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How Urgent’s Urgent?
Surely we can wait until the pandemic is history?
There’s a lot going on right now.
There’s been a lot going on for the last couple of years and unfortunately it doesn’t seem as though that is going to change any time soon.
I wish it would, especially for those living through hell in Ukraine, but it doesn’t look like there will be a period of global calm any time soon.
So given that, can’t we just wait a bit before addressing the climate crisis? I mean after all emissions have been high for years, so another 5 or 10 won’t make much difference will it?
In short, “YES – it will make a massive difference” and “NO – we can’t wait”.
Even for KISSing Sustainability that’s a bit too short though, so a few more details.
Globally current heating is about 1.1oC. It is crucial to keep heating below 1.5oC (as per recent IPCC report which I’ll be publishing two articles on very shortly – so keep your eyes out!). T
he IPCC in 2020 stated that for a 67% chance of keeping heating at 1.5oC then there was a ‘budget’ of 400 GT of CO2 remaining; and yes that’s a budget like the one at home or work. An amount to spend and once it’s gone it’s gone.
The Earth doesn’t do overdrafts…
So simply (and that’s the point of this site, so please don’t get too excited if you love forcings / aerosol impacts etc. I know it is complicated but we’re KISSing here OK :-) ) once the carbon budget runs out we will hit 1.5oC shortly afterwards whatever we do from then on.
As the graph shows, either "Current Policies" added up or the "Current Rate of Change" mean this happens just before the end of 2030 (when the line crosses the X axis at 0 – no carbon left in the budget). So if we wait until 2030 (only 8 years away) – too late… by far…
But we had a pandemic and saw a huge drop in emissions.
It was over 5% in one year; surely if we could repeat that we’d be OK?
No. Even ignoring the fact emissions bounced straight back, a pandemic rate of reduction (5.2% each year) means we run out of budget in 2034, 7% per reduction per year we run out in 2037, 8% per year in 2040 and 9% in 2045.
So starting next year (2023) we need a 10% reduction each and every year to not hit 1.5 degrees (almost double the pandemic reduction).
And remember 1.5, 2.0 degrees etc. are not steps.
They are just points on a slope on the road to “arson of our only home” – the UN Secretary General’s words, not mine. Therefore every 0.001 of a degree makes a difference. So the more we can reduce and the quicker, the better.
We can’t delay. We must all do everything we can now to accelerate decarbonising.
And look out for another future article on why that means UK, US, EU etc. going much faster
We can all make a difference, but we have to act now, so keep KISSing Sustainability
Simon xx
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