Laying the foundations for climate action #1

Hello, Human!

Welcome to the first ever Expedition deep dive of Survivaltech.club. It’s truly amazing that this is happening. Huge thanks for the words of encouragement and to everyone who has already subscribed! It means a lot.

Lifting the barriers of inaction

The dog meme above is one of my all-time-favourites. It fits many chaotic situations like my hours following the launch of Survivaltech.club (LinkedIn blocked the website, subscribers didn’t get registered, users had trouble paying, and all that fun [now everything on the website fixed and talking with LinkedIn support]).

This meme also applies too well to our humankind’s current way of dealing with climate change. Fires are burning everywhere (even literally! Just remind yourself of the Australian and Californian wildfires). But most of us pretend that things are fine and don’t take action.

There are, in fact, psychological barriers that limit our climate action. Firstly, climate change is a phenomenon outside our immediate attention because it is (not yet) causing immediate difficulties to most of us. Secondly, climate change might seem as such a massive challenge that one’s actions would be insignificant. Finally, one might suffer from climate anxiety.    

Focusing attention on climate solutions and long-term time scale have been powerful psychological tools for me to deal with and act on climate change.

If I focus all my working hours until 2050 on climate solutions, I’ve got approximately 51,000 hours to spend on this challenge. (This assumes the normal 5 days work week with a 7.5h hours work day).

51,000 is a lot of hours to spend wisely. And enough to solve climate change. And the more people will join this mission, the more hours and brain power our humanity can leverage!  

Before jumping into climate solutions, this deep dive will lay the foundations for climate action.

Basics of climate change

Since the industrial revolution, our humankind has been emitting greenhouse gases (GHG). Greenhouse gases themselves are not inherently harmful. Quite the opposite. Greenhouse gases form a protective shield around the Earth and are necessary for life on this planet. Here is a great video on how greenhouse gases work.

The problem arises when greenhouse gases start accumulating in our atmosphere. The Sun’s radiation gets trapped in the atmosphere and starts warming up our planet. This is called the greenhouse effect. Learn more from NASA Climate Kids.

An increasing global temperature messes up our climate system and causes more frequent and stronger extreme events and a rising level of sea water. As a result, we will have less fresh water, food shortages, and mass migrations, when lands become uninhabitable. 143 million people will have to leave their homes. These are undoubtedly going to put our world peace to its greatest test.

Unless we act. Fast.  

Three key metrics of climate change

1. Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e)

CO2e is a useful combined measure of different greenhouse gases, as there are several kinds of greenhouse gases out there. While carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most prevalent one, we should keep in mind methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and F-gases (SF6, CFCs, HCFCs).

Different greenhouse gases have varying global-warming potential. What this means is that the same amount of one greenhouse gas can cause larger and smaller warming than the same amount of another greenhouse gas.

We have agreed on measuring the effect of greenhouse gases in terms of CO2. For example, methane (CH4) causes 30 times stronger warming than carbon dioxide (CO2) over 100 years. SF6, a type of F-gases, tops the charts being 23,500 times stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide!  

CO2e represents all the gases in terms of carbon dioxide. It takes into account the different strengths of greenhouse gases (global-warming potential). Pretty smart!

2. Parts per million (ppm)

Our world is at 416 parts per million in global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. This measures how much carbon dioxide we have in the air relative to other gases.

Ppm is one of the critical measures of climate change. It was started to measure regularly in 1958 and has proven to correlate with the rising global temperature. You can follow the measurements here.

3. Celsius (℃)

We measure the global temperature in Celsius.

Our limit for global warming should be sharp at 1.5℃ relative to pre-industrial levels. Even though the Paris Agreement allows a global warming of 2℃, the IPCC report in 2018 strongly warned that bypassing 1.5℃ would already be too risky.

This month in May 2021, our world is 1.2℃ warmer than when we started to put greenhouse gas emissions into the air. While 1.2℃ doesn’t sound like a big deal, for the Earth system it’s like taking way too many steroids and other stuff.

Find out more about measuring by Our World in Data.

The scale and timeline for climate action

Every year our humankind releases 52 giga (=billion) tons CO2e of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. If we take changes in land use into account, the emissions rise to 59 Gt CO2e.

We need to cut the annual greenhouse gas emissions to 25Gt CO2e by 2030 to be on track limiting global warming to 1.5℃. Our humanity has to reach net-zero around 2050. This transition is a “cliff”.

With our current policies, we have a gap of 20-23 Gt CO2e in emission reductions to limit the warming to 1.5℃. Keep in mind that we would need to reduce them by 25Gt CO2e by 2030, so it looks like countries are not even trying. Thus, we are on a track to 3℃ global warming by the end of this century.  

Understanding the scale and timeline for climate action were key components for me, when I formed my climate action goal that I announced in the first post of Survivaltech.club.

Because the scale of the challenge is colossal, I try to focus my exploration on scalable solutions. While it is hard and even impossible to predict which solutions will scale, I try to keep scalability as a guideline, when exploring different solutions.

Thank you Humans. I hope you enjoyed this deep dive! I would love to hear feedback, comments, and suggestions. Be in contact via pauliina@survivaltech.club or at Twitter.

See you next week!  

Pauliina

P.S. If you want to learn even more about tackling climate change and solutions to it, I can warmly recommend Climate Solutions 101-course by Project Drawdown and ClimateScience.

Sources:

• Dragons of Inaction: Psychological Barriers That Limit Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation by Robert Gifford. Link
• How do Greenhouse Gases actually work? Link
• What is the greenhouse effect? By NASA Climate Kids. Link
• Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration by The World Bank. Link
• Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. Link
• The Paris Agreement by United Nations. Link
• Global Warming of 1.5℃ by IPCC. Link
• The CAT Thermometer by CLimate Action Tracker. Link
• Greenhouse gas emissions by Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser in Our World in Data. Link
• Emissions Gap Report 2020 by UN Environment Programme. Link
• It’s getting harder and harder to limit ourselves to 2℃. Link
• CAT Emissions Gap by Climate Action Tracker. Link
• Climate Solutions 101 presented by Project Drawdown. Link

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