Historian Yuval Noah Harari posits: "It took 40-50% of GDP to win WWII, 15% to manage COVID in 2020, so what can 2% do?
"When I say that we just need to invest two percent of global GDP. It doesn't mean that it will actually happen. It just means that it's feasible. Because what I saw again as a historian over the last five years or so is this shift in the public mood, from denial to despair. Yeah, that five years ago, nah this is just a hoax. So this is just overblown and it will happen in like 200 years. Why worry about it now? And then very quickly, it's all over. It's too late. The apocalypse is here. There is nothing we can do. Let's just have fun while we can. And we need to stop in the middle between denial and despair, in actual responsibility and taking action. And the time is now whether there is enough motivation, whether the political will is there." ~ Yuval Noah Harari
Outrage + Optimism is a wonderful podcast with energetic hosts Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson who interview many brilliant guests and share expert opinions along with healthy doses of both outrage and optimism that will leave you feeling informed and energized. Their website has an extraordinary back catalogue of over 160 episodes of conversations with guests including Luisa Neubauer, Yuval Noah Harari, Vanessa Nakate and Sadiq Khan among many others.
Christiana Figueres is the former UN climate chief who oversaw the 2015 Paris summit. Tom Rivett-Carnac is a political strategist, author and podcaster who has spent more than 20 years working to address the climate and ecological crises. Paul Dickinson founded CDP, a not-for-profit charity that runs a global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states and regions to manage their environmental impacts, with an ambition of creating a global economic system that operates within sustainable environmental boundaries and prevents dangerous climate change.
For the past decade climate change and disruptive weather has been a recurring theme in global trend analyses by the World Economic Forum and the U.S. National Intelligence Council, with increasing "serious concern" about a "disorderly climate transition" or "climate action failure."
The November 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) passed the Glasgow Climate Pact and concluded with important steps towards the 1.5°C scenario:
Requesting governments from 153 countries to update and strengthen their nationally determined contributions (NDCs)
Bolstering climate adaptation finance efforts
Continuing the mobilization of billions of US dollars for climate funding and trillions to be reallocated by private institutions and central banks towards global net zero.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. Their report Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
In 2021 the world was at 1.2 degrees C above the pre-industrial level, but headed is toward 2.0 and 3.6 degrees C based on current policy levels. Even at full implementation of the 2030 NDC targets the most likely trajectory will take us to 2.4 degrees C.
Climate Analytics says "fossil fuel must exit the global power system by 2040 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C."
We can now say with credibility that we have kept 1.5 degrees alive. But, its pulse is weak and it will only survive if we keep our promises and translate commitments into rapid action.~ Rt Hon Alok Sharma MP, COP26 President