Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: “We’ve got X years to cut emissions before the climate is so chaotic we live in a permanent state of catastrophe.” It’s an oft-used framing in climate conversations, but is it accurate?
“Climate change is a huge challenge that is impacting us today and gets worse every year our emissions remain above zero,” says BTI’s Zeke Hausfather,” but the way we talk about climate impacts can at times be counterproductive and disempowering. Climate is, ultimately, more of a matter of degrees than thresholds.”
How so?The world has warmed by 1.2C since the late 1800s, says Hausfather, and will very likely pass 1.5C in the 2030s. But while a 1.5C world is one of notably worse impacts on human and natural systems than today, it’s not a "tipping point" that necessarily results in significant additional or permanent warming.
Why not? Earth systems that climate scientists consider potential tipping elements — ice sheets, permafrost, coral reefs, rainforests, among others — respond to changing temperatures on different scales of space and time.
That is, says Hausfather, few climate tipping points are what we'd think of as a traditional tipping point where a specific threshold (i.e., a specific temperature change) results in rapid system change (i.e. climate catastrophe). Instead, they are gradually lost with additional warming and are hard to get back once those parts are gone.
So while tipping points get all the attention, most of the impacts of climate change get worse with more warming — 1.5C will be worse than 1.2C, 2C much worse than 1.5C, and 3C much much worse than 2C. Those impacts will sometimes be hard to predict, but they aren’t necessarily permanent.
“It’s fair to say we don't understand the climate system perfectly,” says Hausfather, “And Earth's distant past has some large rapid climate shifts. So the further we push Earth's climate outside the range it's been in for the past few million years (e.g., >2C), the bigger the risk of unknown unknowns.”
The upshot? When someone tells you that we have X many years to save the planet or are all doomed, it's an inaccurate framing that is inconsistent with our current scientific understanding. Climate change impacts aren’t inevitable, but the longer we wait to reduce emissions, the worse they could become.
Green Growth Won't Kill the Planet
Environmentalists have long worried about the added emissions associated with greater meat and energy consumption around the world as more people become wealthy enough to afford it. Writing for Issue 15 of the Breakthrough Journal, journalist Fred Pearce turns those equations around.
“As the old adage has it,” he writes, “you can only manage what you can measure.” And that has long been a problem for ecomodernists; it is relatively easy to assess climate progress, but there hasn’t been a good, universal set of metrics for what a decent standard of living looks like.“Without a working definition,” he argues, “there has also been no clear understanding of what actual trade-offs—or synergies—might be entailed in achieving decent living standards while fixing the climate.”
But recently, the Indian-born technologist Narasimha Rao developed a quantifiable definition. His measure leaves more people below the poverty line than previous estimates, but he has also shown that clearing his bar would not pose a threat to the climate. Decency, as Pearce puts it, is not incompatible with sustainability.
The Breakthrough Institute is excited to announce that we’re partnering with the Reducetarian Foundation on their newest initiative, the Reducetarian Fellowship!
This opportunity is for exceptional New York City-based undergraduate students who are eager to create a more sustainable, healthy, and compassionate world. Each fellow receives a $7,500 stipend to support their participation in the program.
Webinar: How to Build A Low-Carbon and Humane Meat Industry
How can we produce protein better?
Join the Washington Post'sTamar Haspel, UC Davis' Ermias Kebreab, The Center for Biological Diversity's Jennifer Molidor, and Breakthrough's Dan Blaustein on February 22, 2022, at 1 pm PT/4 pm ET, as they explore pathways to decarbonizing the US beef industry and protein consumption at large.
[Feb 24] Fleshing Out a Future COP with Table's Tara Garnett, BC3's Pablo Manzano, FAIRR Initiative's Helena Wright, and BTI's Daniel Blaustein-Rejto,\.
Join the Push for Open Acces Energy Data
Access to energy-related data is essential to an efficient and equitable transition to clean energy. However, the International Energy Agency, one of the world’s largest repositories of scientific, economic, and logistical data, still keeps much of this critical information behind a paywall.
Sign a letter asking the IEA to provide open access to data. Join the many organizations that have already signed the letter! Please share to spread the word!
