Keep calm and carry on having kids: the UN’s climate chief on eco-anxiety

Jim Skea has just taken on the most important job in climate science. As the new head of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he is now in charge of the organisation that has done more than any other to build the international consensus that climate change is an existential threat to humanity.

In the weeks since his appointment, however, the 69-year-old Scot, a former professor at Imperial and a founding member of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, has set out to strike a very different tone by casting doubt on the apocalyptic claims of the environmentalist movement. His mission, it seems, is to be the still, small voice of scientific calm in a debate that usually tends towards hysteria.

When we meet in The Spectator’s offices, he’s wary of talking politics. Asked about Rishi Sunak’s decision to expand drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, for instance, he replies: ‘I’m going to step back there with my IPCC hat on.’ Asked if more nuclear power is the only way Britain can realistically achieve its net-zero emissions targets, he demurs again: ‘That’s taking me into things that the IPCC wouldn’t touch on.’

He is, however, willing to distance his organisation from the increasingly fatalistic view that many young people have about humanity in relation to the environment. Polls show one in four young Brits is considering having fewer (or no) children in order to do less harm to the planet. ‘I’m about to become a grandfather in January,’ says Skea. ‘So clearly I think it’s sad that people might be making these decisions. I’m delighted the Skea line will continue.’

In general, polls show a rising proportion of young people reporting alarm and despondency about the planet’s future.