No Action Before 2012 and It's Too Late
IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri, November 2007: 'If There's No Action Before 2012, That's Too Late'
Presenting the UN climate panel's final 2007 report, its chairman said the next two to three years would decide humanity's future.
What was said
“If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”
— Rajendra Pachauri (chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) · said Nov 17, 2007 · due Before 2012
2012 arrived with the Kyoto Protocol's successor still unagreed (the Paris Agreement came in 2015). The IPCC kept publishing reports after the 'too late' date: its Fifth Assessment in 2013-14 and its Sixth in 2021-23.
The fine print
Said at the release of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Synthesis Report in Valencia, Spain, on November 17, 2007, a month after the panel shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
Sources
As of Oct 9, 2026
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