Based on a talk by Diane Shisk at the International RC Climate Change/Climate Justice Conference in December 2019 near San Francisco, California, USA
I hesitate to try to communicate about the seriousness of the climate emergency in an article. At a workshop I try to spend at least the first twenty-four hours getting people laughing and discharging in other ways about hearing “bad news.” We work on early memories of hearing bad news, the early material [distress] restimulated by what we have already heard about climate change, what we’re afraid I’m going to say. I hope you have already had those sessions!
And some people think that knowing how dire the situation is doesn’t help people to take action. Most Co-Counselors know the situation is bad; it’s probably not a lack of understanding that is keeping us from moving faster. (Actually, I am very pleased with how fast the RC Community is picking up speed and engaging with the climate emergency. But I would like more of us involved, wherever it makes sense to do so.) But I do think it helps to have an accurate picture of the situation if we’re going to frame a correct response, and I think information about the seriousness of the situation helps this understanding. (And I think most of the world doesn’t know the situation, and we can play a big role in helping people understand it. See Tim Jackins’s article, “Reaching Many People’s Minds,” on page 3.)
We’re in a climate crisis and we’re not ready for it. We’re too busy, our plates are full. We already have our life planned! We have no time or attention for another major project, especially not one that threatens our survival and restimulates us. How can we think about it, much less take some action? And what action should we take?
Fortunately, we can still say that most climate scientists think it is not too late to avert a major disaster. A lot of damage is happening now and will continue to happen from climate change, but if we act quickly and globally, we can avert catastrophe.
Unfortunately, we have already put too many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We know that. I want us to know a few more details. A really important report came out sixteen months ago from one of the United Nations organizations (the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) written by climate scientists studying thousands of reports about the global situation. This was done by independent scientists; they were not paid by the United Nations. They were volunteers; they did the work because they care. (This is the report that caused all the t-shirts to appear saying “12 Years.”)
Essentially the scientists said it is really important to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (1.5 C). That’s what the Paris Agreement aims for, but before this report we weren’t sure what the difference was between warming of 1.5 C or 2 C. (It will be extremely difficult to keep it below 1.5 degrees so people were hoping 2 degrees would be okay.) The report came out really strongly that yes, it really matters. There will be significantly less loss of life, fewer harmful impacts, and less risk of crossing “tipping points” if we keep the temperature increase to 1.5 C instead of 2 C. (As the earth and atmosphere warm, it causes changes in many earth systems including the ice sheets, permafrost, ocean and atmospheric currents. At some point, the heat impacts a system so much that the changes in that system multiply the changes occurring in another system and the systems change so quickly that the rapidly escalating impacts will become irreversible, at least for many thousands of years. Actually, the report talks about the fact that the temperature will probably rise past 1.5 C and that we must quickly remove CO2 from the atmosphere to bring the temperature back down to 1.5 C. We don’t know how to do that on a large scale yet.)
Also, if we don’t make the huge changes needed to do that, we are on track for global temperatures to rise to around 3.5 C by the end of the century (which would be really, really bad). Temperature increase so far is 1 degree C.
To keep the rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees (or to quickly bring it back down when we pass 1.5 C) we must do the following (and a bit more):
- Drastically cut our consumption and use of fossil fuels while we make a major transition to renewable energy
- Undertake a major restoration of our ecosystems (wetlands, mangroves, forests, the soil, and so on)
- Stop deforestation and change agricultural and food practices
(For more details see the Climate Change Draft Program for the RC Communities <www.rc.org/climatechangedraft> or the article referred to below.)
As a global society, we know how to do all of these things and we have the resources to do them. It’s all possible. But we must do them quickly and on a large scale. As an example, just in the area of renewable energy (probably the most important, along with the drastic reduction in fossil fuel use) we would have to install more renewable energy every year for the next eleven years than has been installed globally over the last two decades.
Since the United Nations report came out sixteen months ago, many other reports have been released, most saying that the 2018 IPCC report was too conservative. The report I found most readable and useful was this one, which currently has been signed by 13,324 scientists from 156 countries. (“World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency,” BioScience, Volume 70, Issue 1, January 2020, Pages 8–12, <https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz088>). I recommend that you read the following in a session and arrange other sessions to download and read the whole report:
“. . . we declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency. . . .
“Despite 40 years of global climate negotiations, with few exceptions, we have generally conducted business as usual and have largely failed to address this predicament. The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity.”
The authors give us details about the situation and concrete steps to take to address it. In conclusion:
“Mitigating and adapting to climate change while honoring the diversity of humans entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems. . . . The good news is that such transformative change, with social and economic justice for all, promises far greater human well-being than does business as usual. We believe that the prospects will be greatest if decision-makers and all of humanity promptly respond to this warning and declaration of a climate emergency and act to sustain life on planet Earth, our only home.”
This is not only a short-term challenge. To sustain and improve this work, it will be necessary for our RC Community to grow and strengthen as we take it on. We need to continue to get our minds back more fully and give others access to our tools so that they can become more effective. Building our Community remains crucial. There will continue to be challenges after we solve this one.