By David Suzuki and Ian Hannington
With rapidly accelerating climate change threatening the very future of humanity, it will take nothing short of a revolution to turn things around. The degree of hardship and sacrifice that will entail depends on the determination, speed, and comprehensiveness of our actions. Employing a broad range of available solutions as quickly and as widely as possible could ensure that we build a healthier, cleaner world with greater equity.
The main solutions are those that will shift us away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible. Conserving energy is key, as is continuing to develop clean energy sources. The fastest-growing and most promising technologies are wind and solar, but geothermal, tidal, and some types of hydro are all important as well. Biofuels show some promise, as long as valuable land for food production isn't taken over to produce them.
As well as shifting away from fossil fuels, it's important to protect, restore, and, in some cases, build carbon sinks — forests, wetlands, and other green spaces that absorb and store carbon. Agricultural practices also play a big role, as agriculture is a main contributor to global warming. Reducing livestock production, enhancing soils, and focusing on local production are just some ways to reduce the impacts of growing and producing food. Personal solutions are also crucial. Reducing reliance on private automobiles, conserving energy, and reducing or eliminating animal products from our diets can all help. Stabilising human population growth is also crucial. Giving women more rights over their own bodies, providing equal opportunity for them to participate in society, and making education and birth control widely available will help slow population growth and create numerous other benefits.
Many of the solutions require international, national, and local governance regulations and incentives. One thing is certain: If we continue to focus on building pipelines to get "product" to market, if we continue to dig up oil sands, frack, drill in deep water, and tear up the Arctic, we will face extreme hardship and sacrifice and possibly unimaginable catastrophe as nature corrects the imbalance we created with our greed, ignorance, and hubris. We've already stalled for so long that the gradual transition that might have once been possible is no longer an option — and the more we delay implementing solutions, the more upheaval we will face in shifting to cleaner energy and better agricultural practices. The seriousness and rapid pace of climate change mean that we have to get all hands on deck and use as many viable solutions as possible to arrest it. Keep in mind that greenhouse gases like CO2 stay in the atmosphere for a long time, so even if we were able to accomplish the impossible and stop emissions quickly, we'd still be locked into warming from the gases we've already pumped into the atmosphere. Had we acted more sensibly when we first knew the nature of the problem, we'd be further ahead than we are today. But we didn't, so we must consider a range of solutions, including rethinking the wasteful ways we live on this planet, and the economic systems that call for endless growth in a world with finite resources.
One group of scientists and experts, including Nicholas Stern and David Attenborough, started the Global Apollo Programme to Combat Climate Change "to accelerate the decarbonisation of the world economy through more rapid technical progress, achieved through an internationally coordinated program of research and development over a 10-year period." As the program's name suggests, we need a massive project along the lines of the American effort to get people on the moon — but much larger and on a global scale — to address "the greatest threat to global stability and prosperity". But we also need a massive social movement of people who are willing to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies and ideologies of waste, consumption, and inequality.
Climate change is both simple and complex. Simple because we know that the unnatural rise in global average temperatures is largely caused by burning fossil fuels, as well as by agricultural practices and damage to or destruction of natural features that absorb and store carbon. Complex because it's not easy to predict the various consequences and effects of interacting elements of the earth's natural systems. Everything is interconnected. This is especially true of the planet's natural cycles and the ways in which atmosphere, land, oceans, ice, and living things interact. Just as the causes are simultaneously simple and complex, so are the solutions. But there's no simple or single way to overcome a problem as large as global warming. Addressing climate change and its impacts will require a huge number of solutions, many of them complementary.
Many of those solutions are available, and the rapid pace of technological development means more and better solutions are being developed every day. The barriers to confronting global warming are more political and psychological than technical. Fear of change is one major psychological barrier. It's true that changing the infrastructure and the economic systems that have brought us to this point could come with sacrifices, but doing nothing will be far worse. And perhaps once people cut back on their desire and demand for disposable products and endless consumer goods, they'll find that those things aren't that important. Political barriers include the fact that politicians often think in terms of short election cycles, so they are often unwilling to take the big steps necessary to put us on the path to real change.
And there's still a lot of disagreement about the best approaches to confronting the problem, with some arguing for energy conservation and increased renewable energy use, others for more adaptation in the form of massive geoengineering schemes, and still others calling for a complete revision of our economic systems — and every imaginable combination of the above.
Although free-market capitalism can help spark innovation in new technologies, our current economic systems demand endless growth, continued consumption, and the most profitable pathways, which often means using the cheapest fuels to extract the most money from energy and production. That's why some thinkers have suggested it's time to change the systems by which we govern production and distribution — to find a way that goes beyond outdated ideas such as free-market capitalism and authoritarian communism. As Naomi Klein writes in This Changes Everything, this should be seen as an opportunity, since the current economic model is "failing the vast majority of the people on the planet on multiple fronts." She adds, "Put another way, if there has ever been a moment to advance a plan to heal the planet that also heals our broken economies and shattered communities, this is it."
Of course, this is what many who argue against fighting climate change fear: that addressing the problem will mean overturning current systems, which could take away some of the advantages the wealthy and privileged enjoy, often at the expense of the world's poorest and disadvantaged. But considering that about 10 per cent of the world's wealthiest people are responsible for about half of global emissions, according to a 2015 Oxfam report, it's clear that adjustments are necessary. Some options suggested by Klein include low-rate financial transaction taxes, closing tax havens, a small "billionaire's tax", cutting global military spending, a $50-per-tonne carbon tax in developed countries, and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.
The energy question itself appears to be resolvable with conservation and renewable energy technologies, but other major contributors to climate change appear more complex. How do we get people to stop relying so much on private automobiles? Are fuel-efficient or electric vehicles the answer, or do they just keep us locked in to a wasteful car culture? What about agriculture, a major source of emissions? Some argue for increased industrial methods and more genetically modified foods, whereas others say finding ways to increase local production and work with nature would get us further.
Finding agreement on the best methods to confront global warming will not be easy, but we have little choice, and the more we study and discuss it, the closer we'll come to resolving it. But we can't just talk and study. We have to act.
The seriousness and rapid pace of climate change mean that we have to get all hands on deck and use as many viable solutions as possible to arrest it.
We can't just sit on the sidelines and expect government and industry to tackle the problem, especially now that a climate change-denying president and party have been elected in the United States, a country whose climate action is critical to the whole world.
Governments move slowly at the best of times. We can't count on them to make the changes we so desperately need. It's up to us. We must be the change. We have our work cut out for us. Perhaps this is even an opportunity, albeit one fraught with great challenges. The 2016 US presidential election exposed nasty currents in US society, but it also revealed a profound and rising dissatisfaction with the status quo. There's good reason for that. The gap between rich and poor has grown, globalisation and changing technologies have left many people behind in an outdated economic system, racism is displayed daily on social media and television, education standards have declined, traditional media is breaking down, war and violence continue, and the effects of climate change worsen every day.
The answer isn't to throw more gas on the fire. Many Americans did that in 2016. Now, it's up to those of us who believe in a brighter future to bring the fire under control without killing the flame. Despite Donald Trump's promises to overturn what progress has been made on environmental and climate policies and initiatives, there's no stopping the wave already under way. Renewable energy investments have surpassed fossil fuel investments every year since 2010, and the gap continues to grow; American states and cities are putting a price on carbon, investing in renewable energy and in transit; electric vehicles will achieve price parity with gas vehicles by 2022; and the global movement against climate change is not going to stop.
Embracing scientific information about the warming planet and committing to avoid a catastrophic temperature increase this century creates a huge opportunity. The important hurdle is to commit to reduce emissions, because until we start, we won't know what opportunities will arise. In 1961, when President John F. Kennedy said the US would get American astronauts safely to the moon and back in a decade, no one knew how they were going to do it. Amazingly, not only did they achieve the goal before the decade was over, but there were hundreds of totally unanticipated spin-offs, including laptops, cell phones, GPS, ear thermometers, and space blankets.
With the Paris Agreement demonstrating that world leaders are taking climate change seriously, and with people at all levels of society making changes in their own lives, developing solutions, and rejecting the forces of "no," we can see that a revolution is under way.
Sometimes it takes disaster to bring about change. When citizens can no longer breathe the air, as in parts of China and Mexico, governments must find ways to address the problem. But progress is also about the better parts of human nature. We can and must speak louder than those who would keep us on a destructive path despite the overwhelming evidence that it's past time to shift course. When those of us who care about humanity and the planet's future stand up and speak out, we can make this small, blue planet and its miraculous life and natural systems a better place for all.
This is an edited extract from Just Cool it! The Climate Crisis And What We Can Do, A Post-Paris Agreement, by David Suzuki and Ian Hannington (New South), RRP $27.99