There is a new understanding amongst sustainability leaders that we are already in the age of consequences, and our previous reticence to publicly explore that together is being overcome through the overwhelming weight of evidence
Molly Harriss Olson is a recognised global pioneer of sustainable systems and Convenor of the Council for the Human Futures Roundtable on the Poly-Crisis. She received the Yale Distinguished Alumna Award in 2020, for her global work over more than 35 years to systematically re-design economic structures to ensure the protection of biodiversity, survival of humanity, and achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Molly was the founding Executive Director of Clinton’s President’s Council on Sustainable Development
It is time for some brutal honesty about the situation with the climate and environment. Otherwise, this week’s high-level deliberations at the General Assembly, and the championing of solutions at ‘Climate Week’ will have no influence on the fate of humanity. The rise, impact and damage from extreme weather events plus the maths of carbon budgets shows we are rapidly running out of time – and now need to cut global emissions 7-10 per cent per annum. Even the most ambitious action agenda will only buy our kids a little more time.
After decades of working in this field, I realise that too many of my colleagues have been focused on maintaining a sense of possibility rather than face the hard task of making the best of a tragic situation. Our global conversation on the environment desperately needs more leaders to break ranks, admit failure, and call for a new approach in this age of consequences. That admission must include an exploration of why global capitalism is turning out to be incompatible with the many laudable social and environmental goals declared at international events.
No, I am not a revolutionary who has mistakenly been platformed in eNews. As one of the first ever graduates in both Economics and Environmental Studies in the 1980s, I was excited to build a future bringing those two fields into alignment. Within a few years I was running President Clinton’s White House Council on Sustainable Development. The increasingly warm welcomes I received at Davos and other business gatherings made it seem like sustainability was the next paradigm in business and economics. But now looking back on my career, it turns out I was merely tinkering on the margins while our neoliberal economic policy plunged us into an existential poly-crisis.
Admitting this reality is painful for myself and my peers, given our decades of work to build dynamic alliances, partnerships, and initiatives. Most of these efforts, sadly failed to change the direction of the main biophysical indicators on the state of our planet, such as species extinction, habitat loss, toxic contaminants, and atmospheric carbon, as well as ocean temperatures and acidification.
The neoliberal ideology framing our work was so strong that although experts (IPCC, HDI…) and policy makers knew of the bad data coming in, they sided with the most optimistic projections, required every component of society to be ‘financially sustainable’ and shunted more risks and costs onto the poor, the powerless, and the unborn.
I now see that the wider environmental movement, including myself, were complicit in the delusion. We won some battles, and we emphasised those victories and were invested on that basis. There was a subtle self-interest at play. For we sensed that if we forced the structural issues with truth to power on the growing rapacious form of modern slavery capitalism, we would be delegitimised as radicals, and the funding would be diverted to more ‘compliant’ organisations. Privately many of us feared that multiple targets had been sliding backward, but Professor Jem Bendell’s recent book, Breaking Together, has left us in no doubt. Its extensive, robust data overwhelms the casual reader; reminiscent of the voluminous, meticulous, paradigm transforming data in the Origin of Species; a high bar I know, but I believe this research hits it. But it is not for the faint hearted.
Bendell too, built a thriving career in international sustainability until he could no longer ignore the overwhelming data showing that climate change was already ravaging ecosystems, amplifying the cascading other crises (water, biodiversity, food, endocrine disruptors, energy, inequality, democracy and human rights) all taking us towards societal breakdown. He draws attention to fundamental facts like the Human Development Index (HDI) falling in 80% of countries worldwide over the last 5 years. Crucially, he relates this widespread decline to the foundations of industrial consumer societies, such as our systems of money, energy, agriculture, natural resources and stable climate. The global nature of this decline means we are misunderstanding the situation if we focus on factors specific to our own countries.
This week in New York, the celebrations of small victories will keep masking the taboo on tackling systemic causes. It’s that same verdant optimism we’ve sought at the last 14 Climate Weeks. The truth of our global failure on the Sustainable Development Goals will be misdirected into more of the same calls to try harder with the same failing approach. Did you know that according to the Secretary General of the UN Antonio Guterres, progress towards many of the goals has reversed? This should be a cause for deep questioning of the whole program, not to mention the economic system in which it is embedded.
To the extent that there is cause for celebration, that we could achieve the scale and speed necessary for global stabilisation, it’s worth noting that for all the Earth systems boundaries we’ve broken, we do actually know precisely the corrective action that would in time, heal our Earth life systems; and it’s important to highlight the most game changing of these that have demonstrated successes. (See the attached Rapid Acceleration of Climate Action plan).
By facing squarely, the consequential state of the planet, and ineffectiveness of our efforts thus far, I’ve discovered we can explore this reality together, even though we don’t know exactly what the implications might be, or whether it may already be too late. It does mean we need to rethink everything. For instance, hundreds of scholars have publicly called on us to focus more firmly on the need for the redistribution of resource consumption in this age of consequences. Beyond that, I don’t come with any answers. But I know that the call again for “one last push” doesn’t ring true anymore. Instead, only painful honesty will kickstart the kind of conversations we need, to incite the speed and scale of action required – and maybe, just maybe, rediscover our relevance to both people and the other living beings we hope can endure.
RACE to 2030
8 Climate Week ACTIONS to Rapidly Accelerate Climate Efforts (RACE)
Background and Context
- The rise, impact and damage from extreme weather events plus the maths of the global carbon budget shows we are rapidly running out of time to avoid irreversible tipping points – and now need to cut global emissions 7-10 percent per annum. Every nation and every business needs to dramatically ratchet up their climate decarbonisation Targets.
- Good news is, compared to 10 years ago, costs of key decarbonisation technologies have come down 10 fold for rapid mitigation. (reference RMI 2024)
- This is complemented by advances in business model, finance and policy innovation to enable rapid exponential scaling of climate mitigation tech and cleantech market transformation. (RMI, 2024). For instance, China last year added more solar and renewables alone than were added by the rest of the world the year before. 1
The maths of Paul Hawken (et al) Drawdown book shows we also need a revolution in scaling Drawdown technologies, that can take CO2 out of the atmosphere so as to return the atmosphere to a safe climate with < 350ppm. In this context, the following integrated suite of rapid accelerated climate efforts (RACE) are needed:
Action 1 – National Government’s and Corporations Need to Review and Increase Ambition of CO2 Decarbonisation Targets – SystemIQ and RMI’s analysis in the reports above shows there is potential for nations, regional governments, cities and companies to significantly ratchet up their targets and timelines for decarbonisation. Only by committing to more ambitious targets can we bridge the current climate ambition gap for the next UNFCCC COPs and unleash fully the creativity of staff in government and business to achieve more ambition.
The power, buildings and transport sectors are strongly coupled – so decarbonising rapidly the power sector whilst also encouraging electrification of buildings and transport systems – can enable rapid whole of economy greenhouse gas reductions this decade. Cities and regional jurisdictions like Canberra, ACT (ie 60% GHG reductions from 2014-2024) and South Australia in Australia and, Texas, and California USA, are showing that rapid transitions to 100% renewables + storage are possible. Norway has shown rapid market transformation of EVs is achievable with now over 95% of new cars purchased being EVs. And by 2030 Greenpeace has shown that the energy storage of EVs globally will be larger than all current energy sources enabling the EVs with Vehicle to Grid capability to play a big role via virtual power plants, with household batteries, to rapidly ensure sufficient energy storage sources for national economies to achieve 100% renewables.
Action 2 – Review and Increase Ambition of non-CO2 GHG Decarbonisation Targets – Roughly half of the increase in global warming is being driven by non CO2 GHGs, because they have much higher global warming potential than CO2 over 10-20 year time periods. There needs to be renewed focus of nations and large companies to agree to commit and report to science based specific targets by decade to 2050 for non-CO2 GHG gases, that are relatively ignored by governments and business compared to their focus ot cut CO2 emissions.1
Action 3 – Create a Knowledge Sharing Web Platform with Webinars on How to Achieve Rapid Decarbonisation at 7-10% per annum rates of CO2 and non CO2 GHGs. Create a high profile focus and fund FTES under the UNFCCC or a reputable global NGO – to improve capacity, speed and relevance of knowledge sharing globally – based on what has worked in leading nations, regional and city governments and companies to achieve rapid decarbonisation of 7-10% per annum.
Action 4 – Create a New Global Push for Cities and National Governments to Commit to Formal Urban Heat Island Reduction Targets of at least 2 degrees by 2035-2040 compared to BAU eg Medellin, Columbia has cut urban temperatures by 2 degrees2 – The majority of people globally live in cities. Leading cities are showing that by using urban greening they can reduce the city wide urban heat island effect by 2 degrees. City Governments working with national government and urban planning authorities can Increase use of reflective (white roof) rooftops, and increase urban shading via adopting ambitious urban tree canopy targets, urban solar car park shading targets, and investment in urban green and blue infrastructure to reduce the urban heat island effect – by at least 2 degrees city wide by 2035-2040.
Action 5 – Elevate the Mission Innovation push to invest and scale – CO2 and non CO2 “Drawdown” technologies and natural solutions outlined in the Paul Hawken et al book Drawdown. See Solar Foods Finland3 – and many other exciting CCUS technologies, which are now scaling.4
Action 6 – Create a global Climate Resilient Pathways R&D&D and Knowledge Sharing initiative to demonstrate investment opportunities in change that simultaneously achieves mitigation whilst enhancing resilience – so whilst mitigating climate change we are also creating more resilient systems to extreme weather events. Such investments are known to contribute to creating Net Zero Climate Resilient Pathways
Action 7- Each Nation must Ramp Up their Target Ambitions to achieve all of the above actions at speed and scale. In the USA, the power of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which has also now been duplicated in Australia, is a great launchpad on which to build further actions. In addition to the six actions above, there are additional options to ramp up the scale and speed of decarbonisation in each country that are unique to that country. These should also be identified and committed to, to complement the above six actions.
Action 8 – Business needs to Pay their Taxes, reach Net Zero asap, and welcome transparent, enforceable regulations that stop all harm to people and the planet. This is what creates the level playing field for good businesses to thrive.
1 Ministers Unite for Immediate Action on Climate and Clean Air, Urging Bold Financing and Swift Measures on Non-CO2 Super Pollutant Greenhouse Gases | Climate & Clean Air Coalition (ccacoalition.org)
2 How cities from Medellín to Düsseldorf are using nature to tackle extreme heat | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
3 Embrace what may be the most important green technology ever. It could save us all | George Monbiot | The Guardian
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