After the rather distressing article from last week, I thought I would be publishing today something a bit more uplifting, something that reminds us all that, no we are not completely doomed just yet, provided we act and act swiftly. Buried in the latest part of the AR 6 report published by the IPCC back in March are eight ways to avoid climate catastrophe. This was mentioned in an article in The Guardian.
1. Reduce methane emissions
Methane essentially comes from the decay of vegetation, animals’ digestion and the exploitation of fossil fuels, methane is a greenhouse gas with a massive footprint, 80+ times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first 20 years. Cutting this would help limit global warming by a huge half a degree.
2. Stop deforestation
In many countries of the global South, people are still deforesting as a mean to make money. Clear cutting land to cultivate palm oil to produce ultra processed food for the North. The situation is pretty dramatic in Brazil where the Amazon rainforest may reach a tipping point. The situation in Congo, Malaysia and Indonesia is a bit better, but this is no contest anyone would want to win.
3. Restore degraded lands
We have seen it with my review of Regeneration by Paul Hawken, bringing back Nature to her former glory and beauty would allow Humankind to have a brighter future. Of course, this is not completely simple as solutions will vary from agroforestry to plain reforestation of degraded land and so on.
4. Change agriculture and the way we eat
Wasting less food and eating much less meat are two very powerful ways to slow down and halt climate change. Eating less ultra processed “food” and eating more fruits and vegetables will also be beneficial to human health by halting the obesity epidemic. There again we find ourselves with a wicked problem where systems thinking will be needed to advance towards solutions.
5. Solar and wind power
I think this one has been the most talked about. Switching to solar and wind power is the most straightforward and easiest way to slash emissions. Out of these eight solutions, I believe it’s the one that is close to being on track, especially given how renewables are ramping up these days [JUGGERNAUT]
6. Energy efficiency
Am so glad this is getting more and more traction as we need to consume much less energy in all aspects of our lives : buildings, transportation and so on. The IEA states we need to improve our global primary energy intensity by 4 percent a year, and we are currently at one measly percent… Lots to be done there !
7. Stop burning coal
This will come to no surprise at all if you have read me for a while, but King Coal is a nasty character and he needs to go down ! At one kilo of CO2 emissions per single kWh, there is no way we’ll halt or reverse climate change if we do not phase out coal as fast as we can. Lucky for us, some countries have made some serious headway in this direction.
8. Put climate at the heart of all decision making
A systemic problem requires systemic solutions. We are sleepwalking in a climate emergency and this can’t go on anymore. The drought in Europe and the fires in Canada that have engulfed 100M people recently are just the latest signs that our planet and very lives are under attack. The further we delay climate change action, the worse it will get and the more people will suffer and die.
Conclusion
This article may not be very original. Or you may not have learned a lot in this one if you follow climate change topics and/or read my blog. But I believe that not everyone is on par yet with these topics and it’s nice to bring more folks on board with climate solutions.
Image credits : Spenser Sembrat on Unsplash.
