This is the decade for action
Welcome to 2020, the start of a new decade, and our last chance to take action. It is time to take our heads out of the sand and wake up to the climate and ecological crisis.
It has not been a great start, with fires incinerating around 11 million hectares in Australia to date, and killing more than one billion animals. Further north, severe flooding has left hundreds of thousands homeless in Indonesia’s rapidly sinking capital, Jakarta.
Last decade was the earth’s warmest on record, and 2019 was the second warmest year on record, testament to how greatly human-caused global warming is impacting the planet. In 2019, earth experienced the warmest month (July), lethal heatwaves in Europe, fires and near-record melting in the Arctic, a deadly monsoon in India, three highly destructive tropical cyclones, and Australia suffered its hottest and driest year on record.
While some of these events may seem very distant from Lochaber, we are not, and will not be, immune from the impacts of global warming because we are interconnected through global food supplies, global trade and global peace.
Time is running out. Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels continue to increase, reaching 412 parts per million in November 2019, and we have relatively little of our global carbon budget remaining for warming to be limited to 1.5°C to meet the Paris Agreement targets, and to prevent climate breakdown. We now have around 340 Gt CO2 – or eight years of current emissions – that can be emitted before the world passes 1.5°C warming.
Every year that passes without reducing emissions puts the 1.5°C target further out of reach. If emissions had peaked and begun to decline after the year 2000, the 1.5°C target would have been much easier to achieve, only requiring reductions of around three per cent per year. By contrast, limiting warming to below 1.5°C starting NOW, will require a 15 per cent cut each year to 2040.
A recent article in the Guardian highlighted the political, collective action that is required to fight the crisis, and provided ideas on the many ways people can get involved. For example, have you considered changing your shopping choices to reduce your carbon footprint, or lobbying your workplace to carry out an audit and reduce its carbon emissions?
This is an emergency and the time to act is now!