When someone is diagnosed with cancer, their first response is often terror, the belief that they have no hope. For those who have not paid due attention to the climate crisis in recent years, the evidence that we are on the verge of a catastrophe could elicit the same reaction. But those who have overcome cancer (or have been close to people who have overcome it) know that soon after comes another phase: evaluating possible treatments and, in most cases, making an effort to follow them. From there the good news can come: you have been accepted for a new and promising therapy; your body is responding well; you are in remission; you feel healthier; you have a good prognosis. Understand that there are things that can make a difference.
Climate change is a nightmare. Floods, fires and extreme heat this summer, from China to Siberia and British Columbia, remind us that the problem is escalating rapidly. But the most striking thing in the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released on 9 August, is not the bad news, which is actually nothing new at all. It is the clarity on possible solutions that are a sign of hope.
The most significant aspect of the IPCC report was briefly underlined by Piers Forster, a physicist expert on climate issues at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. On August 9, Forster wrote a couple of tweets highlighting the good and bad news of the report. The bad news is familiar: we are witnessing extreme weather events “increasingly intense and frequent”. We are close to an increase of 1.5 degrees in the average temperature of the planet, which we will reach in the middle of the century. The good news, on the other hand, is that “we are much more confident that by eliminating net emissions, the human contribution to overheating will also stop”. By eliminating emissions, “the change in temperature could even begin to move in the opposite direction”. This means that we are in a position to stop, or even reverse, some of the devastation.
As the report reads: “The deliberate removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere could reverse some aspects of the climate crisis. However, this will only happen if the removal exceeds the emissions. Some trends in climate change, such as rising global surface temperatures, would begin to reverse within a few years. Other aspects would need decades (for example the melting of permafrost, the layer of soil that in circumpolar regions remains frozen throughout the year) or centuries (acidification of ocean depths) to reverse the trend. Some, like sea level rise, would need even millennia ”.
In other words, it is a long-term plan. It would take a heroic effort and unprecedented collaboration. We should introduce profound changes in our societies, our economies and our way of life. But it is possible to do it. And we know how.
I wrote to Forster, who replied explaining that for him the encouraging news began with advances in scientific understanding: “There is good news from the new science as well. We have found that the risk of experiencing sudden changes or breaches of climate-critical thresholds – such as the interruption of the Gulf Stream, the collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet or the Amazon forest dieback – is low and will be very unlikely if we keep the increase in temperature around 1.5 degrees. Thanks to the improvement of climate projections, we know precisely the path relative to emissions that the planet must follow to keep temperatures close to an increase of 1.5 degrees. We must at least halve global emissions by 2034 and zero net emissions by half a century ”.
As one of the large posters displayed at the New York Climate March in 2014 said: “We have the solutions”. We have known the problem for decades. In this millennium, the solutions to move away from fossil fuels – renewable energy sources, especially wind and solar – have matured. The remaining obstacles are political. This means that there is a lot of money in circulation related to the fossil fuel industry and the status quo. Consequently, we need a civil society movement strong enough to counter these pressures. We need people to turn fear into determination, or rather, we need more people to be able to do so, following the example of many scientists, activists, funders and politicians.
The urgency is palpable. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said “this report must ring a death knell for fossil fuels and coal before they destroy our planet. No coal-fired power plants are to be built after 2021. Countries should end all exploration and production of fossil fuels, and divert subsidies to renewable energy. If we want to eliminate net emissions by mid-century, by 2030 the scope of wind and solar energy should quadruple and investments in renewable energy should triple “. It is a cry of alarm, but also a project.
Even the usually very measured International Energy Agency said in May that we should aim for zero net emissions, and that doing so “means huge reductions in the use of coal, oil and gas. The path is difficult but feasible, and would bring great benefits to people’s prosperity and well-being, providing an opportunity to limit overheating to 1.5 degrees ”. In short, by 2030 we must dismantle the fossil fuel industry.
One of the less emphasized aspects is that the climate has entrusted us with the mandate to build a better, cleaner, more equitable and collaborative world both towards nature and between us human beings. Things cannot continue as before. In front of us there are two roads: one to heaven and one to hell. If we reach the relative paradise of a carbon-free world we will realize that the fossil fuel age has always been hell due to the toxicity of oil, gas and coal, which kill millions of people every year, and the corruption of politics.
Putting an end to the era of fossil fuels, with their methane and carbon dioxide emissions, is the main goal, but there are other paths to follow that concern agriculture, food, construction, transport. One of these aspects, underlined by Professor William Moomaw, formerly one of the authors of the IPCC reports, concerns trees. “Forests capture about a third of all CO2 emissions created by humans each year,” he wrote with scientist Beverly Law in a recent article. “The researchers calculated that putting an end to deforestation and allowing mature forests to continue growing could allow them to capture twice as much CO2.”
It has long been said that the most effective technology for absorbing carbon is the tree. “The other thing that I find surprising,” explains Forster, “is that nature continues to work hard to cover our asses, with forests and the proliferation of life in the oceans continuing to capture much of the CO2 we emit. The IPCC report shows that it is this mechanism that makes the goal of zeroing net emissions possible ”.
We know what to do. We know how to do it. Whether we feel like it remains to be seen. Many, from activists to scientists, have already taken the right path. Fear of a world much worse than the present one should stimulate us, and the same goes for hope for a better world. At the climate summit scheduled for November in Glasgow, public pressure will have to push all governments to officially commit to saving the world. And in the next few years we will have to make sure they keep their promises.
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)
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