I Have a Busy Life: Do I really need to know about climate change?

Do you expect to be around to ring in New Year’s Eve 2050? Or do you know any young kids today who will be at the peak of their careers 30 years from now? If the answer is yes, then climate change is relevant for you. 

But why is the mid-century mark of 2050 an important milestone for climate geeks?  Scientists tell us that if the average temperature of the Earth’s surface rises above 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 we will have messed up our kids’ futures big time. Huge areas of our planet will become unlivable (hotter than the hottest parts of the Sahara Desert today, or simply swallowed by rising sea levels). If we allow that to happen, our kids and their kids will struggle to survive.

It doesn’t have to be that way. We can protect the kids’ futures if we first slow down—and then stop--the rate at which the earth is warming. This involves taking deliberate--but urgent--actions now, that will limit the warming of our planet to below 1.5 degrees over the next 30 years. The catch is that it won’t work if just a few countries try to reverse global warming on their own. Every part of the planet needs to be protected, and everyone needs to row in the same direction. (Covid-19 is showing us that worldwide collective action on a super-fast emergency track is not as far-fetched as we thought.)

Every part of the planet needs to be protected, and everyone needs to row in the same direction.

To limit the warming, we need to find new ways and technologies to do five big things. We need to transform how we 1) make and use electricity; 2) transport people and goods; 3) manage our cities (rethinking how we heat and cool our buildings); 4) grow our food; and 5) make steel and cement. Our current methods of doing these five things are releasing invisible and destructive greenhouse gases that form a heat-trapping blanket in the atmosphere, dangerously warming the Earth below.  

The good news is that we’re not fumbling around at the starting blocks any more. We’ve already made progress in how we do the first (solar and wind electricity) and the second (electric vehicles). We also know exactly what we have to do in the third and the fourth areas; we just need to get started immediately (agriculture and cities/buildings). The fifth area–making steel and cement–poses the biggest research challenge at the moment, but there are promising clean-technology breakthroughs on the horizon.  

Meanwhile, we have an interim milestone just nine years from now, in 2030.  A lot of countries have already pledged to substantially reduce their emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by 2030. You might hear things like “emissions peaking by 2025” for example, and then sharply declining to zero by 2050 or 2060. This is called the Race to Zero. So far, 70 countries have signed up. Others have pledged to cut their emissions, but have not yet publicly committed to reaching zero by mid-century.  The US has recently announced a commitment to zero, but it’s not legally binding yet.

Stay tuned for a number of big global climate meetings this year, during which countries will tell the world what kinds of major U-turns they are making to fight global warming. Keep in mind: Each U-turn in one of those five areas is going to create its own upheavals as we transition quickly from the old ways to the new, planet-protecting technologies. Listen carefully for descriptions of “transition planning” that need to accompany the proposed U-turns, in order to make them credible and timely. If you don’t hear it, demand to know more!

Stay tuned for more gup shup climate talk next week. Don’t forget to pass this on to friends and family --and feel free to comment with your own thoughts! --Mohua