The Future We Choose, a new book by the architects of the Paris climate accords, offers contrasting visions for how the world might look in thirty years (read the worst case scenario here)
 |
| ‘The ambient feeling of living on what has again become a green planet has been transformative.’ Photograph: Ichiro/Getty Images |
| The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis is a passionate call to arms written by Christiana Figures and Tom Rivett-Carnac. Christiana Figueres was the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 2010-2016 and the public face of the most pivotal climate agreement in history, the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. Tom Rivett-Carnac was Christiana's political strategist. Together they are the co-founders of Global Optimism, an organization focused on creating environmental and social change. They outline two scenarios for our future:
|
In most places in the world, the air is moist and fresh, even in
cities. It feels a lot like walking through a forest and very likely
this is exactly what you are doing. The air is cleaner than it has been
since before the Industrial Revolution. We have trees to thank for that.
They are everywhere.
It wasn’t the single solution we required, but the proliferation of trees bought us the time we needed to vanquish carbon emissions. When we started, it was purely practical, a tactic to combat climate crisis by relocating the carbon: the trees took carbon dioxide out of the air, released oxygen and put the carbon back where it belongs, in the soil. This, of course, helped to diminish climate crisis, but the benefits were even greater. On every sensory level, the ambient feeling of living on what has again become a green planet has been transformative, especially in cities.
Reimagining and restructuring cities was crucial to solving the climate challenge puzzle. But further steps had to be taken, which meant that global rewilding efforts had to reach well beyond the cities. The forest cover worldwide is now 50% and agriculture has evolved to become more tree-based. The result is that many countries are unrecognisable, in a good way. No one seems to miss wide-open plains or monocultures. Now we have shady groves of nut and orchards, timber land interspersed with grazing, parkland areas that spread for miles, new havens for our regenerated population of pollinators.
A major part of the shift to net-zero emissions was a focus on
electricity; achieving the goal required not only an overhaul of
existing infrastructure but also a structural shift. In some ways,
breaking up grids and decentralising power proved easy. We no longer
burn fossil fuels. Most of our energy now comes from renewable sources
such as wind, solar, geothermal and hydro. All homes and buildings
produce their own electricity – every available surface is covered with
solar paint that contains millions of nanoparticles, which harvest
energy from the sunlight, and every windy spot has a wind turbine. If
you live on a particularly sunny or windy hill, your house might harvest
more energy than it can use, in which case the energy will simply flow
back to the smart grid. Because there is no combustion cost, energy is
basically free. It is also more abundant and more efficiently used than ever.It wasn’t the single solution we required, but the proliferation of trees bought us the time we needed to vanquish carbon emissions. When we started, it was purely practical, a tactic to combat climate crisis by relocating the carbon: the trees took carbon dioxide out of the air, released oxygen and put the carbon back where it belongs, in the soil. This, of course, helped to diminish climate crisis, but the benefits were even greater. On every sensory level, the ambient feeling of living on what has again become a green planet has been transformative, especially in cities.
Reimagining and restructuring cities was crucial to solving the climate challenge puzzle. But further steps had to be taken, which meant that global rewilding efforts had to reach well beyond the cities. The forest cover worldwide is now 50% and agriculture has evolved to become more tree-based. The result is that many countries are unrecognisable, in a good way. No one seems to miss wide-open plains or monocultures. Now we have shady groves of nut and orchards, timber land interspersed with grazing, parkland areas that spread for miles, new havens for our regenerated population of pollinators.
Drones organised along aerial corridors are now delivering packages, further reducing the need for vehicles
 |
| ‘The electric motor is simply a better way of powering vehicles.’ Photograph: Lucinda Merano/Getty Images/EyeEm |
What’s strange is that it took us so long to realise that the electric motor is simply a better way of powering vehicles. It gives you more torque, more speed when you need it, and the ability to recapture energy when you brake and it requires dramatically less maintenance.
We also share cars without thinking twice. In fact, regulating and ensuring the safety of driverless ride sharing were the biggest transportation hurdles for cities to overcome. The goal has been to eliminate private ownership of vehicles by 2050 in major metropolitan areas. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re making progress.
We have also reduced land transport needs. Drones organised along aerial corridors are now delivering packages, further reducing the need for vehicles. Thus we are currently narrowing roads, eliminating parking spaces and investing in urban planning projects that make it easier to walk and bike in the city.
While we may have successfully reduced carbon emissions, we’re still dealing with the aftereffects of record levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The long-living greenhouse gases have nowhere to go other than the already-loaded atmosphere, so they are still causing increasingly extreme weather, though it’s less extreme than it would have been had we continued to burn fossil fuels.
Glaciers and Arctic ice are still melting and the sea is still rising. Severe droughts and desertification are occurring in the western United States, the Mediterranean and parts of China. Ongoing extreme weather and resource degradation continue to multiply existing disparities in income, public health, food security and water availability. But now governments have recognised climate crisis factors for the threat multipliers that they are. That awareness allows us to predict downstream problems and head them off before they become humanitarian crises.
Everyone understands that we are all in this together. A disaster that occurs in one country is likely to occur in another in only a matter of years. It took us a while to realise that if we worked out how to save the Pacific islands from rising sea levels this year, then we might find a way to save Rotterdam in another five years.
The zeitgeist has shifted profoundly. How we feel about the world has changed, deeply. And, unexpectedly, so has how we feel about one another.
 |
| ‘All homes and buildings produce their own electricity.’ Photograph: Lari Bat/Getty Images/iStockphoto |
We emerged from the climate crisis as more mature members of the community of life, capable of not only restoring ecosystems but also of unfolding our dormant potentials of human strength and discernment. Humanity was only ever as doomed as it believed itself to be. Vanquishing that belief was our true legacy.
* This is an edited extract from The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis
Links
- ‘The Only Uncertainty Is How Long We’ll Last’: A Worst Case Scenario For The Climate In 2050
- The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis
- Christiana Figueres on the climate emergency: ‘This is the decade and we are the generation’
- Christiana Figueres: the woman tasked with saving the world from global warming
- This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate review – Naomi Klein’s powerful and urgent polemic
- Extreme weather is 'silver lining' for climate action: Christiana Figueres
No comments:
Post a Comment