Climate repair: Three things we must do now to stabilise the planet

 The challenge of surviving the next 50 years is now seen as a planet-wide existential crisis; we need to work together urgently

“Nowhere is safe.” As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in a recent report that climate change and its consequences are here to stay, is there still an opportunity to mitigate some of the dangers and to get back to a place of relative safety for humanity?
The challenge of surviving the next 50 years is now seen as a planet-wide existential crisis; we need to work together urgently, just to secure a short-term future for human civilization. Global weather patterns are violently disrupted: Greece burns; the south of England floods; Texas has had its coldest weather ever, while California and Australia suffer apocalyptic wildfires. All of these violent, record-breaking events are a direct result of rapid heating in the Arctic - occurring faster than in the rest of the world. The warm Arctic triggers new ocean and air currents that change the weather for everyone.

The only way to reverse some of these catastrophic patterns, and to regain a kind of stability in climate and weather systems, is “climate repair” – a strategy we call “reduce, remove, repair” – which demands that we make very rapid progress to net-zero global emissions; that there is massive, active removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere; and, in the first instance, that we refreeze the Earth’s poles and glaciers to correct the wild weather patterns, slow down ice-melt, stabilize sea level, and break the feedback loops that relentlessly accelerate global warming. There are no either/or options.

Reducing emissions
About 70% of world economies have net zero emissions commitments over varying timescales, but this has come too late to restore climate stability.

The IPCC has asked for accelerated progress on this trajectory, but whatever happens, current emission rates of atmospheric greenhouse gases imply global warming of 1.5-degree Celcius by 2030 and well over 2-degree Celcius above pre-industrial level by the end of the century – a devastating outcome. In particular, melting ice and thawing permafrost are considered inevitable even if rapid and deep carbon dioxide emissions reductions are achieved, with the sea-level rise to continue for centuries as a result. In every area of the world, climate events will become more severe and more frequent, whether flooding, heating, coastal erosion or fires.