Misconceptions about climate change have hindered climate action for years. As we head into COP28 UAE, the most important climate conference of 2023, it’s crucial that decision-makers correct several in particular.
1) “Climate change and carbon are inherently bad things”
Earth’s climate has changed continuously over its history, so climate change in and of itself is not to be feared. Meanwhile, carbon is the building block of organic matter and was actually a prerequisite for the development of life on Earth. Of the periods in Earth’s history when there was particular flourishing of biodiversity (measured in total number of species), CO2 levels were often higher than they are today.
What should concern us is the pace of climate change, which has accelerated in an incredibly short period of time due to human activity. Brutal, rapid changes to Earth’s environmental conditions are triggers for biodiversity loss and life extinction, as they do not provide species with enough time to adapt. Over the course of Earth’s history, abrupt changes in the planet’s atmosphere have already resulted in five mass extinctions.
Today, with over a million species facing the prospect of disappearing entirely, scientists believe that we are already in the midst of a sixth mass extinction. What’s more: because of human activity, the damage is happening much more quickly than in the distant past. Instead of leading to a massive loss of biodiversity in hundreds of thousands or millions of years, today’s impact is taking mere decades. By failing to zero in on how rapid climate change is impacting life on Earth, we have failed to communicate why climate change is even a problem, which in turn limits public support for climate action.
Let’s be honest: many people don’t care about the planet, so why are we making ‘saving Earth’ the focus of climate action? We need to stop sounding alarms that fall on deaf ears. Instead of telling people to care about the planet, we should reframe the discussion around climate action as a mission to save life – including ourselves.
Humans, like other living entities, depend on ecosystems – large and complex communities of organisms – for survival. This puts us on the fragile side of our relationship with Earth. While we and the planet are inexorably linked, Earth is destined to outlast all of us. Eons after the final humans vanish from this planet’s surface, Earth will continue to rotate. Its climate will continue to change for as many as five billion more years before the planet evaporates. The essential question for us is whether or not our own disappearance is a short-term prospect. It’s a matter of surviving as a species.
2) “The solution to rapid climate change is reducing carbon emissions”
Electrifying transportation and shifting towards sustainable energy are worthy steps, but addressing rapid climate change is about a lot more than CO2 emissions.
Reducing carbon emissions is not capable of mitigating the short- and mid-term impacts of rapid climate change. This is because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Merely lowering the amount of carbon that enters the air is equivalent to slowing down on the highway while continuing to drive in the wrong direction. This issue is especially important, as many of our central climate goals are short- and mid-term goals. This includes the need to limit Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, per the Paris Agreement.
When it comes to reversing climate change in the short term, addressing methane emissions is the only solution. When accounting for methane in a twenty-year period, it has up to 86 times the global warming potential (GWP20) of carbon dioxide. As a result, preventing a unit of methane from entering the atmosphere is equal to preventing the emission of many times more units of carbon.
In addition, methane takes just over a decade to break down. This means that reductions in methane emissions actually lead to fewer greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, helping reverse climate change.
Even though methane represents only 15% of global greenhouse gasses, cutting methane emissions – rather than carbon emissions – is the fastest way to fight global warming. Unfortunately, we are not on track to achieve the necessary reductions. In fact, many of the practices that cause methane emissions are increasing. This includes many practices associated with conventional livestock production, which accounts for approximately 32% of all methane emissions. The global failure to remove these emissions is partly due to the international community’s intense focus on carbon.
If humanity does not limit Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, natural ecosystems will be much more likely to pass a critical tipping point on the way to collapse. Methane is a main part of both the problem we’re facing and also the solution. Addressing methane emissions is an indispensable part of saving ourselves and life on Earth.
3) “Greenhouse gas emissions and climate change are the main triggers of environmental catastrophe”
Once we internalize the repercussions of rapid climate change for us and life on Earth, it’s easier to understand the importance of also addressing variables besides climate change that put ecosystems at risk. That is, we need to tackle climate change, but it doesn’t stop there.
Intensive agriculture has a greater direct impact on biodiversity loss than greenhouse gas emissions do. What’s more, because the food production systems that fed 1.6 billion people at the turn of the twentieth century are still being implemented today to feed more than 8 billion people, intensive agriculture’s impacts on soil degradation, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and the depletion of natural resources are becoming more severe.
Over the last half century, humanity has lost 30% of its arable land due to deep tilling, fertilizers, pesticides, and other practices associated with intensive monoculture. Widescale soil erosion, more than 90% of total deforestation, and other impacts of food production are responsible for the vast majority of cases in which animal and plant species are at risk of extinction. Of the biodiversity loss that human activity is heightening (by at least a thousandfold), intensive agriculture is the main culprit.
For climate action to succeed, it cannot limit itself to addressing climate change. We need to address all behaviors that cause people to live outside their planetary boundaries. Among other things, optimizing food systems for sustainability and food security is no less imperative than the rest of climate action. This is one reason why it’s so crucial that we lead a transition to more sustainable food production. Regenerative agriculture, which focuses on nurturing and restoring soil health, is especially effective for fruits, vegetables, and other crops. We also need to complement sustainable livestock agriculture with cellular agriculture and other new production systems for animal proteins and fats.
