We act during 2020, or we die
The choice we face when we consider business-as-usual for next year, and the decade after that, is very stark. If we carry on as we are, we lock in the certain deaths of most people we know, most children yet to be born, and most of the species alive today.
The secretary-general of the United Nations is hosting a Climate Action Summit on 23 September. World leaders are invited to New York to present concrete and realistic plans. ‘I want to hear about how we are going to stop the increase in emissions by 2020, and dramatically reduce emissions to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century,’ he has said. These plans must describe the complete transformation of economies — without increasing economic inequality — to stabilise the global climate and reduce the rate of species extinction.
The science is clear that the global economy must produce a right-angle change in the rate of carbon emissions during 2020. The rate of greenhouse gas pollution is steadily rising past 40 billion tonnes per year at the moment. It must be falling steeply by the end of next year. If it does not, if it continues to rise, in ten years time the carrying capacity for the Earth will be limited to about one billion humans. That means that business-as-usual for just ten more years will lock in the deaths of six or seven billion humans in the decades to come.
So many billions of people do not die quietly. This means mass migrations on an unprecedented scale, social unrest, social collapse, warfare, terrorism and starvation. All the social progress of past decades, all the technological developments, all the financial hoards and all the conservation projects will have come to nothing.
This is the climate emergency that we face. It is not an emergency like a fall in house prices, or like a shortage of credit in the banking sector. This is the end of our civilisation, the end of the lives of most people we know, and of most species that we share the land and sea with.
So, an Island Plan for the next ten years that does not seriously address this issue is meaningless. When governments start to ration petrol, diesel, aircraft kerosene and ships’ fuel oil, do not say, ‘But that’s not fair! I need my car, my holidays, my business flights and my out of season fruit from the other side of the world!’ These are the greedy, complacent, selfish entitlements that have caused all this.
Why would any government take such unpopular measures? Because those of us who understand the urgency are going to continue to stand up and demand that they do. It’s the only responsible thing to do.
This article first appeared in the Jersey Evening Post on 28 August 2019
