Later May Be Too Late

Some problems are just too difficult to comprehend, too big, too nebulous. And It’s often easier to look away than confront them and look them in the eye.The burdens of the day leave little room to contemplate tomorrow,  future generations or problems beyond our day to day existence.

We don’t see the long term consequence of the daily war we wage against our own bisosphere. And this is despite the felt evidence, and the extensive research on environmental tipping points and planetary overshoot. The Global Footprint Network estimates that we have already exceeded our planetary regenerative capacity by at least 70%. By 2030 we will need two earths to sustain us. As per founder Mathis Wackernagel, while ponzi schemes are illegal everywhere in the world, this, the biggest ponzi scheme of all is also the longest running and also largely ignored and unregulated. We don't see this crisis as different from things we have encountered in the past. It’s not clear that we may be in the middle of an extinction level event and that what we do in the next six years will determine the shape things to come for the next five hundred. It's not clear to us why postponed climate action is the same as no action at all. 

Unintelligible reports and mixed messages from scientists and climate organizations are not hitting home either. Some say it’s hopeless, others say it’ll be tight but there are plenty of ways for our economy to thrive while regenerating our ecology. On the one hand we have unbelievable success stories like solar and wind energy prices dropping beyond all expectations and models, and also the dramatic increase in the share of all  new power generated from clean sources, now above 90% in many parts of the world. Equally we have horror stories. Fewer coal plants were decommissioned in 2023 than in any year for the past decade and China and India have plans to build new coal plants way into the distant future. Their development depends on it. 

So what’s the big picture today in October 2024?

We have a 75 year goal to keep warming to within1.5 degrees celsius of pre-industrial levels (1850-1900) by the time we get to 2100. 

What happens if we breach our self assigned target?  Left unchecked, reinforcing loops can lead to unexpected, large scale and sudden changes.  These changes will be irreversible. Massively increased frequency and intensity of weather events, droughts, floods, disruption of oceanic currents, sea level rise could displace two billion people. We haven’t yet seriously modeled the scenario where carbon sequestered in permafrost is suddenly released over a short period which would add a catastrophic 1,700 Giga tons of GHG gases, tripling what is already in the atmosphere.

What do we need to get there? We have to more than halve our per capita carbon emission by 2050, down from 4.8 tons CO2e today to 2.1 tons. Net emissions from all sources from housing, travel, food, cooling, heating, waste disposal have to somehow reduce by more than 50%. And then we have to reduce it some more to create room for the surge in the carbon footprint of  four billion people desperately trying to work their way out of poverty. It will take everyone, from Governments to individuals, and all institutions and organizations in between, to pull this off. The “good news” is that G20 is responsible for 75% of all emissions, so the problem is somewhat contained within 10% of the nations in the world. To that extent it will be easier to broker agreements, set targets and monitor progress.  

Current status. Not so good. In the past ten years our inadequate, albeit well intentioned, actions have made the Paris goal practically unachievable, despite a bonus covid year where emissions were down significantly. As per the UNEP’s 2023 November report our best case scenario is between 2.5 to 2.9 degrees of warming based on current pledges made.

Where do we begin?  We need to somehow translate this big picture into small actions.

First we have to strip all sugar coating from climate related messaging, where well meaning but patronizing groups and individuals want to ensure that they don’t kill hope for the rest of us, as that might paralyze us into inaction. We need to understand the facts, get our governing bodies and NGOs out of  the  hope / despair management business.  

Second,  climate models are far from perfect and timelines and goals from IPCC might have an arbitrary feel to them. And the data is sometimes too broad and complex to distill down to “so what?”. Check out the following UNEP report and see for yourself.  https://www.unep.org/interactives/emissions-gap-report/2023/#section_0. Even if we are not convinced, it is rational to not play brinkmanship here. A sound strategy, we have to assume that there is an extinction level event in progress, not "coming soon", as the scientists community is saying, about which we may still be able to do something.

Thirdly, we need to understand that when it comes to  global average temperature increase, every tiny fraction of a degree is very significant.   For those who don't buy all this, simply apply the Precautionary Principle, now a common term in the jargon-filled sustainability circles. Better safe than sorry.  Very small changes of critical planetary variables, all delicately balanced,  can have catastrophic and irreversible global impacts. After all, even carbon dioxide is just 0.04% of the atmosphere. I have heard people use that in arguments against climate change.

And finally, we need to look inward, introspect. Are we as a species equipped to solve these problems that we created, bottle the Frankenstein we unleashed? Can we understand, adapt, stop or reverse anthropogenic climate change with a business-as-usual attitude? Probably not.  Can we declare a planetary emergency, like an asteroid was on collision course with earth, and come to  some sort of rapid and unified action, with a house-on-fire mindset? Perhaps. But it will be a first.

Regardless, not doing anything is not an option. Whatever is required, whatever it is we need to do, we need to act now. Later may be too late.