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.
‘I’m very conscious that constant drip-drip anxiety messages could have a paralysing effect on climate action’
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.’
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