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‘Every 0.1C’ of overshoot above 1.5C increases risk of crossing tipping points - Carbon Brief
(www.carbonbrief.org)
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2024
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The problem that no one wants to hear though is that it is still too slow. We need to cut emissions drastically, like seriously drastically. But no one wants to hear that, because it would imply an actual impact on our economies and living standards. And people rather give up our future than inconvenience themselves.
Yep, we'd need something like the Covid lockdown(s) but over several decades.
And that's precisely why it won't happen. The drop in emissions during covid was actually pretty much in line with what we would need to achieve our climate goals by 2030. Just had to fuck over all of our economies for it.
Last year Germany had a 10% reduction in emissions with a 0.3% decline in GDP. German GDP dropped by 3% due to the 2008 financial crisis. So oversimplified maths says a fairly noraml recession is enough to solve it. The investment into green technologies necessary to maintain a or enable a good material quality of life for everybody would boost the global economy a lot. Obviously there would be regions doing much worse, but others would do a lot better.
Most of what made the panedmic so bad, was the lack of social interactions. That is not a problem in terms of emissions. What is, is commuting to work.
Yet, I pay almost twice as much in the grocery store, compared to just a few years ago. Try to sell to people that shit would be even more expensive. It's not like the state of emissions during the pandemic was what we needed to achieve our goals, but the actual downturn itself. We would have to lower our emissions yearly on the same level to achieve our goals, not just stay at the same one we reached during that time.
This is exactly the calculation China made as they've positioned themselves to be the region doing a lot better. If everyone would realize this and fight for their slice of the pie, we'd be doing a lot better.