CO2e
By 2014, it was common knowledge that if our society was to have a 50% chance of staying below the two-degree Celsius threshold, atmospheric concentration of the heat-trapping substances (GHGs) must stabilize at 450 ppm (parts per million) of CO2e (the CO2-equivalent, not just CO2). This week, it was reported, the CO2-equivalent of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is now well over 470 ppm of CO2e. This means humanity’s-explorers-of-the-truly-immoral knew over two years ago that the advertised two-degree Celsius limit was unattainable, is unattainable anytime in the near future, and has been unachievable for longer than that.
This also means a three-degree Celsius limit is still possible, but given our current GHG trajectory, a four-degree Celsius target seems the most likely course of events–unless we do something about that. To put that in context, a four-degree (Celsius) rise would mean widespread human suffering unseen for hundreds of years with a better than 50% chance our civilization and our current economic model, are toast.
So let’s agree we do not want to end human civilization and consider effective ways to reduce the possibility we (not just our progeny) might have to face widespread horrors.
- More funding for electric transportation systems
- Accelerated funding of research and deployment for additive manufacturing
- Modernization of our electric grid
- Home solar with on-site storage
- Renewables-based clean water systems
- Carbon neutral food production
- Accelerated research and deployment of infrastructure rebuilding and hardening methods
- Mandated adherence to a carbon neutral humanity by 2020 – because later is too late
We could have begun this process, coping with the anthropogenic forcing of the radiative balance, sooner, but your local corporate-citizen-fossil-fuel-vendor fought like hell to keep you blind to the clear and present danger of human forcing of the climate. Thereby eviscerating our political will to address the mounting climate crisis–be sure to thank them in an appropriate manner. My suggestion for thanking them, and their cohorts, would be an additional item to our list above…
- Accelerated research depicting the ejection of humans into space as the preferred option to staying here on Earth–while maintaining astronomical costs for each explorer…
…PDF reference–and just in case it stops working for some odd reason:
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