The world is awash in books on the environment. Many of them give invaluable information about how the environment works and how we humans are destroying its workings as we go about digging stuff up, cutting things down, plowing or paving the land, wiping out other species and pumping out billions of tonnes of pollution. Much has been written about what we need to do to live within our environmental envelope, but one book stands out for its clarity. Speed & Scale zeroes in on the climate crisis and how it might be solved. While many such books are written by scientists this one is authored by John Doerr an engineer and venture capitalist who has supported zero emissions technologies for decades. He wrote this in collaboration with Ryan Panchadsaram an engineer and investor working on systemic societal challenges. The book gets some of its heft from stories by such prominent business and political leaders as Christiana Figueres, Al Gore, Bill Gates, Mary Barra and Jeff Bezos. What makes this book most interesting and important is its pragmatic approach. It shows what can be done now, what new technologies and approaches are needed and the barriers that need to be overcome. It should be a must-read for politicians and business leaders who have to muster the courage and willpower to make big and difficult changes fast before we enter an epoch of climate disaster for humanity.

The alarm bells of climate change are getting louder. Droughts, fires, floods and record storms are creating one disaster after another. And yet the world’s leaders are still dragging their feet when it comes to heading off the climate shift that will kill people and destroy economies. The latest warning comes in a report compiled by the compiled by the World Meteorological Organization in partnership with a number of expert groups. In it UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the world is “heading into uncharted territories of destruction” and “no one is safe from disasters such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, extreme storms, wildfires or sea level rise.”

The list of climate related crises keeps growing:

• Recently smoke from a huge forest fire in British Columbia brought some of the worst air quality in the world.
• After suffering through a heat wave Pakistan has floods that inundated one-third of the country.
• In France one fire after another is eating away at the forests while parts of the country suffer hailstorms that destroy roofs and punch through car windows.
• The southwestern United States is in a prolonged drought that is causing severe water shortages and crop reductions. Companies are actively searching for other parts of the continent to grow some crops.
• Drought is causing hardship in China and a food crisis in the Horn of Africa.

In the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, governments pledged to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. This report United in Science 2022 says that instead of going down greenhouse gas emissions are going up. Fossil fuel projects that add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere keep getting built.  As a result there is nearly a 50 per cent chance that we will hit the 1.5 degree rise in as little as five years. The report calls for a renewable energy revolution to bring down carbon emissions as well as huge investments to adapt to the changes that are already being felt.

The European energy crisis gives us a sharp reminder of how hard it is to move to a sustainable future and how dangerous to delay the shift. Energy prices are up, economic growth is down, and winter is coming. Western Europe is facing its greatest shortages of fossil fuels since the oil embargo of 1973 and before that the Second World War. Energy prices have skyrocketed because of the Russian war on Ukraine. That caused most European countries to start cutting imports of Russian natural gas and impose a wave of sanctions against Russia. That country has retaliated by cutting deliveries of gas even more as colder weather approaches. European countries are already enacting wartime-like measures to conserve energy as they try to stockpile enough gas to get them through cold weather. France ordered illuminated outdoor advertising turned off at 1am and many of the nation’s swimming pools are closing because it is too expensive to heat them. In Hanover, Germany, hot water has been switched off in showers in some public buildings. Everywhere people are being told to turn up the air conditioning and turn down the heat to 19 or 20 degrees. Industries face much higher energy prices and the risk of supply restrictions in the winter bringing the likelihood of reduced production and layoffs.

The European Union had pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2030, and Russian gas was seen as a transition fuel from coal, which releases 40 per cent more carbon dioxide. This gas crisis gives impetus to a green energy transition. The problem is that it is coming so fast that countries have not had time to get enough renewable sources online. As a result, they are trying to buy gas from other countries and are even extending the life of coal-burning power plants resulting in even more pollution. The lesson is that fossil fuels are an inherently unstable source of energy because of unpredictable crises in one part of the world or another. Locally produced green energy sources will be much more reliable. Our challenge is to push the development of clean energy sources as fast as possible and make a fast transition.

Around the world tens of millions of young people are heading to college and to schools at all levels. They are at an age when they are forming habits that will often last a lifetime. They are living at a time when we know we have to change many of the habits of previous generations if we are going to have a livable planet. A U.S. based organization has a website, Going Green in College: A Guide for Students, which gives good advice on how to reduce your environmental footprint in daily activities. Many tips are just common sense, such as turning off the lights when you are not in a room. Energy has so cheap that people forget its environmental cost in the form of air pollution. It’s crucial that this generation of young people adopts sustainable lifestyles. In the 1960s and 1970s young people were in the forefront of political and social changes that led to a better world. Now is their time to lead again by showing how to live well within the world’s ecological boundaries.

Air pollution is one of the world’s biggest health threats. Nine out of 10 people breath polluted air and it kills 7 million people a year according to the World Health Organization. When we think of air pollution it’s usually about industrial smokestacks or exhaust pipes – outdoor air. But most of us spend up to 90 per cent of our time indoors where we are often exposed to a host of pollutants, some seeping into our homes from outdoors and others coming from things in the house. The health effects of these pollutants range from Irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat, headaches, dizziness, and fatigue up to respiratory diseases, heart disease and cancer. Consumer Notice, a U.S. based consumer advocacy organization, has published Indoor Air Quality, a web page that explains what is commonly found inside our home and office air and how we can protect ourselves.  

Back in 1968 The Population Bomb, written by Stanford University Professor Paul R. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne Ehrlich, predicted overpopulation would cause worldwide famine, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. The book, which talked about population, resources and the environment, triggered a heated global debate. Many developing countries with high birth rates pushed back saying it showed an attempt to stifle their development. When the book was published the world population was just over 3.5 billion and growing at a rate of 2.1 per cent per year. Since then, the population has risen to nearly 8 billion, but the rate of increase has dropped to 1.1 per cent.

Over the years, some countries experimented with population control measures, including family planning advice and contraception. Others limited how many children a family could have and even forced sterilizations. Limiting population growth became a taboo subject. However, the population is still increasing. According to the United Nations, it is projected to reach 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. This will put increasing pressure on the environment at a time when many vital resources are already in decline. How should we look at population growth in a time when the world is struggling to deal with poverty, growing inequality and environmental decline? The Great Transition Initiative, an online forum on a sustainable future, pulled together more than two dozen scholars to tackle this thorny subject in a project called The Population Debate Revisited. They take a variety of positions on one of the most complex issues facing humanity, including not just the number of people but the per capita consumption, which makes a huge difference in the impact per person. As one author wrote, population growth in affluent countries does much more to accelerate environmental decline than increasing numbers in poorer parts of the world.

Our civilization has reached a fork in the road. After a million years of harnessing fire, the pollution from all that burning is destroying the climate that supports us. Fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas – produce about 80 per cent of global primary energy. This is what powers furnaces and stoves and generates much of the world’s electricity. The greenhouse gases released by producing and burning all this fuel is transforming our atmosphere, making it trap more heat. The rising global temperature already has devastating effects. Weather has become more extreme and unpredictable. Recently there have been huge floods and droughts in parts of China with red alert heat waves. The southwest United States is in a historic drought. The Colorado River, the main water source for much of the region, is shrinking and Lake Mead, the giant reservoir, has dropped by 155 feet [about 47 m.] since 2000. In France, one violent storm after another fires hailstones the size of tennis balls or bigger right through roofs and car windshields. In recent years one huge wildfire after another has levelled towns and killed people in North America and Europe. The heat waves are even worse killers. We are already locked into an even warmer and wilder climate.

The only way to slow and eventually reverse global overheating is to throw the off switch on fossil fuels. We need to power virtually everything with clean electricity. There is also a place for geothermal, clean hydrogen and a limited amount of biofuels [because they compete with food crops]. This will be a long, complex and costly transition stretching over decades. The process has barely begun. Despite promises from most of the world to reduce fossil fuel use, global emissions are still rising. Countries are building solar and wind farms at a historic rate, but it will take many years to make the shift from fossil fuels. People are buying more electric cars, but they are still a tiny fraction of sales, and internal combustion engines will continue to spew out pollutants that warm the planet and create choking smog for years.

The fastest way to a greener pathway is through energy conservation, by reducing how much we use every day. For many people, locked in a car commuter cycle or relying on a truck for work, that will be difficult. However, everyone has the option to cut back their energy use to some degree. Just switching to more fuel-efficient vehicles would have an important impact and would not reduce mobility. In the longer term the most important thing individuals can do is to tell businesses and governments they are ready for the difficult and sometimes expensive changes we will need for a global energy transition. Business is very sensitive to consumer demand and will change products quickly when our buying patterns shift. It may take longer to get governments to make a major shift. There is an axiom in government that it may claim to lead but is always setting its course based on what if feels voters will accept. So, it is up to us as individuals to press our leaders for major change and say we will support them at the ballot box.

We have good advice on what climate change is doing from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but we need a guide through the difficult process of change and adaptation. Governments experimented with expert groups of cabinet ministers, business leaders and senior representatives from other parts of society. This was the round table on environment and economy process of the late 1980s, but it often lacked focus and commitment and has generally disappeared. This kind of multistakeholder approach would be well suited to the clear and specific challenges of climate change. Non-partisan groups with experts from many sectors would have the credibility needed to make the difficult calls about how we need to change.

When I was a little boy in the late 1940s my father gave me a hand sprayer loaded with the pesticide DDT. With this new toy I ran around the house shooting at flies like some anti-aircraft gunner.  Little did I know that I was participating in not just the killing of a few houseflies but the start of civilian chemical warfare.

It was more than another decade before people realized our use of pesticides was out of control and threatening our environment and health. On June 16, 1962, The New Yorker magazine began to serialize chapters from a book by U.S. biologist and ecologist Rachel Carson. It was Silent Spring, the most influential environmental book until then. It was a bombshell. Carson wrote about declines in bird populations linked to pesticides. She took a complex subject—the damaging effects of persistent pesticides—and captured it in one powerful image: a spring in which no birds sang. By this time the bald eagle, an American icon, was heading for extinction because DDT was causing eggshells so thin they broke. The same was true for other birds. Carson did not call for the elimination of pesticides but for minimizing their use to protect other species and to limit the ability of pests to develop resistance to the chemicals.

Silent Spring is often seen as the launchpad for the environmental movement and for laws and regulations to protect people and nature from pollution. It led to controls and bans on a number of pesticides, notably DDT, the most notorious of the pesticides developed in the middle of the twentieth century. It changed public thinking about industrial claims that such products were safe when in fact a number were not.

Despite the many controls on specific chemicals we are still awash in pollution. The latest crisis is over so called “forever chemicals” as PFAS are widely known. These compounds, found in non-stick cookware, food packaging and water-repellent fabrics, are highly persistent in the environment. They have been found in the bloodstream of virtually every human tested. It shows that our approach to regulating hazardous substances still fails to protect us from new harmful substances. Companies have to run certain safety tests but these are clearly inadequate and we end up with dangerous substances widely dispersed in the environment and in our bodies.

It was 50 years ago, on June 5, 1972, that the world began the first of the great environmental conferences that have tried to chart a course toward a sustainable future. At the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, 114 governments met to try to come to terms with the environmental problems that were serious even then and with the needs of the less industrialized nations who needed ecological room to expand their economies. Indian Prime Minister Indira Ghandi put human needs on the agenda, calling poverty a driver of environmental degradation because the poor exploit the environment to meet immediate needs such as for food and fuel. This made a strong link between environment and development issues, helping to set the scene for the sustainable development concept which was fleshed out in the next decade. The Stockholm conference came three months after the publication of the controversial book The Limits to Growth, by The Club of Rome, an international association of scientists, educators, economists, humanists, industrialists and civil servants. The book warned that with increases in population and demands, the world would face increasing shortages of essential natural resources. It said consumption trends could be changed “…to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future.” This presaged the 1987 Brundtland report, Our Common Future, which called for sustainable development. Following the Stockholm conference, Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos published Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet, which warned we had to learn to control our demands and environmental impacts.

One of the major results of the Stockholm conference was the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP], giving the world its first global environmental agency. It was a period when governments around the world started creating their own environmental departments and citizens formed  many environmental non-government organizations.

Following Stockholm, the world has held a series of major meetings such as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1982, which included the Earth Summit, the largest meeting of world leaders ever held. The Rio conference launched the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity and agreed on Agenda 21, a program to achieve sustainable development. After Rio came the UN General Assembly Special Session on Sustainable Development in New York in 1997 and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. Although there are many great environmental problems most attention has shifted to climate change with its regular meetings to seek a solution to this crisis.

The common theme for much of this was the work of Canadian businessman and environmentalist Maurice Strong. He headed the Stockholm conference, was the first head of UNEP, was a member of the Brundtland commission and headed the Rio conference.

How many people can look at the clouds, feel the wind direction and make an informed guess about the weather? How many kids have never seen a cow, and think milk only comes from plastic bags? For thousands of years humans have been making a great migration. Not the one from Africa to the rest of the world but from rural areas to cities. We are the only species that is becoming disconnected from our roots.

In 2008, the United Nations said that half the world now lived in urban areas and this trend will continue, and more recently estimated that two-thirds of humans will be urban dwellers by mid-century. In high income regions such as North America and Europe more than 80 per cent of people live in cities, towns and villages. It is a huge change. For most of history humans were rural dwellers, harvesting food and natural resources and later farming and fishing with big boats. People understood nature and natural processes because they depended on that knowledge for success, even survival.

As people move into cities, some of which hold more than 30 million people, they lose connection with nature, the basis of life. Many millions have never been outside urban areas and millions more have only seen bits of nature from the windows of a car, bus, train or aircraft. This lack of connection to our natural roots becomes more and more of a handicap when experts try to explain why we need to protect biodiversity and preserve natural spaces where nature can operate on its own cycles.

Each statement from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] ratchets up the pressure to fight climate change. The planet has already warmed by more than 1 Celsius since the start of the industrial revolution because of massive burning of fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas. Under the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change the world agreed we need to hold the temperature increase to well below 2C with a goal of 1.5C to prevent even more severe damage from wildfires, floods, droughts and huge storms that already are hitting us hard.

An early April report by 278 climate experts from 65 countries said we have to make historically fast and deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions or we will overshoot the targets. The report, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of climate change, said that to meet the 1.5C target, global greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 and be reduced by 43 per cent by 2030 and to net zero by 2050. We’re nowhere near on track. With current policies, the world will warm by more than 3 degrees. Even if nations meet their promises for future cuts, we will get just under 3 degrees of warming. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres did not sound optimistic as he accused the governments of high-emitting countries, of making “empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world.”

Two days after the IPCC report came out, Canada approved the Bay du nord oil project in the Atlantic Ocean off the country’s east coast. It is to produce some 300 million barrels of oil which when burned would release about 130 million tonnes of carbon dioxide or twice as much as Canada’s electricity sector releases in a year. The deep-sea oil project is to start pumping oil in 2028. The Canadian climate plan aims for emissions to be cut by 40-45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

The IPCC scientists said we need deep and immediate emissions reductions across all sectors. “We are at a crossroads. The decisions we make now can secure a liveable future. We have the tools and know-how required to limit warming,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. However, the report’s authors write, it “cannot be achieved through incremental change.”

More than 80 per cent of the world’s energy still comes from fossil fuels, a power system developed over several centuries. A titanic shift must take place. We must electrify almost everything to literally repower the world. It will cost trillions of dollars but is necessary to save the planet from climate disaster.

It’s not just electric cars. We have to change the heating systems for almost every building in the world and the power for most industrial processes. There are signs of hope. A number of countries have cut emissions over the past decade, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden and Ukraine. They used less energy, transitioned away from fossil fuels to renewables, and increased the energy efficiency of their products.

The need for dramatic change is running up against a fight from huge fossil fuel industries trying to stay in business, people reluctant or uncertain how to make the necessary changes and many politicians afraid to provide the historic leadership needed. Given current trends it is virtually certain we will overshoot the 1.5C goal. The question is can we correct by rapidly reducing emissions later and how much damage will we suffer in the interim.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the biggest blow to sustainability since the term became popular more than 30 years ago. The invasion is not only a humanitarian catastrophe for Ukrainians but it will harm people around the world. The war has already driven the price of oil to sky high levels. That makes it more expensive for everyone who needs fossil fuels for heating, food production, transportation and production of virtually everything we use. For low-income countries this means an increase in the cost of their food and that has long been a trigger for social instability. In addition, Ukraine has been one of the world’s major grain producers and there are questions about how much it can produce this year let alone ship with the Russian navy controlling its Black Sea export routes. Russia is being blacklisted from a wide array of international activities at a time when we need global cooperation on critical issues such as COVID-19 and climate change. We risk slipping back into a Cold War period of isolation at a time when countries need to be pulling together.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]  makes for chilling reading even at a time when we have war in Ukraine and a continuing COVID-19 crisis. It says the window to prevent huge and irreversible changes to our climate is rapidly closing. The effects of melting glaciers and thawing permafrost in some areas are “approaching irreversibility.” Mass die-off of fauna and flora are happening now. We already live in a world of history making floods, fires and drought and this with a temperature rise of only 1.1C from pre-industrial times. At current rates of emissions we are headed for between 2 and 3 C which will likely trigger a scenario where burning trees and melting permafrost release even more greenhouse gases accelerating the warming trend. The results will be dramatic and deadly. Tens of millions will have to flee as their homelands become unlivable because of flooding or heat waves. The only way to stave off the worst is to start making gigantic cuts to emissions, at least 45 per cent in this decade alone.

We have changed our planet and now we have to change ourselves. As the climate becomes wilder and less predictable, the four new horsemen of the apocalypse – drought, fire, flood and storms – are riding into our lives destroying homes and businesses and killing people. We need to react and fast. First, we must make historic efforts to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. Second, we need to adapt to the effects of a warmer world because we are too late to completely stop climate change. The best we can do is to slow and eventually stop the global temperature increase over many decades.

How? The main tool is between our ears, and we must change how we use it. To paraphrase Einstein, the kind of thinking that got us into this environmental mess will not get us out of it. Building more and bigger things that consume fossil fuels will worsen climate change. Instead, we need to build smarter and more efficiently, and we need to conserve energy and materials. It would not be the first time. During the Second World War fuel and strategic materials were rationed. People made do with what they had. During the 1973-1974 oil embargoes people traded in big cars for fuel efficient ones and the phrase “off oil” became popular. There was a burst of research into alternative energy. In each of these crises people learned how to conserve but then forgot again once oil was again plentiful. This time there is no going back. It is time for a permanent shift in our thinking. It will mean revaluating what is worth keeping and what we can do without.

There is no shortage of ideas. In 1915, Canada’s Commission on Conservation wrote about the need to live within natural cycles saying: “Each generation is entitled to the interest on the natural capital, but the principal should be handed on unimpaired.” In 1973, the Science Council of Canada said, “Canadians, as individuals, and their governments, institutions and industries, (must) begin the transition from a consumer society preoccupied with resource exploitation to a conserver society engaged in more constructive endeavours.” In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development, {the Brundtland Commission] released its historic report, Our Common Future, saying humans have to live “within the planet’s ecological means.” It called for sustainable development to meet our needs and reasonable wants. It said we need a safe and fair society with a healthy economy in a stable and healthy environment.

In late 2021, the International Energy Agency said there is an urgent need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It called for “…behavioural changes – meaning adjustments in everyday life that reduce wasteful or excessive energy consumption” particularly in nations that burn a lot of fossil fuels. It said nearly two-thirds of the energy reduction needed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 will require changes in what we consider “normal” behaviour.

This will require fundamental changes in our thinking. Several centuries ago western philosophers proposed that humans should conquer nature and use it as we see fit. Scientific discoveries and the industrial revolution brought us more food, better health, greater comfort and longer lives. They also brought the over-exploitation of natural resources, the decline of other species and life-threatening pollution. The costs of this development pattern are starting to outweigh the benefits. We need to return to older concepts in which humans were seen as part of the natural world. We need to learn how to properly value nature and natural goods and services such as the provision of clean water, removal of wastes, genetic diversity and a stable climate. For example, we commonly value forests only in terms of the money they will bring if cut down and sold. Yet the forests are critical in carbon storage, air purification, stability of land, the water cycle and biological diversity. These are essential services.

We need to change what we value as individuals. Is the consumption of things and energy more important than a healthy environment? This is the question that all of us must put to ourselves and in a consumer society it will not be an easy one to answer. Another change is in the goals we set as societies. For most countries, especially industrialized nations, the long-term strategy of economic development has been to use more natural resources to build more things, mainly using fossil fuels to run the machinery. We need to reorient our idea of development, so it provides essential goods and services in ways that no longer undermine environmental stability and security. We want to live well but need to do it within natural limits. This all comes at a time when the global population is still expanding and more people aspire to better lifestyles. How we do this and the trade-offs we make will be defining choices for our future.

A global organization created nearly 50 years ago to deal with oil shortages now says people have to embrace a future where they stop burning oil and other fossil fuels that are disrupting the climate. The International Energy Agency (IEA) was set up because of the 1973-1974 oil embargo by major producers that left many countries scrambling to get affordable supplies. For much of its existence it equated energy security with more fossil fuel supply.

In recent years the IEA, like most governments and businesses, has realized this is not sustainable. Last spring it called on governments to stop approving new fossil fuel projects and plan for an orderly but rapid wind down of existing operations.

In a paper in late 2021, Do we need to change our behaviour to reach net zero by 2050? the IEA said technology change is necessary but not enough. It said, “…behavioural changes – meaning adjustments in everyday life that reduce wasteful or excessive energy consumption – are also needed. They are especially important in richer parts of the world where energy intensive lifestyles are the norm. Behavioural changes include cycling or walking instead of driving, turning down heating, and going on holiday nearer to home. In addition, efforts by manufactures to use materials more efficiently and encourage consumers to recycle can reduce energy use in industry.” It estimates that nearly two-thirds of the energy reduction needed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 will require changes in what we consider “normal” behaviour.

Governments can help by settling lower speed limits and improving energy efficiency in appliances. Individuals can help by driving slower and less often in fossil-fueled vehicles, using mass transit and generally reducing energy use. It will not be easy but can be done. The COVID-19 crisis showed that most people will accept major lifestyle changes for the good of their health and that of their society. However, it also showed limits to how fast and how far governments can move. The greatest challenge in governance in coming decades will be how well leaders can convince and assist people in shifting to a low-carbon lifestyle, giving up some things to gain others, such as better health and reduced risk of natural disasters.  

COP26, the global meeting on climate change was hard as delegates struggled to get commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. But the hardest work starts now as governments, industry and individuals try to make pollution cuts in ways that most people can accept. A recent webinar, The Climate Agenda Post COP26, brought together three prominent experts on what the future might hold.

Mark Carney, economist, UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, former governor of the Banks of England and Canada, and author of Values: Building a Better World for All, said money managers are starting to shift investments away from fossil fuels. Mark Cutifani, Chief Executive of the multinational mining company Anglo American, said there were opportunities and value in sustainable business and his company is creating renewable for some of its operations. Gail Klintworth, Chair of the Shell Foundation, talked about the need to include communities, especially in the Global South, in the transition to sustainable development.

The webinar was held by GlobeScan an international polling and advisory company with a long history of researching and interpreting public opinion on environmental and sustainability.

Human history has been a quest make life better; to produce better shelter, more food, good health care and personal safety. Now one of the main tools we used to build a better world – energy from burning fossil fuels – is starting to destroy our civilization. The pollution from coal, oil and gas is creating climate disruption like nothing we have seen in modern history. Heat waves, droughts, fires, floods and giant storms have burned whole towns to the ground and flooded out others. Hundreds have died in the heat, fire and floods. Just last week historic rainfall in British Columbia sent mudslides down hills. Roads and rail lines were cut. Cars were swept off roads and people killed. Hundreds had to be rescued by military helicopters. Floods submerged towns and killed thousands of farm animals. The whole southwest coast of the province was cut off from land transportation to the rest of the country. Food supplies were disrupted and fuel rationed.

This is just one example of how climate change is going to upend our lives. Fires and floods ravaged parts of Europe and North America this year while historic droughts cut food production in parts of western North America. In parts of the world, particularly in Africa years of drought are turning hunger into starvation. Millions of animals are dying in forest fires and heat waves, even in the oceans. Tropical diseases are moving out of the tropics as the world warms.

We have changed the world’s climate and now it is changing us. The earth’s temperature has risen 1.1 C since the start of the industrial revolution a couple of centuries ago. With current promises for pollution cuts by governments around the world it is still on track to rise by 2.4 degrees this century. Scientists warn we have only a few years to reduce our climate changing emissions enough to stave off even more disastrous effects. It will require historic changes in human behaviour. It’s a classic example of pay now or pay more later.

COP26 in Glasgow gave the world a giant wakeup call about how much we have to do to stop climate change from crippling our civilization. The scope and scale of changes we need to make are so great it is like reinventing the wheel. Many things that work well, have built our economies and supported our lifestyles are destroying our environment. We must replace them to avoid a harsher and more dangerous world. To save ourselves from a more hostile environment this generation will have to make the greatest changes in the shortest time in human history.

Pollution from energy use is the biggest culprit in causing climate disruption and will be the hardest thing to fix in time. About 80 per cent of the world’s commercially produced energy comes from fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas. Their production and burning release carbon dioxide and methane, which are warming the planet causing more erratic and violent weather. In 2015 world leaders said they will work to limit the global temperature increase to no more than 2 degrees with a goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels. We are already at 1.1 degrees and are on track to blow past both targets. To stop dangerous levels of climate disruption we need to cut emissions by about half this decade and nearly totally by 2050. It means repowering most of the world: getting rid of gas and diesel cars, trucks and buses and changing aircraft, ships and trains to clean power. It means the end of burning gas to heat homes and other buildings and to cook food. It means changing the way we make such essential materials as steel and cement. It also means changing agriculture and stopping deforestation.

It’s impossible to make such huge changes overnight, but we must start the process immediately. This is a gigantic task that will last for years. Many politicians are probably unaware of just how big. Those that do understand appear reluctant to tell the public about the scope and scale of changes needed. Some political leaders still support the expansion of fossil fuel production. Most local governments routinely approve buildings with too little insulation and with gas heating, instead of mandating maximum insulation and systems such as heat pumps and electric heat. All this will cost vast amounts of money and cause years of disruption.

Governments need to map out a pathway for change so we can see what is feasible. They will need to provide financial support for the transition just as they did during the COVID-19 crisis. This will be hard in rich nations and extremely difficult in developing nations, such as India, where coal provides 70 per cent of energy. So, leaders in rich countries not only have to sell the idea of a major change in spending at home they also need to convince voters to support spending on clean energy in other countries. In the past they have been able to raise support for spending billions on foreign wars, often with poor outcomes. They need to put the same level of effort into raising funds to fight climate change overseas as necessary to protect their own nations not only from extreme weather but from a flood of climate refugees.

The good news is that such changes will bring many benefits and a more sustainable society. In addition to keeping climate change from spiralling out of control, the air will be much cleaner, and deaths and illnesses from air pollution will plummet. Whenever I see an electric car go by, I know I won’t be breathing noxious fumes from a tailpipe. Ending dependence on foreign oil should eliminate the need to send armies to protect oil wells. Renewable means no more worries about depleting fossil fuels and having to destroy more of the environment to find new supplies.

One way or another the world we know today is coming to an end. Climate change has begun. The only question is how much worse will we let it get. Do we want to live in a world of increasing heat waves, droughts, forest fires, floods, famines, sea level rise and climate refugees? How much of an effort will we make to keep a relatively safe environment?

The head of the United Nations says the latest report on the climate crisis shows the world has to stop using fossil fuels before it is too late. “The alarm bells are deafening,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. “This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.” The problem is that fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas – supply more than 80 per cent of world energy and their use is growing at a time when we need to cut back. In the 2015 Paris climate agreement world leaders promised to try to limit the global temperature increase to no more than 2 degrees with a goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels. We are already at 1.1 degrees and are on track to blow past both targets.

Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis is the latest report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of scientists whose findings are endorsed by the world’s governments. In more than 3,000 pages 234 scientists said warming is already accelerating sea level rise and worsening heat waves, droughts, floods and storms. The report comes at a time when unstoppable forest fires in Canada, the United States, Greece and Turkey are burning towns, forcing evacuations, and killing people. After setting a Canadian heat record of 49.6 in late June, the village of Lytton, BC was virtually wiped out by a forest fire.

Arctic sea ice and glaciers are melting. So is the permafrost, releasing stored methane, a potent greenhouse gas that will increase global warming. Some effects, such as sea level rise and ocean acidification are irreversible for centuries to millennia. A number of low-lying island nations say they are facing “climate extinction” as rising seas will force them to abandon their homelands. People in cities are already suffering from air pollution from forest fires hundreds of kilometres away. Cities form heat islands as their pavement traps the sun’s heat and this will get worse, making life more hazardous for anyone without air conditioning. Warmer weather is allowing insect-borne diseases to spread north, including the debilitating Lyme disease which has moved into Canada. Ironically this is discouraging people from getting into nature at a time when we need to be more connected to the natural world.

We have a choice about how bad things get. It all depends on how much we are willing and able to wean ourselves from fossil fuels and other practices that release greenhouse gases. Three years ago, the IPCC said the world’s climate will reach a dangerous 1.5 degrees increase from pre-industrial levels by as early as 2030, bringing extreme drought, huge wildfires, great floods and food shortages for hundreds of millions of people. That report said global net emissions of carbon dioxide would need to fall by 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach “net zero” around 2050 to keep the warming to around 1.5 degrees

We are not on a good track. The International Energy Agency has warned that global emissions will rise next year by a record amount, much of driven by increased coal burning. What can you do? At a personal level, choose energy efficient equipment and turn it off when not in use. Reduce driving and look at getting an electric car or at least a plug-in hybrid. Limit meat consumption. We will have to make some big changes, including sacrifices of what we take for granted. Major decisions on what kind of energy is available are made by politicians and the energy companies. Real change will only come when a majority of people push their politicians and business leaders. Whenever you connect with a politician ask what they have done and what they are going to do to stop the climate crisis. Let them know you support policies that rapidly reduce our use of fossil fuels.

For more than a generation we have been warned to stop destroying our environment or the damage will come back to haunt us. Experts around the world urged us to quickly move to sustainable forms of development that cut pollution and don’t use up natural resources faster than they are created. We made some half-hearted stabs at the job but keep falling further and further behind.

In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development, released Our Common Future, a wide-ranging report that popularized the term sustainable development. Known as the Brundtland Report, it called for development that did not destroy the environment that supports life on Earth. In 1988 the World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere said we needed a 50 per cent cut in global CO2 emissions to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of this greenhouse gas. The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development and the Earth Summit of world leaders produced Agenda 21, a roadmap for more sustainable development and launched the United Nations Framework Convention On Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity, both aimed at reducing ecological damage.

Back then we had the time to for a planned transition to a sustainable economy that would work for all people and for the long term. Instead of launching a full-scale shift to a sustainable economy and lifestyle we built bigger houses, bought bigger cars and consumed and polluted more than ever. Now we coming up against a wall of crises. Whole towns are being burned by out-of-control forest fires and people are dying. Others are fleeing into lakes or seas to save their lives. People thousands of kilometres away from the fires are choking on the smoke and breathing in toxic materials that harm their health. Bigger and hotter heat waves are setting record temperatures, killing people and cooking shellfish alive. Intense heat is even killing Christmas trees as they grow. Droughts are getting longer and more severe, reducing food production, and sending climate refugees from poor lands knocking at the doors of richer nations. Historic floods are wiping out bridges, highways and homes. Glaciers and ice caps are melting, and seas are rising, flooding low-lying areas.

As a senior vice-president of a major polluter ruefully told me years ago it would have been far cheaper to prevent the pollution than to clean up the mess afterward. We now face the task of undoing decades of choices and purchases that are too polluting and demanding of limited resources. In many parts of the world the future is looking so grim that the survivability of communities and whole regions is in question. As the world gets hotter and weather more extreme some regions are predicted to become unlivable. Coastal areas are starting to be inundated and will have to be abandoned or protected with gigantic seawalls. Some food producing areas are already under stress and may not be able to produce as much particularly as rivers dry up. A number of governments have promised a shift to more sustainable forms of development and are investing in renewable energy, but most are still allowing the expansion of fossil fuel projects. This at a time when world experts warn we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by half by the end of this decade and to nearly zero by 2050. Thus we are in a race toward an uncertain future in which our climate will keep changing and we will be struggling both to adapt and to try to reduce our impacts on nature.