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The climate emergency is here, and anguish is everywhere. Despite decades of warnings from scientists, CO2 emissions are rising, and the globe is warming at an accelerating rate.
The conclusion most recent of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is quite clear:
Climate change is a danger to human well-being and the health of the planet. Any further delay in global action will endanger a sustainable future.
Or, to use the words of the UN Secretary General:
Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic folly.
The catastrophe is not caused by the concern that we will fail, but that there will be no real struggle. No awakening. Just a kind of energetic, economic, political limbo in which we will end up to the bitter end.
Yet this is not the time to sound the trumpets of doomsday. Pandemic and conflicts have made the climate game more difficult than ever, but there are still moves to reverse the outcome. Some are the stuff of idealists, others extremely practical: together they could make us hear, one day in the future, that this war is over.
1 – Tax carbon.
Ready, go, a tax on fossil fuels. Yes, right now. This is the real painful molar that needs to be removed, we can only feel better afterwards. Carbon pricing affects every corner of the economy. It fuels, in a certain way it forces innovation. It puts a brake on energy dependence on, let's call them, "unstable" countries. And it lifts the veil on all the ambiguities that in many countries around the world are exploited to end subsidies even for obsolete energy sources.
I know, the word "tax" is suicide for all politicians in the world. But it is an idea that is still (slowly) gaining ground. And it will do so, rest assured: the more the world warms, the more the push to give a fair price, a high price, to emissions will increase.
The real question is not whether this will happen, but in what form and how quickly.
How much would that work? A recent analysis of Resources for the Future finds that a carbon tax in the US would reduce carbon pollution about 44% by 2040. Not bad.
2 – All electric.
There are 268 million cars and trucks in Europe. In the US about 290 million. And I only said the West. Add in millions of fossil fuel ovens, gas stoves and more, and the climate omelette is done.
What if we made everything electric? Estimates say that electrification could reduce emissions by 80% in the most industrialized countries.
The idea is simple: electric is more efficient than fossil fuels for almost every goal. The cleaner the network, the better it works. The better it works, the cheaper it makes it to abandon fossil fuels.
The way is not easy: it is one of the greatest industrial transformations in the history of capitalism.
But the car left. Car manufacturers have already planned investments for 500 billions of dollars. Battery factories are under construction everywhere. Do we want to talk about the increasing micro-mobility on the planet? Its increase can also have a huge impact. As a beautiful lady says while she brushes her smile: go electric.
3 – Small-scale solar
It is now clear that the future will be sunny in homes, condominiums, shopping malls, parking lots, fast food restaurants, granita kiosks, public toilets (keep it up). Small is beautiful with solar. Unused space can become a platform for producing energy.
Of course, no one pretends to make steel from solar (oh my: somebody yes), or that it is the best way to generate power in any situation, but it is clean and reliable. We won't suddenly find it at zero, as in the first blackouts we are already witnessing (last year 11 million Texans in the dark for days, now the same fate for South Africans).
The energy potential of local solar is enormous.
An analysis in Nature Communications found that in the US residential roofs alone (if covered with panels) would amply meet the planet's energy needs. Covering the roofs of supermarkets alone, on the other hand, would power 8 million homes.
The disadvantage? You know him. It is the accumulation of energy.
Batteries are the snag: bulky and expensive. However, this too is changing rapidly. Storing energy in the garage or cellar is possible. And it could become an important part of the core business of many companies that today "limit themselves" to selling cars.
Yes, the "old" monopolists don't like this. Companies have been making money from this for over 100 years, and rooftop solar (with a battery in the garage) breaks this chain. In the short term, the greed of the former "bosses" will slow everything down, but in the long term, "local" solar will win and give us a big hand against the climate crisis.
4 – Tell the truth, the whole truth about the climate crisis
How much will your beach house be worth when you find fish in your living room? And all those refineries what will happen to them when the demand for oil is reduced? 215 of the world's largest economic sectors will face gigantic losses and even greater risks due to the climate. And this now, by 2024, not tomorrow.
The pandemic has made us realize how vulnerable we are to sudden and catastrophic shocks. We need a lot of mental strength, and also ethics. For example, fighting greenwashing relentlessly is crucial. The 25 most important companies in the world (together they make up 5% of total emissions) are not doing much. They promise to reset them by 2050, but at the current rate the reduction will not exceed 40%.
Do they lie? Yes. They lie.
And they take refuge in another "diabolical" system, that of carbon offsets. Instead of reducing emissions, they plant trees or protect forests. Ending up giving credits to forests that would never have been cut down anyway, or which then burn in fires. Truth, clarity, stop compensations.
5 – Fight on a cultural level
Much has been said about the shortcomings of the big media in covering climate change. It is too often treated as an environmental issue rather than a rapidly evolving planetary catastrophe. Or, simply, we don't talk about it anymore.
Caught up in (of course, serious) "short and medium-term" problems, the media have normalized the catastrophe of the world we are sitting on. For everyone, climate change simply "no longer works". Transform the apocalypse into a desolate eve? They're doing it well.
It is time for journalists to prepare for a much bigger conflict. The climate battle is rapidly evolving into the center of a broader media-led culture war, in which science and evidence are irrelevant to opponents. The next phase, whether we like it or not, will be to make the climate conversation "unpleasant".
Demonize it, as if it were any "censorship" cultural lever, equate it with cancel culture. And this is the most terrible thing at the moment. After 100 years of warnings and 40 years of data, we now know exactly what happens, and we know exactly what will happen.
