The climate emergency and what we can do about it
Guest post by Jesper Grimstrup – Physicist
The climate is changing and it is changing fast. We stand at the beginning of a climate emergency, where rising CO2 levels are beginning to have a real impact — heatwaves, massive wildfires, superstorms, droughts, rising sea levels — and this is just the beginning. It will get much worse if things do not change drastically in the immediate future.
So what do we do about all this? In this piece I would like to first give you a brief rundown of the basic facts and then I will write about what we can do.
As a researcher in theoretical physics I have followed the science of climate change relatively close over the past 25 years and I have talked to a good number of climate scientists, some of whom have become my friends. What I have learned is alarming. All the scientists I have met are deeply worried and privately they tell me that they are very worried that the world will not recognize what is happening and act accordingly.
I stopped flying about a year ago. I cannot look my nieces and nephews in their eyes knowing that my actions imperil their future. I believe that this is a moral question — what the world needs now are adults who take a personal responsibility and act. We need to act. There is no doubt anymore, the science is solid, it always was, what we must do now is to behave as responsible adults and act.
THE BASICS
CO2 is a gas that involves one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms — it a natural part of the atmosphere where it plays a very important role in keeping the planet warm. If we didn’t have CO2 in the atmosphere — together with other heat trapping gasses — we’d be very cold. The problem is, however, that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has been growing over the past several centuries. The most important reason for this is that we started burning fossil fuels — oil, coal, gas — which causes CO2 emissions; another important reason is that we have turned forested lands into farmlands, a process that involves burning trees, which again causes CO2 emissions.
Before the industrialization the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was around 270 ppm — that is 270 CO2 molecules per million — which sounds like a very tiny amount but without it we would be absolutely freezing. Today the concentration of CO2 is above 410 ppm. So we’re getting close to having doubled the amount of CO2 in at atmosphere. And this is the bad news. Leading climate scientist estimate that concentrations above 350 ppm are dangerous.
Now, more CO2 means more warming and the globe has indeed been warming. So far the overall mean surface temperature has gone up by about one degree celsius since the beginning of the industrialization. That does not sound like a lot, but if you look at climate date for the past many millions of years you’ll see that the Earth’s global climate has been remarkably stable — its mean surface temperature appears to have stayed within a small range of 2-3 degrees Celsius. Seen in that light one degree is actually a lot. And we are on tract to increases in the mean surface temperature with 3-4 degrees and more, something that will send the Earth climate into a trajectory that it has not been on for tens of million of years — if ever.
Let me give you a few extra pieces of information. First of all, the increase in CO2 concentrations are actually accelerating. A few decades ago it grew with one ppm per year; now it grows with roughly three ppm per year. It looks like it is an exponential growth, which is not good. At the moment the climate is warming by roughly 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade.
Secondly, the increase in temperature is not evenly distributed around the planet. The mean surface temperature grows more over continents than over oceans, and the poles — Arctic and Antarctica — warm much faster than closer to the equator. This too is bad news: 1) the poles have large icecaps, which can and will melt when the climate warms and cause the oceans to rise (the Greenland icecap has what amounts to ca. 6 meters of increase in sea levels; the Antarctica icecap has about 60 meters of increase) and 2) the arctic has a lot of permafrost — that is land that is permanently frozen — which will melt in a warmer climate and which in that process may set off a lot of methane gas. Methane gas is a very strong heat trapping gas, its lifespan in the atmosphere is much shorter than that of CO2 (a few decades compared to several centuries for CO2), but its warming effect is quite high.
Thirdly — and this is what in my opinion is what makes the problem with climate change especially serious — the climate system involves a number of so-called tipping points. That is, there is a very real risk that we at some point will see a domino effect, where one critical event triggers a number of other critical events, which causes the whole thing to cascade out of control. It is very hard to precisely locate such tipping points, but it is estimated that the first ones could be just one degree away. What makes this particularly tricky is that even if we stopped all CO2 emissions tomorrow the climate would continue to warm for several decades. It is like a large oil tanker; it takes a long time to stop. The UN climate panel — IPCC — released a report last year that estimated that the world has about 10 years to implement radical societal changes in order to stay below a 1.5 or 2 degree increase in global mean temperatures. Most climate scientist I know doubt that this is achievable.
All this adds up to one thing: we need to act and we need to act quickly. I believe that we must act on all levels, both personally and politically. This problem clearly cannot be solved by us as individuals, it requires political action, but the politicians cannot act unless they have strong public support and pressure.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
Let me now come to the point that I find most important to write about, namely what we can do as individuals.
First of all, I believe that we do indeed have the power to make a difference. The idea that we are powerless is in my opinion wrong; just look at Greta Thunberg https://www.ted.com/speakers/greta_thunberg, if a small schoolgirl from Sweden can set in motion a global movement, then imagine what we can all do if we just try.
I think that there are basically two things we can do:
Change our way of life.
We can all reduce our CO2 emissions by implementing some relatively small changes in our everyday lives. This has of course an immediate effect of reducing our CO2 emissions but there is a secondary and perhaps equally important effect of sending a message to the markets and to the politicians. If we change our way of life then the industry will adapt too. I see no reason why we cannot live great, modern lives in a sustainable manner; we just need our societies and our industries to change so that (almost) everything can stay the way it is now.
So let me give you a list of climate-friendly things to do:
FLY (A LOT) LESS.
Too offset a flight to Europe you’d need to plant roughly 20.000 trees for the entire plane. That is a lot of trees and a lot of CO2. So why not spend your next vacation closer to home?
Flying is the single most destructive thing we as individuals can do to the climate. The average citizen on the planet has a annual CO2 budget of about 5 tonnes; for the average European its 10 tonnes, for the average US/Canadian citizen its 20 tonnes. A single long haul trip easily amounts to 5 tonnes alone. So to quit flying — or to fly less — is the single most important thing we as individuals can do to save the climate.
The problem is that the airline industry has some very large growth rates these years. If everyone on the planet flew the same as we’re flying in our countries we’d most definitely toast our planet. That is why I have decided to stop flying completely — and why I think we all need to drastically cut back on our flights.
Again: if we do that we’ll not only reduce emissions, we’ll also send a message to the industry to develop cleaner and more sustainable technologies.
EAT LESS MEAT.
There are several reasons why meat has a very large carbon footprint. First of all, animals need to eat too, which implies that it requires a lot of land to grow their food too. And farmland means less forest (for instance, the rainforests in Brazil are being cut so that we can feed our pigs in Denmark, where I live, with soybeans). Secondly, some animals — cows, sheep — have developed special stomachs to better digest grass. This is good for them but unfortunately it means that they fart more. And farts are made of methane, a bad thing for the climate. This actually matters a lot. Experts estimate that one kilo of beef causes emissions that correspond of 45 kilos of CO2. Translated: when your family has burgers for dinner, it causes as many CO2-equivalent emissions as when you drive your car from Washington DC to New York.
So why not try out some vegetarian dishes instead of having steaks every day? It’s healthier too!
CONSUME LESS.
Generally speaking, most industrial processes today involve CO2 emissions. So the less we consume, the better. The clothing industry is particularly bad. So why not try out some second hand clothes instead of buying new every time?
Also, its always good to buy local products. Why buy a wine from Australia when you have good Canadian wine that involves much less transportation?
DRIVE LESS
Everything that involves energy usually involves CO2 emissions (unless you have an electric car and live in a country like France, Sweden or Switzerland, that has an electrical system based on hydro and nuclear energy). So to cut back on CO2 emissions its good to reduce activities that involve a lot of energy. Why not use a bike instead of the car? Or take the train or the bus? Trains are good for reading!
Much can be achieved by small things too. If we for example insulate our houses we spend less energy on heating (and cooling) and save money too.
Act politically.
Political/environmental activism works. Here in Europe we’ve seen very strong movements in the public opinion on climate change within the past year. One reason for this is that there has been a lot of demonstrations and other kinds of activism. Children are marching in the streets demanding changes. This is clearly working. I think that any kind of non-violent activism is a good thing.
Another thing we can do is simply to inform ourselves and to talk with others about this issue to create awareness. Talk to friends, family, colleagues. The amount of ignorance on climate change is staggering — we need to spread information.
And finally there is of course the most important thing: we must elect politicians that understand the danger we are facing and who are willing to act. In Denmark we have just had an election where climate change was the number one issue and where the new government has now set a goal — which will soon be turned into law — of an overall 70% CO2 reduction in 2030. Furthermore, at the elections for the European Parliament a few months ago parties with a green agenda gained ground; and almost all parties promised to be radically more ambitious than
hitherto. So it is possible, but the politicians need the electorate to push them, support them and pressure them. Without that support there will be no change.
This is not a problem that will go away; the changing climate that we are seeing now is just the beginning, it will get worse and worse and most of us will not experience the day when things begin to get better. BUT we can do our part in creating the political changes that brings about the day when it does get better.
If we do nothing it will get irreversibly bad.
We all have a responsibility to avoid that and together we can make a difference.
Every little bit helps.
What can you do?
Denmark