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climate action
Look Up: The Scariest Part When We See the Big, Big, Big Picture
As a new study once more makes clear, raising the temperature is by far the biggest thing humans have ever done; our effort to limit that rise must be just as large.
Oct 23, 2024
This is “Climate week” in New York City, and my inbox has been awash recently in the latest press releases about start-ups and noble initiatives and venal greenwashing. Much of it’s important, and I’ll get to some of it later, but there’s a big new study that came out last week in Science that sets our crucial moment in true perspective. Let’s step back for a moment.
This new study—a decade in the making and involving, in the words of veteran climate scientist Gavin Schmidt “biological proxies from extinct species, plate tectonic movement, disappearance in subduction zones of vast amounts of ocean sediment, and interpolating sparse data in space and time”—offers at its end the most detailed timeline yet of the earth’s climate history over the last half-billion years. That’s the period scientists call the Phanerozoic—the latest of the earth’s four geological eons (we’re still in it), and the one marked by the true profusion of plant and animal life. It’s a lovely piece of science, and it’s lovely too because it reminds us of all we’re heir to in this tiny brief moment that marks the human time on earth. So staggeringly much—strange and extreme and fecund—has come before us.
But it’s also scary as can be, for two big reasons.
The first is that it shows the earth has gotten very very warm in the past. As the Washington Post explained in an excellent analysis yesterday, “the study suggests that at its hottest the Earth’s average temperature reached 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius).” Our current average temperature—already elevated by global warming to the highest value ever recorded—is about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, or 15 degrees Celsius. For most of the 500 million years the study covers, the earth has been in a hothouse state, with an average temperature of 71.6 Fahrenheit, or 22 Celsius, much higher than now. Only about an eighth of the time has the earth been in its current “coldhouse” state—but of course that includes all the time that humans have been around. It is the world we know and we’re adapted to.
In every era, it’s increases in carbon dioxide that drive the increases and decreases in temperature. “Carbon dioxide is really that master dial,” Jess Tierney, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona and co-author of the study, said. And so the study makes clear that the mercury could go very high indeed as humans pour carbon into the sky. We won’t burn enough coal and oil and gas to reach the very highest temperatures seen in the geological record—that required periods of incredible volcanism—but we may well double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, and this study implies that the fast and slow feedbacks from that could eventually drive temperatures as much as eight degrees Celsius higher, which is more than most current estimates. Over shorter time frames the numbers are just as dramatic
Without rapid action to curbgreenhouse gas emissions, scientists say, global temperatures could reach nearly 62.6 F (17 C) by the end of the century — a level not seen in the timeline since the Miocene epoch, more than 5 million years ago.
Now, you could look at those numbers and say: well, the earth has been hotter before, so life won’t be wiped out. And that’s true—there’s probably no way to wipe out life, though on a planet with huge numbers of nuclear weapons who knows. But these temperatures are much higher than anything humans have experienced, and they guarantee a world with radically different regimes of drought and deluge, radically different ocean levels and fire seasons. They imply a world fundamentally strange to us, with entirely different seasons and moods—and if that doesn’t challenge bare survival, it certainly challenges the survival of our civilizations. Unlike all the species that came before us, we have built a physical shell for that civilization, a geography of cities and ports and farms that we can’t easily move as the temperature rises. And of course the poorest people, who have done the least to cause the trouble, will suffer out of all proportion as that shift starts to happen.
But that’s not the really scary part. The really scary part is how fast it’s moving.
In fact, nowhere in that long record have the scientists been able to find a time when it’s warming as fast as it is right now. “We’re changing Earth’s temperature at a rate that exceeds anything we know about,” Tierney said.
Much much much faster than, say, during the worst extinction event we know about, at the end of the Permian about 250 million years ago, when the endless eruption of the so-called Siberian traps drove the temperature 10 Celsius higher and killed off 95 percent of the species on the planet. But that catastrophe took fifty thousand years—our three degree Celsius increase—driven by the collective volcano of our powerplants, factories, furnaces and Fords—will be measured in decades.
Our only hope of avoiding utter ruin—our only hope that our western world, in the blink of an eye, won’t produce catastrophe on this geologic scale—is to turn off those volcanoes immediately. And that, of course, requires replacing coal and gas and oil with something else. The only something else on offer right now, scalable in the few years we still have to work with, is the rays of the sun, and the wind that sun produces, and the batteries that can store its power for use at night.
Another new analysis this week, this one from the energy thinktank Ember, shows that 2024 is seeing another year of surging solar installations—when the year ends there will be 30% more solar power on this planet than when it began. Numbers like that, if we can keep that acceleration going for a few more years, give us a fighting chance.
That’s what all those seminars and cocktail parties and protests in New York over this week will ultimately be about—the desperate attempt to keep this rift in our geological history from getting any bigger than it must. As this new study once more makes clear, raising the temperature is by far the biggest thing humans have ever done; our effort to limit that rise must be just as large.
We need to stand in awe for a moment before the scope of earth’s long history. And then we need to get the hell to work.
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Young Climate Activists Are Fueling Hope and Winning Change
While we can’t count on certain stubborn politicians to save our only planet, we can count on the young people at the heart of the climate movement.
Sep 14, 2024
The past 20 years have been critical in the fight for bold and sustainable climate solutions. The next five years will be even more vital—and young people like me are fighting hard to make sure our leaders get it right.
Research shows we have about five years left to avert global warming beyond 1.5°C, the tipping point when even more severe climate disruptions could exacerbate hunger, conflict, and drought worldwide.
Climate change—long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil—impacts our livelihoods and our lives. It harms our health and well-being and threatens our access to vital resources, from water to food to housing.
We’re the last generation that can save the world from climate disaster—and we’re giving the fight for our lives and for a better future everything we’ve got.
Communities on the front lines of the climate crisis are already paying the price for inadequate climate action. Pacific islands like Tuvalu are already sinking and expected to be completely submerged in coming years. Meanwhile, scientists predict that rising sea levels will leave 60% of Miami-Dade County under water by 2060.
While we can’t count on certain stubborn politicians to save our only planet, we can count on the young people at the heart of the climate movement.
The global youth-led climate movement has a long history of standing up to corporate giants and their political allies who exacerbate climate change. Despite failed attempts by some politicians to patronize, belittle, or discredit the teenagers and 20-somethings leading protests and driving policy demands, young climate activists are fueling hope—and winning change.
In June 2023, youth climate activists won a landmark lawsuit, Held v. Montana, when a judge ruled that the state’s failure to consider climate change when approving fossil fuel projects was unconstitutional. Similar suits are underway in many other states.
Universities also have a prime role to play in encouraging students to practice sustainability and foster social change. At my university, Virginia Tech, students can participate in a Climate Action Living Laboratory (CALL), where they work with faculty and staff on sustainability projects and research, using our campus and surrounding community networks to work towards the university’s climate action goals.
In my Virginia Tech coursework, I got to harvest food for our dining facilities at our campus farm, compost on an Indigenous farm, visit a local community garden, and tour a food sorting facility—all while working closely with campus partners I wouldn’t have met otherwise.
Across the country, institutions like Colorado State, the University of California at Berkeley, Cornell, Dickinson College, Furman, and the University of Vermont have implemented living learning labs of their own. In addition to advancing sustainability initiatives, these labs combine disciplines and skills—and unite diverse groups of people—to incubate innovative climate solutions.
You can help us grow the movement, too. Consider supporting domestic climate activist youth movements in your local community and organizations like Sunrise D.C., a local branch of the youth climate organization where activists in the nation’s capital get involved at both the local and national level.
We’re the last generation that can save the world from climate disaster—and we’re giving the fight for our lives and for a better future everything we’ve got. Join us.
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4 Signs of Hope in a Burning World
Rapid and radical decarbonization is possible and is starting to happen on a near-global scale, but it must proceed very much faster.
Aug 21, 2024
The recent wildfires in Greece started on Sunday 11 August in Varnavas, 35 kilometres (22 miles) north of Athens. By the time they were brought under control three days later, they had reached the capital’s suburbs, having burnt through 25,000 acres of forest.
Though the fires fortunately did not get fully into Athens, it was a close call. Similar extreme weather events—whether wildfire, drought, storm, flood, or heat dome—are now seen on a near-daily basis somewhere around the world, and are often more intense than even a couple of decades ago. They are the most visible elements of climate change’s shift into climate breakdown.
We are also seeing clear worldwide changes. Last year was exceptionally hot—the hottest year since accurate weather records were first kept in the 1880s—but this year is perhaps more worrying. 2023 was an El Niňo year; one in which the sea surface temperature warms by 0.5°C above the long-term average. It’s a climate phenomenon that occurs every two to seven years and leads to temporary air temperature increases across much of the world in those years.
The future really does look grim. A world of devastating weather events, unliveable cities, gross food shortages, mass migration, and global marginalization beckons.
The problem is that El Niňo has been fading since February, yet the global pattern does not show the anticipated easing of temperatures. Instead, we are seeing the opposite; 15 national heat records have been broken so far this year, as have 130 monthly national temperature records. As Costa Rican climate historian Maximiliano Herrera told The Guardian: “Far from dwindling with the end of El Niňo, records are falling at even much faster pace compared to late 2023.”
In fact, June this year was the 13th month in a row to set a monthly global temperature record, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, whose ERA5 satellite suggested that 22 July was the hottest day ever recorded on Earth. The World Meteorological Organisation, meanwhile, has reported that at least 10 countries have already recorded temperatures above 50°C this year.
The implications are clear enough. We are heading for a global disaster at a level frequently warned of but even more frequently ignored—whether by politicians, business leaders, or others—while the fossil fuel industries and countries that exploit oil, gas, and coal continue to argue that the problem is grossly exaggerated.
More than 50 years ago, economic geographer Edwin Brooks, in a much-quoted remark, warned of “a crowded glowering planet of massive inequalities of wealth buttressed by stark force yet endlessly threatened by desperate men in the global ghettoes.” His warning focused on economic inequalities and was made before the full impact of climate change was apparent, yet it is more timely than ever.
The future really does look grim. A world of devastating weather events, unliveable cities, gross food shortages, mass migration, and global marginalization beckons.
The task of avoiding this dystopic future is huge. Four years ago, a U.N. report identified the need to decrease carbon emissions by 7% a year until 2030 to avoid the worst impacts of climate breakdown. They are still rising, and the need now is for an annual reduction of at least 10%.
It is a predicament that will require a third societal transition. The first was the farming revolution over several thousand years and the second was the industrial revolution, which started close to four centuries ago and is still under way. The third will be learning to live within the limits set by the capacity of the world’s ecosystem to handle human activity, initially by preventing climate breakdown, which must be achieved in mere decades.
But there are some signs of hope.
The first is that climate science has come on by leaps and bounds in the past 40 years and there is much greater confidence in its predictions. This means intergovernmental panels—which have tended to be overly cautious about not exaggerating the impact of the climate crisis, due to a need to work in consensus—will able to be far blunter in their statements.
Then there is the evidence just about everywhere that climate breakdown is happening. The third reason is that the first two will combine to inspire more activists, both young and old, to act. Many are willing to engage in nonviolent direct action despite elite determination to maintain the status quo through harsh legal measures.
There is a fourth reason for hope: the extraordinary way that rapidly improving technologies mean it is so often (and increasingly) much cheaper to use renewable energy than relying on fossil carbon energy sources.
Rapid and radical decarbonization is possible and is starting to happen on a near-global scale. But it must proceed very much faster. Global net zero needs to be achieved by 2040, not 2050, and that means that richer states must aim for net zero by 2035 while providing funding to speed up the process right across the Global South. It is a huge task, but that is the way to prevent climate breakdown.
To put it in a wider context, three tasks face us all. The first is the most urgent: coming to terms with environmental limitations. The second is an evolution of the world economy to ensure a far more equal sharing of what we have, and the third is responding to security challenges without depending on the early use of military force.
It is a transformational task but thanks to the immediacy of climate breakdown there isn’t really any alternative. Luckily, for now, there is time to do it, just.
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