Words by Smiley Team
With the release of the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report on 9 August, climate change will be at the forefront of many people’s minds. Drawing on climate science research from the last eight years, the UN-commissioned report reveals that we're heading towards warming of 2 to 3℃ – a terrifying prospect brought about by human causes.
As observed by the science summed up in the report, the human causes of climate change have by far outweighed its natural causes since the 1800s. If we carry on like this, the impacts of climate change will debilitate society, the economy and the biosphere. It will cause international food shortages, water scarcity, more wildfires, and extreme sea level rises, as well as worsening refugee crises, a damaged economy and irreversible destruction to the natural world.
But the report also offers two positive messages: 1) we still have time to divert from our current path leading us to total climate collapse, and 2) we have a chance to limit global warming to 1.5℃, a point at which the impacts of climate change will be less severe.
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So what are the solutions to climate change? How do we pivot away from excessive fossil fuel extraction, drive systemic change and create a greener, cleaner world in which young people have a future and wildlife can thrive?
Luckily, the IPCC report recommends ways to tackle this unprecedented crisis as well as setting out the challenges. As the IPCC chair, Dr Hoesung Lee put it, the report “will be a valuable toolbox for negotiators” as they consider the solutions to climate change at the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), which will unfold in Glasgow this November.
To give you hope for our planet’s future and get you feeling optimistic again, here are the top five solutions to climate change, as laid out by members of the IPCC.
Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas, introduced this latest report saying one of the main ways to keep global warming at around 1.5℃ would be to stop deforestation. To do this, the panel strongly recommends adopting national policies to reduce emissions from deforestation across the world.
Another top solution to climate change, according to Taalas, is to stop extracting fossil fuels. Unsurprisingly, the IPCC discovered that when governments adopt strong policies to divest from fossil fuels, they increase chances of limiting global warming.
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To wean ourselves off fossil fuels, we must transition to renewables. By 2050, the 2019 report suggested that we need to source a minimum of 59% of our electricity from renewables. In 2020 we were getting just 29% of our electricity from renewables so we still have a long way to go.
Over half our emissions are absorbed and stored by oceans as well as plants and soil. But climate change is weakening the ocean’s ability to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. This means that protecting our oceans is vital to limiting global warming as well as protecting marine ecosystems, preventing sea level rises and flooding, and maintaining ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream that are vital for stabilising temperatures and weather conditions on land.
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Lastly, the IPCC warns that we must all prepare for the fact that a certain amount of global warming is locked in. Since the first 2015 report urged that we do everything possible to keep global warming “well below 1.5℃”, we now know that we’ve passed that point. To protect ourselves from the inevitable climate disasters we are likely to see, Taalas recommended governments create effective early warning systems to respond to these threats and evacuate areas when necessary.
Although the prospects are bleak, the report offers us hope that we can still avoid the worst of climate collapse. It is also focused on the physical science of climate change, which means that it excludes possible social and economic solutions that can also help us beat this unprecedented challenge to humanity.
For further information read the full IPCC report, ‘AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis’, here.
