Last year, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published reports which were the culmination of seven years’ work by hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists and experts from 198 member countries. They confirmed human activities are affecting the climate and that our choices up to 2025 will essentially form the kind of future we will experience in the decades to come. ‘By 2030’ could be too late; 2050 definitely is.
Earth’s climate is changing rapidly day by day and humans are the root cause. If we are to avert much worse climate breakdown, there has never been a more important time to make a fresh start and stick to it! There is a role to be played at world level as well as all of us all as individuals.
What should the world’s ‘fresh start’ list contain?
The IPCC reports formed what the UN Secretary General called the ‘survival manual for humanity’. It advises world leaders to immediately take ‘key measures’ to avoid much worse climate catastrophe. Urgent, deep reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are essential, as every part of a degree of warming brings escalating risks for humanity and ecosystems. Key measures include:
- Reduce methane. Produced from oil and gas operations and coalmines, animal husbandry and natural sources like decaying vegetation, methane degrades to CO2 after 20 years but for that time it is 80 times more powerful as a GHG. Reducing it is seen as the best way to slow near-term warming.
- Stop deforestation. Vast swathes of forests are being cut down for grazing, crops and mining, destroying some of the world’s biggest carbon sinks – we risk losing the ‘lungs’ of the world and the vast variety of species that live there.
- Restore degraded land and seas. Natural ecosystems of all kinds are vital absorbers of carbon, yet they are being degraded by human abuse. Oceans are huge carbon sinks but their capacity to continue absorbing our emissions reduces as temperatures rise! Many species are being dangerously depleted as we pollute and overfish.
- Change agriculture and the way we eat. Feeding the world’s future population using current food systems will be impossible. Shifting to a more sustainable, locally grown diet, rich in plants and low on meat and dairy will go a long way to averting future food crises. Fertilisers also release nitrous oxide, a strong GHG, and should be avoided.
- Increase renewable energy and energy efficiency. Solar and wind power, and reducing land conversion to agriculture, have the most potential for reducing GHGs globally. Using energy more efficiently could be the single largest contributor to reaching net zero. More efficient public transport systems would benefit people, boost the economy, reduce air pollution and cut GHGs.
- Stop burning coal. Successive UK governments have drastically reduced coal in our energy mix but recent approval of a new coal mine and the issue of 100 new licences for oil and gas will extend climate-damaging fossil fuels for decades into the future.
- Make climate and biodiversity the heart of all decision-making. Environment has never been central in political thinking – business and finance always come first – now we see climate breaking down and ecosystems collapsing, threatening not just economies but our very civilisation! IPCC pleads for climate to be at the heart of all government policy.
For more information about Sherwood Forest Friends of the Earth, find Sherwood Forest FoE on Facebook or email sffofe@btinternet.com.
Pauline Meechan, Sherwood Forest Friends of the Earth