From now on, the following applies to every decision: what does this mean for the climate?

It is now or never’. There is still a ‘last chance’ and ‘the door is ajar’. Humanity has “another 8.5 years” to avert an imminent threat. The latest report from the IPCC, the scientific climate panel of the United Nations, is also clear. Answering the question of what we can do to curb global warming, the IPCC is closing its sixth cycle of reports — with another grim warning.

No place on this planet can escape the effects of climate change, which is unequivocally man-made, the IPCC wrote in the first volume, which appeared in August last year. The impact is widespread and profound, the scientists concluded in February in Part Two, and humanity is not adapting fast enough. And now there’s the third part, in which the IPCC describes the need for the impossible to keep the planet more or less safe.

Unfortunately, the impossible has to be taken quite literally. When scientists write that humanity must “immediately” reduce the use of fossil fuels, they do not mean in a few years, but today. And reducing “deeply” is quite different from reducing oil and gas use on the modest scale that some countries have done so far.

The report also states that major changes are also required in the areas of land use, mobility, industry, infrastructure and housing.

The good news, according to the IPCC, is that every opportunity to do so is within reach. To put it in the words of Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD): the Paris climate goals are achievable and affordable. Point. Nobody has to worry about that anymore, especially not in the wealthy Netherlands.

So much for the theory.

But what does this report actually mean? A simple example can show this. With this report in hand, can the cabinet still decide to widen the A27 highway at the Amelisweerd estate? The cabinet will have to, Minister Harbers (Infrastructure, VVD) will say, because everyone continues to drive.

But is buying a new car still compatible with the message of the IPCC? Well as long as it is an electric car, many motorists will say. Will there be enough electricity for all those cars if the power is urgently needed at the same time to make industry more sustainable and to heat homes for which coal, oil and gas are still being used? For this, the Netherlands only needs to build nuclear power stations, then there will be electricity in abundance. But it will take ten to twenty years to build, and according to the IPCC the door is now ajar, but it will close within ten years.

Apparently even a simple example does not provide a simple answer. This is of course not about the widening of the A27 (or perhaps also), but about the message of the IPCC. It is addressed to everyone – to countries, companies and individual citizens – and says that in any decision we will have to ask ourselves how that relates to climate change.