about. It is not like a distant war or a botched landing that we can forget about because it affects us, but only for a few days. No, drought – the fact that fresh water is becoming ever scarcer and more precious – concerns us more with every passing day. We see cracked, arid, yellow and brown soil and feel thirsty just thinking about what this could mean in a few months' time, when we may no longer be able to turn our taps on freely or use public fountains. How many of you have seen Siccità by Paolo Virzì?

So, before looking to some distant "we", to some "humanity" in other multiverses that has already overcome the climate crisis, let us try to do what "we", here, today, must do.