A manifesto from a London activist looks pretty scary, but is a great place to start a discussion.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently issued a special report on the impacts of global warming above 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and came to some dire conclusions about what will happen if we don't.
The key recommendations in the report include reducing carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030 and reducing them to zero by 2050. I will repeat that- we have twelve years to cut carbon emissions almost in half.
This is doable; all it needs is what the report calls for, "rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems." Jim Skea, co-chair of the group on mitigation, is quoted in the Guardian:
We have pointed out the enormous benefits of keeping to 1.5C, and also the unprecedented shift in energy systems and transport that would be needed to achieve that. We show it can be done within laws of physics and chemistry. Then the final tick box is political will. We cannot answer that. Only our audience can – and that is the governments that receive it.
I previously wrote how there was no political will, but given that we at TreeHugger are relentlessly positive, suggested five things you can do to fight climate change. But I concluded in a subsequent post: "Really, it is hard to be optimistic when you read this sad list. We have to do better. We CAN do better." They were all baby steps."
And I wondered, what would we really have to do to reduce carbon emissions 45 percent in 12 years, 100 percent in 32?
London anti-car activist Rosalind Readhead has thought about this and has written a manifesto for cities, listing policies that need to be implemented immediately if we are serious about a transition to zero carbon. When I first looked at it I thought it was wild and crazy and extreme and impossible, but the more I thought about it I realized that this is the kind of wild and extreme stuff that we have to talk about. She asks some of the same questions we have asked here:
For instance why are we investing heavily in electric car infrastructure when there are viable alternatives such as walking and cycling that can replace the majority of short car journeys? And why haven’t we even begun to de-carbonise heating? Data now has the same carbon footprint as aviation. A rapid rise in data processing has increased our energy use substantially. How can we use data more efficiently?
She then presents her key policies. I asked for her permission to reproduce it in full here. Some of them are very European and London-specific but I am leaving the full list. This is radical stuff and presented as food for thought.
Sacrifices at Home/Public Domain
