12.
When I was 12 I learned the term “greenhouse gas.”
I remember hearing how certain gases, in certain parts of our atmosphere, are especially good at insulating heat around the Earth, creating a greenhouse effect. When in excess, these gases could dramatically alter Earth’s climate and affect life on our planet.
What I heard concerned me and inspired me to ask more questions. The more I learned, the more questions I had. My concern ultimately led me to study climate policy and environmental engineering at Stanford University, travel around the globe to learn about and work on varying aspects of climate change, and to join the SustainUS youth delegation to the COP24 UN Climate Conference.
Three years ago at the COP21 UN Climate Conference in Paris, 195 participating nations set the goal to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, acknowledging, in part, the disproportionate impacts climate change could have on vulnerable low-lying coastal communities and countries in the Global South if warming were to exceed this limit.
12.
We could reach 1.5 degrees of warming in just 12 years.
On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) released a report that answers a pressing question: What would it take to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees? The findings, synthesized from more than 6,000 scientific studies, give us a severe message: to prevent 1.5 degrees of warming that would cause long-lasting and irreversible changes, we need urgent and unprecedented action by 2030.
Passing the 1.5 degree threshold means increased risk for our communities and the world over, especially for vulnerable and low-income communities in the Global South. This would look like increased social and political insecurity, water stress, crop failure, a worsening refugee crisis, poor air quality, more severe weather, sea level rise, diminishing fish stocks, more heat related deaths… the list goes on and on.
To prevent the worst of these affects, we don’t have time to wait. Keeping below 1.5 degrees would mean rapid and far-reaching work to cut emissions drastically by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
Still in many places in the U.S. it’s easy to say everything is alright. It’s easy to turn up the air conditioning and turn down the radio when there is news of water stress affecting people on the other side of the planet.
But how much longer will we have this luxury? It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to ignore when friends and family in the West are affected by growing forest fires and when colleagues and kin on the East Coast are affected by stronger, more frequent hurricanes. The luxury of ignorance is already impossible for many vulnerable communities around the world being lost under rising tides, facing changing monsoons and watching their crops fail. We’ve already increased warming by 1 degree above pre-industrial levels, meaning we are already two-thirds to our 1.5 degree mark.
As youth, we cannot watch quietly as others make the critical decisions that will determine what kind of world we inherit. There is no time for apathy.
In November, young adults across the United States will have the chance to be heard through their midterm election votes. How policy is shaped in the next several years will impact on our nation’s response to climate change. Less than 1 in 6 Americans under age 30 voted in the 2014 midterms. 2018 must be different.
In December, the SustainUS youth delegation alongside other climate advocacy groups will be going back to the UN Climate Conference in Katowice, Poland. As the urgency for action grows, so does the importance of raising up climate justice, holding our country accountable, and making youth visions for our future heard.
12.
In 12 years time, I hope to be a mother. I can’t help but wonder what kind of world I may be introducing to my child and what life will be like for their peers across the globe.
The urgent and unprecedented action that the IPCC calls for to limit warming to 1.5 degrees means that our engagement and presence is needed. My generation did not ask for this inheritance: humanity at a crossroads facing our most complex, demanding, and delicate challenge yet.
But this world, at this time, is all we’ve got.
Unlike anytime previously in our history, what we do, how we consume, how we vote, what we eat and how we live matters. Really matters. It will affect our own lives, the lives of our children and generations to come.
Maria Doerr was raised on homemade blackberry pie just north of the Missouri Ozarks. As an urban climate practitioner, she seeks to address climate justice through nature-based, people-oriented urban resilience in the US and abroad. Maria is attending the COP24 UN Climate Conference with SustainUS. Folks can support her journey to the Conference by making a donation on GoFundMe.
