Martin Hare Robertson

Climate Change

My Background

In Autumn 2018 two events caused me to pay attention to Climate Change: (1) Extinction Rebellion held their first mass protest in London, (2) the IPCC released SR15: Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5ºC.

In April/May 2019 I spent ~80 hours diving really deeply into the general topic of climate change and turned what I'd learned into a talk aimed at a general audience that would explain why climate change matters and what we need to do to address it:

In December 2020 I spent another ~35 hours writing another talk which summarized the global climate action progress since my first talk:

Nat Bullard produces an excellent annual presentation which summarises the state of climate action.

Climate Crisis: 2020s Are The Decisive Decade

“IPCC Working Group 1 Report is a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.” - UN Secretary-General António Guterres (2021) (source)

“This is the decade in which, contrary to everything humanity has experienced before, we have everything in our power. We have the capital, the technology, the policies. And we have the scientific knowledge to understand that we have to half our emissions by 2030. So we are facing the most consequential fork in the road. If we continue as now, we are going to be irreparably going down a course of constant destruction, with much human pain and biodiversity loss. Or we can choose to go in the other direction, a path of reconstruction and regeneration, and at least diminish the negative impacts of climate change to something that is manageable. But we can only choose it this decade. Our parents did not have this choice, because they didn't have the capital, technologies and understanding. And for our children, it will be too late. So this is the decade and we are the generation.” - Christiana Figueres (2020) (source)

Extinction Rebellion have published a summary of the climate change situation titled Emergency on Planet Earth

IPCC SR15 projected that in pathways with no or limited overshoot of 1.5°C, global net CO2 emissions need to decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030. For limiting global warming to below 2°C CO2 emissions are projected to decline by about 25% by 2030 in most pathways (source). However, global emissions have not even started declining yet. The UN Emissions Gap Report tracks this gap between projected emissions and the required emissions reductions to meet the Paris Agreement goals.

Global CO2 Emissions up to 2022 (source)

Current global policies are predicted to result in a +2.7C world, and even the most optimistic scenario where all announced targets are met would result in between +1.5C and +2.3C of warming:

Climate Action Tracker Thermometer Nov 2022 Update (source)

One of the reasons for some optimism is that the Climate Action Tracker projected temperatures have been declining as climate action has progressed:

Climate Action Tracker Trends: Policies and Action
Climate Action Tracker Trends: Optimistic

This is further backed up by the 2023 IEA World Energy Outlook report

Global CO2 emissions could peak as soon as 2023, IEA reveals

Resources

My Essays About Climate

Working on Climate

Climate Progress

Glimmers of Hope

This is a collection of some of the snippets I come across on the web which make me feel a little bit more hopeful about the energy transition progress.