We Must Use Less: A Year of Climate Crisis, a Glimpse of Hope, but not in Mere Technology

Field: Environmental Science (Physical Sciences)

Basically, in relation to the urgent need to reduce or reverse humankind's damaging effect on the global climate, all the crucial trends in human behaviour are going in the wrong direction, and many of them in a positively non-linear fashion. So says an article published in the Guardian last week,1 which reports on a statement by 11000 scientists published this November in BioScience.2 Of the three main drivers displayed graphically in the Guardian article (world population, air transport and meat production), air transport is rising most steeply. However – and this is the saddest part of the picture at a human level – both at a global and a community level there is an enormous diversity of human behaviour, ranging from whole nations that are driving us closer to the brink compared with ones that have less than a 10th of that impact per capita, down to individuals in a society who will happily go out and buy the latest and largest SUV compared with people who make do with more modest means of transport. The list goes on, and it's now no secret that 10% of the world's population produces 50% of the world's net anthropogenic CO2 emissions, whereas an enormous 3.5 billion of the world's poorest people (45% of humanity) together account for only 10%.3 Around 14.5% of total worldwide net greenhouse gas emissions (most of them from fossil fuels) were accounted for by the production of animals and animal-derived products for human consumption in 2013 according to the FAO4 – trend rising; that's more than greenhouse gas emissions from all road transport, private and commercial. Admittedly, estimates vary, but I haven't read any that are below 7% with respect to animal production. Hence it's not surprising that the 11000 scientists recommend that humans change to a largely vegetarian diet as soon as reasonably possible. Air travel and agriculture are increasing particularly fast as sources of net CO2 production, and even the European Union, which prides itself on the setting of environmentally-sustainable development targets, envisages no significant reduction in agricultural emissions in the foreseeable future, and further significant increases from air travel.5 The EU's policy of calculating the CO2 footprint from cars merely from tailpipe emissions – thereby completely neglecting metal/mineral mining (particularly of lithium) and car production (amongst other processes) – is interesting. One could be forgiven for thinking that their proclaiming of electric cars (which by European Commission standards have zero emissions!) as the sustainable future of road travel, is a desperate measure to compensate for failures to reduce CO2 emissions from other sources. But it also seems to be a measure designed to maintain current human behaviour (or even increases in certain behaviour, such as mobility), but supported by a different technology. Here's the rub: there is no evidence whatsoever that “technological solutions” on their own will save us from the climate catastrophe. However, and this is essentially the core message from the report from 11000 scientists: there is ample reason to believe with great confidence that a reduction in consumption, waste and futile energy-consuming cycling of resources (as happens in our increasingly throw-away-old/buy-the-newest consumer-oriented socioeconomic system) will have a significant positive effect on climate change, the environment in general and many ecosystems and their organisms in particular. For me, it's a glimpse of hope that, more than ever before, scientists and grass-roots organizations such as Fridays for Future are supporting a common line with a very simple and true message. Basically, large numbers of scientists are saying that we must use less of everything. We had better heed that advice now or be doomed. Another, purely selfish, perspective would be the following: certain things that many humans “like” doing may well still be possible, but at much-reduced level/frequency (e.g., eating a beef burger, or riding a motorbike along a serpentine mountain road); however, if many of us don't significantly reduce our consumption habits, we will be faced with absolute bans and highly restrictive legislation – the irony being that those measures on their own might well, in particular cases, backfire on the environment. The looming threat of certain mobility-related bans is driving a certain well-known car manufacturer to respond very vigorously with electric vehicle adverts containing the hashtag “NowYouCan”. It's a small change of letters to turn that into “NoYouCan't”, and that, I'm afraid, is the message that we should take to heart. The implication that we can continue current behaviour, or even increase it, because industry will find the “solution” for us, is a sure route to ruination. And in the longer term, that will do industry no good either… The views and opinions expressed in this editorial reflect solely those of the author, and not necessarily those of his employer or anyone else associated with BioEssays.