Is climate change a non-starter?
“Is climate change a non-starter?” That was the question posed in all seriousness by *Die Welt* at the end of May 2026. The *BILD* newspaper also ran the headline: “Forecasts completely wrong! Climate researchers scrap their worst-case scenario.” The AfD even spoke in the Bundestag of “the end of the greatest fraud in human history”. What had happened?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has revised its “worst-case scenario”, its most dire forecast for climate change. This is because the measures taken so far to protect the global climate are showing initial positive results, and it is unlikely that the global temperature will rise to 4.8 degrees by the end of this century.
The main reasons: Renewable energies have become dramatically cheaper and the Paris Climate Agreement has spurred the world into climate protection policy.
It is a normal scientific process for climate scenarios to be regularly updated. Our colleagues at *Die Welt* and *BILD* have, however, simply overlooked the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has also scrapped its ‘best-case scenario’. This means that even the 1.5-degree target set in Paris is now barely achievable unless the international community takes climate protection more seriously than it has done so far. The new, middle-of-the-road scenario, which forecasts global warming of 2.8 degrees if the world carries on as before until 2100, is of course also a disaster – a fact that “BILD” and “Die Welt” have simply overlooked.
Climate researchers such as Niklas Höhne from the New Climate Institute: “In my view, it is irresponsible and also transparent that climate change deniers, the far-right media or indeed the Trump administration are exploiting this process for their own ends. The adjustment of climate scenarios is a normal scientific process.” The fact that the worst-case scenario has been revised downwards shows – according to Höhne – that climate protection efforts to date have had an effect, albeit not yet a sufficient one.
With more ambitious climate protection measures, we still have the chance to put our entire civilisation on a completely new footing. By 2025, twice as much money had already been invested globally in renewable energies as in the old fossil-fuel and nuclear energy sector. However, to still achieve the Paris targets, a tripling of current efforts is required. The energy issue is the social issue of the 21st century. This is in fact the opposite of what climate change deniers are claiming these days.
Climate change is not going away; it remains the question of humanity’s survival. The new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says nothing else. The idea that the climate crisis is going away is simply a lie.
But there are also rays of hope: China alone has added as much renewable energy capacity in 2026 as Germany has over the past 25 years combined. And it is not only in Germany that the business of solar panels, electric cars and heat pumps is booming. Renewable energies are driving down electricity prices worldwide, whilst fossil fuels are driving them up.
In May 2026, renewable energies accounted for 68.2%, and fossil fuels for just 31.8% of total net electricity generation in Germany.
