We WILL Fix Climate Change!

our home is burning rapid climate change is destabilizing our world it seems our emissions will not fall quickly enough to avoid runaway warming and we may soon hit tipping points that will lead to the collapse of ecosystems and our civilization while scientists activists and much of the younger generation urge action it appears most politicians are not committed to doing anything meaningful while the fossil fuel industry still works actively against change it seems humanity can't overcome its greed and obsession with short-term profit and personal gain to save itself and so for many the future looks grim and hopeless young people feel particularly anxious and depressed instead of looking ahead to a lifetime of opportunity they wonder if they will even have a future or if they should bring kids into this world it's an age of doom and hopelessness and giving up seems the only sensible thing to do but that's not true you are not doomed humanity is not doomed [Music] despite the seriousness of the situation for years positive trends have accumulated and there is finally some good news and a clear path towards our collective climate goals welcome to our ted talk please watch this video to the end check out our detailed sources afterwards to learn more okay let's start with the scariest things cancelling the apocalypse some of the most widely shared stories about climate change are that it is an existential threat the end of human civilization and maybe even our own extinction event and that it's basically unavoidable now but what does science actually say as of 2022 the global average temperature has risen 1.2 degrees celsius compared to pre-industrial times limiting warming to 1.5 degrees was the most ambitious goal of the paris agreement but we are not likely to meet it already with the warming we have today hot places will get hotter wet places wetter and the risk and strength of extreme weather events increase significantly warming beyond two degrees makes all of these extremes more extreme extreme weather events more common with more ecosystems under major pressure some will not survive at three degrees significant parts of earth especially in developing countries might become unable to feed their populations heat waves will become a major global issue large-scale natural systems will break down the scale and frequency of hurricanes fires and droughts will further increase and cause trillions in damage poor regions and subsistence farmers will be hit the hardest hundreds of millions of people will need to leave their homes in the four to eight degree range the apocalypse begins the hot house earth where things change so quickly that it may become unable to support our large human population and billions may perish leaving the rest on a hostile alien planet a decade ago for lack of action and perspective many scientists assumed a four plus degree world was our future and a lot of public communication focused on exactly this future path luckily it's much less likely that this version of the apocalypse will come to pass if current climate policies stagnate we're likely to end up with warming of around three degrees celsius by 2100 which is scary and tragic and far from acceptable but this is actually good news how in the last decade we've seen enough progress that most scientists now think that we have likely avoided apocalyptic climate change although substantial risk still remains we can pretty confidently say that humanity isn't going anywhere civilization might have to change but it will endure which begs the question what has changed over the last 10 years and is this really good news the invisible shift you probably know this story the last decade has been an immense failure for climate policies around the world instead of passing comprehensive binding bills that would meaningfully reduce emissions we mostly did nothing a lost decade with one negative record after another and this story is true and it's one reason why so many people are giving up but it is not the whole picture despite the lack of climate policies and ongoing lobbying and misinformation campaigns from the fossil fuel industries there was a lot of progress let's go back 20 years to see why today is so different between 2000 and 2010 greenhouse gas emissions had grown by 24 percent three times as much as the increase in the previous decade subsidies for fossil fuels aimed at promoting economic growth caused a colossal increase in their consumption for developing countries like china and india coral was the cheapest fuel for growth while rich countries showed little interest in changing their ways in 2010 many people expected these trends to continue instead of decreasing fossil fuel use its consumption would rise the next decade turned out to be very different though first of all coal burning in developing countries like india has slowed down or leveled off like in china and it's plummeted in rich countries like the uk and us since 2015 three quarters of planned coal plants have been cancelled and 44 countries have committed to stop building them ten years ago that would have seemed like wishful thinking but today we can say with confidence coal is dying it's just not competitive anymore because technologies we thought would remain expensive matured rapidly instead renewable electricity has shown explosive progress in a mere decade wind energy got three times cheaper solar electricity is now 10 times cheaper cheaper than coal or any other fossil fuel burning power plant despite the massive subsidies and global infrastructure propping up fossil fuels 25 times more solar and nearly five times more wind electricity is produced today compared with 10 years ago which is of course not nearly enough one of the biggest obstacles is the variability of their power output renewables need a lot of energy storage to be a reliable power source like expensive batteries amazingly battery prices have decreased by 97 in the past 30 years 60 in the last decade alone which will serve all kinds of green technology like electric cars you might say well that's great but didn't kotskazak's last climate video say that while wind and solar are nice we need nothing less than a fundamental transition of our global industrial system yes but luckily the shift goes beyond just the energy sector throughout the economy people are working on improving current technology to lower emissions we're rapidly replacing old incandescent light bulbs with leds that are 10 times more efficient in 2020 about seven out of ten new cars in norway were electric or hybrid in 2021 it was already eight out of ten and the list goes on from electric heating and better insulation to ships traveling at half speed to save fuel wherever you look you find scientists engineers and entrepreneurs trying to solve some aspect of climate change enormous amounts of human ingenuity are being brought to bear on this problem with more and more people deciding to prioritize preventing rapid climate change solutions for low carbon production of cement electronics and steel and innovations like artificial meat and carbon capture are in the works the more of these technologies we deploy the cheaper new and better technology gets the cheaper they get the more people use them and so on we can see the impact already the domestic co2 output of rich countries is falling without a major recession since the year 2000 the eu as a whole shows a 21 decrease at least 28 the uk 35 denmark 43 but the best news may be that emissions are no longer necessarily coupled with economic growth in the past this was an inconvenient truth to get richer you had to emit more which led to fierce arguments between developing and developed countries about the fairness of reducing emissions while their populations were still poor but in the last decade we've seen that it is possible to increase prosperity without increasing emissions emissions in the czech republic dropped 13 percent while their gdp grew by 27 france reduced their co2 emissions by 14 while increasing gdp by 15 percent romania saw an 8 decrease and 35 percent growth and even the largest economy on earth the usa decreased emissions by 4 while growing their gdp by 26 some of you may call this a numbers trick that rich countries are just exporting emissions to poorer nations by moving the dirty parts of their economies like manufacturing but even when we account for all of our imported goods the numbers still look positive it's no longer a matter of having to choose between prosperity and the climate as it seemed to be a decade ago developing countries will profit from that because as rich countries pay for the expensive development of green technologies they can adopt them more cheaply they can skip most of the higher mission phase that today's rich countries went through we are at the point where not decarbonizing is a bad business decision and we haven't even really talked about solutions like carbon capture in 2000 it didn't really exist in 2022 that technology does exist and costs around 600 to remove one tonne of co2 from the atmosphere as investment pours in and the technology matures and begins to scale it's likely that these costs will plummet over the next few decades so everything's fine then well let's not get carried away all of these processes are great but not nearly fast enough we're still doing way too little and technology will not magically solve everything we need to use fewer resources and use them longer design consumer goods that are repairable and durable and decrease our energy requirements we need much better infrastructure agriculture and cities it will still be hard work especially to get the right policies passed and enacted but for the first time ever there are a few trend lines pointing solidly in the right direction and now imagine if all of this was achieved without proper financial and political support and despite fossil fuel lobbying just think what humanity can do when climate change finally gets the political attention and funding it needs so is it okay to feel hopeful again the situation is still dire and serious so what's the point of focusing on this side of the story the trap of hopelessness climate change can feel overwhelming and make your future seem bleak the sadness and hopelessness that many people feel is real and very destructive because it causes apathy apathy that is only serving the fossil fuel industry that is still delaying change however it can in a sense they have weaponized hopelessness we are now in phase four in the public debate about rapid climate change action phase one was climate change is not real phase two was climate change is real but not caused by humans phase three was climate change may be caused by humans but it's not that bad phase four is climate change is no longer avoidable we are doomed and it doesn't matter what we do if we want the world to change we first need to believe that change is possible and we have an abundance of evidence that it is changes to our industrial system are gaining momentum technology gets better and cheaper climate change has become a key issue in most free elections as more and more younger people move into influential positions they prioritize climate change and work on new solutions in 2022 most governments not only acknowledge it but set their own net zero goals in democratic and autocratic countries the results of years of fighting a steep uphill battle are now clearly visible the pressure needs to keep increasing to make sure that the promises made today are actually kept climate dumerism is the equivalent of giving up even though you can still prevent not just the worst case but also mitigate most of the bad things make changes in time to adapt better and prevent the poorest from suffering that is why hopelessness and apathy are so dangerous if the last in many ways wasted decade has shown anything then it's that progress is being made and the dire scenarios are just predictions not our sealed fate as of 2022 based on current global policies we will end up in a three degrees world now it's our job to yet again prove the predictions wrong despite how serious and urgent things are to turn that three degrees into a two degrees and then see where we can go from there for that we need hope and we hope we gave you that today at least a little that you feel that things are serious but also that you have a future that you can have kids without dooming them or the world that taking action today is worth it and that despite powerful industries doing everything to delay it society is changing if you need a more concrete roadmap of what you can do personally we're working on a follow-up video to talk about that in greater detail dumarism inactivity and weaponized hopelessness are the only trump cards left for the powers that don't want change don't let them win we're still excited about the future and we think one of the best things you can do to keep your optimism and curiosity up is to learn new things if you don't know where to start our friends from brilliant.org have got you covered brilliant makes maths and science accessible and fun with a hands-on approach more than 60 interactive courses like the joy of problem solving or scientific thinking give you the tools to crack problems in maths science and computer science that are all designed to get your intuition going and give you plenty of aha experiences lessons will surprise you with storytelling code writing tasks and interactive challenges basically using whatever keeps you interested and entertained all the content is interactive instead of just reading and listening to explanations you drag and drop manipulate shapes and diagrams make selections and answer questions this way you learn something almost without you noticing it and tiny step by step you'll build up your long-term understanding of science and get closer to your stem goals to start looking at the world of science from a different perspective go to brilliant.org slash nutshell and sign up for free and there's an extra perk for kurtzgazzak viewers the first 200 people to use the link get 20 percent off their annual membership which unlocks all of brilliant's courses in maths science and computer science at courts and we love to create things that seem impossible at first brilliant can help you acquire the skills to do that [Music] wait [Music] you

Channel: Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

Views: 4,557,913

Keywords:

Id: LxgMdjyw8uw

Length: 16min 10sec (970 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 05 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/GreenFeather05]

I guess kurzgesagt made this video prior to the findings from the UNs IPCC warning Earth ‘firmly on track toward an unlivable world’.

https://apnews.com/article/climate-united-nations-paris-europe-berlin-802ae4475c9047fb6d82ac88b37a690e

[u/Brenden105]

This is why a Carbon Pricing is good policy. It increases the cost of producing carbon and makes alternatives more affordable.

In Canada the proceeds of that pricing is passed back to tax payers, with the majority of people getting back more than they paid into the program.

[u/fretmasterj]

They would post this the day after I get my vasectomy...

[u/functor7]

It seems like we are a bit bipolar - jumping between depressive doomerism and manic hopium. We don't want to be doomers, and so we think that the "cure" for it is to a concentrated dose of "hope" - usually in the form of techno-fixes that Kurzgesagt fixates on. But, eventually, the scale of the issue hits us again and we revert to our depressive state. It is admirable to want to resist apathetic doomerism, but both doom and hope are issues in this dynamic. Hope doesn't exist without the doom, and the doom can't exist without the hope. Climate change drives us mad - not just through doom but hope as well.

Kurzgesagt misrepresents things to tell this story of hope. The main thing that stuck out to me was their claims about decoupling economic growth from emissions - specifically their claim against the objection that we only see relative emission reductions rather than absolute emission reductions (due to exporting emissions). Their claim about it seemed very strong and - moreover - they didn't show any numbers or present evidence in the video, which is odd for them. You can check their sources, where they cite this paper - which is a meta-analysis about questions of decoupling emissions from economic growth. The conclusions in this paper are skeptical about this decoupling. Basically, we almost exclusively see relative reductions in countries and in the few examples of absolute reduction there are non-reproducible extenuating circumstances which functioned to limit economic growth. Another interesting thing that the paper notes is that many papers that seek to demonstrate that decoupling is possible often work under the assumption that economic growth is just an assumed fact, implying that environmental collapse is preferable to reductions in GDP growth. The paper leaves the question of whether or not absolute reduction is possible in the air - an attitude not represented in Kurzgesagt's video. Similarly, the attitude in the IPCC report which reports on the expected +3C warming is also not one of hope and optimism. But because, a priori, Kurzgasagt committed to tell a manic story of "hope", rather than what science can actually tell us, they need to oversell and misrepresent claims. Huffing too much technofix hopium.

What to do then? Don't we want hope in order to get people to actually do something?

Philosopher Bruno Latour talks about this exact conundrum, and his conclusion is to learn to treat climate change more like a chronic diagnosis. An example might be how parents might react to their kid's diagnosis of autism. The standard reactions are those of doom or hope. They might get depressive about it, mourn their "bad luck" and bemoan their fate. Doomers. On the other hand, they might fixate on "cures". Science will, surely, have the answer to autism and how to "fix" it and, if they don't, then some new age scam surely does. Both of these are not great attitudes and are harmful to autistic people ("Autism Speaks" is such a scam, and hurts autistic people and their families in the name of a "cure"). The best way to approach such a diagnosis is to learn to validate the existence of autistic people as they are--their joys, fears, desires, needs, etc--and to work to ensure that they can live in an environment where they can be. It's not a cure, it's not "giving up", it's learning to celebrate people who experience things differently than neurotypical people do. The diagnosis changes how life is lived, rather than mourning a life lost or seeking to regain it. This is a harder lesson to learn, but can ultimately make things better for everyone involved. We need to approach Climate Change with the same mindset. Technology and policy can be useful adaptive/mitigative measures, but they won't be cures and we need to treat them as such. We need to learn to let go of our delusions that we have control and domination of nature, and that we are mere components of it. This chronic diagnosis can help us take appropriate "medical interventions", without falling into manic hope. It can help us recognize the loss of our ignorant consumer/comfort-focused bliss without falling into depressive doomerism.

Ultimately, we need to learn that the cure for depression isn't mania and act accordingly.

[u/Brenden105]

Interesting to see Kurzgesagt updated the title of this video to "We Will Fix Climate Change" after it was published

[u/lurkerer]

Time to shill for Big Broccoli:

In the hypothetical scenario in which the entire world adopted a vegan diet the researchers estimate that our total agricultural land use would shrink from 4.1 billion hectares to 1 billion hectares. A reduction of 75%. That’s equal to an area the size of North America and Brazil combined.

Now to elaborate what sort of effect such a huge land saving could entail:

Restoring ecosystems on just 15 percent of the world’s current farmland could spare 60 percent of the species expected to go extinct while simultaneously sequestering 299 gigatonnes of CO2 — nearly a third of the total atmospheric carbon increase since the Industrial Revolution, a new study has found.

If the land area spared from farming could be doubled — allowing 30 percent of the world’s most precious lost ecosystems to be fully restored — more than 70 percent of expected extinctions could be avoided and fully half the carbon released since the Industrial Revolution (totalling 465 gigatonnes of CO2) absorbed by the rewilded natural landscape, researchers find.

Imagine that hypothetical 75% of agricultural land rewilded. All it takes is to switch to Beyond Burgers or something, which are considerably more heart healthy (SWAP-Meat Trial). The pressing demand for lab-grown meat would mean your taste buds would barely go a few years without getting real meat on your plate again. Except in this reality the world doesn't end.

[u/ICantMakeNames]

Doomerism is the most obnoxious thing, and I see it all too frequently on reddit, especially regarding climate change. Hopefully this video can curb some of it.

[u/FrustratedLogician]

Climate change is a symptom of a larger problem of a population that cannot be supported by the finite planet. Until that corrects, that video will keep pushing against the titan wall of laws of physics.

[u/femstora]

So Catastrophic instead of Apocalyptic. That's good.