Sustainable
For a Future Worth Living
Climate
Like when fever strikes, global warming is a symptom of a deeper malaise. Climate change is telling us loud and clear that our growth-based economy is unsustainable.
Margarita Mediavilla in: Khaled Diab. 2021. How Europe can grow without growing. European Environmental Bureau META.
When talking about climate change, we are all too often trapped in what is known as the 'Carbon tunnel vision'. This means that when it comes to climate change, we only think about carbon emissions. This obscures the bigger picture.
Even if we decouple carbon emissions from economic growth, we would still overshoot other planetary boundaries. We would still be in an inequality crisis with unequal exchanges between the global minority and the global majority.
In the fight against climate change and for a future worth living, we have to take many more aspects into account.
According to Kasper Bjørkskov. 11 things I wish more people knew about Capitalism. Post on LinkedIn 2026
Carbon Tunnel Vision
Source: PLOS Global Public Health. Breaking free from tunnel vision for climate change and health. 9. March 2023
Even today, we are presumably much better at understanding the social consequences of climate change than the social conditions for limiting it.
Christian Berg. Book: Sustainable Action. Overcoming the Barriers. 2020
The rights of future generations are just as weak in today's political decisions as the rights of people in the Global South or the rights of nature.
None of the signatory states to the Paris Climate Agreement have yet fulfilled their commitments. Externalising the costs of our lifestyle is still too easy for political actors to face up to the responsibility of restructuring and doing without.
Translated from: Josef Mackert. Newsletter WBGU Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen. 22.10.2024
For more than 6,000 years, the human race has learned to live within a relatively narrow band of environmental and climatic fluctuations. The mean annual temperature over that period has been around 13ºC.
Currently, around 1% of the Earth's land surface - mainly in the hottest parts of the Sahara - has an average annual temperature of 29ºC.
By 2070, almost a fifth of the Earth's land surface could reach these temperatures, and this could affect around 30% of the forecasted world population.
Chi Xu etal. 2020. Future of the human climate niche. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Vol. 117 | No. 21.
The average near-surface air temperature in
Switzerland has already increased by about 2.9°C above the preindustrial
average (1871-1900).
Source: MeteoSwiss. 2025
In 2024, 37.4 billion tonnes of CO2 will be emitted from fossil fuels.
Source: Global Carbon Project. November 2024
Wallpaper © Scott Book | Shutterstock, Inc. [US] 2019
A continuation of current policies would result in a 100% chance of exceeding 1.5°C, a 97% chance of exceeding 2°C and a 37% chance of exceeding 3°C by 2100.
CarbonBrief. UNEP: New climate pledges need 'quantum leap' in ambition to deliver Paris goals. 24. 10.2024
The Global North's share of Global Warming to date is over 60 %, China's share is around 15 % and the share of all other countries together is around 24 %.
Source: Global Carbon Project 2023
Wallpaper © Barnaby Chambers | Shutterstock, Inc. [US] 2019
Fossil fuels currently generate around 80% of the primary energy consumed worldwide.
Source: International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2023.
Wallpaper © 24Novembers | Shutterstock, Inc. [US] 2023
In stark contrast to the trickle of climate finance, fossil fuel subsidies have surged in recent years. In 2022, total spending on subsidies for oil, natural gas and coal reached a record $7 trillion [according to IMF]. That's $2 trillion more than in 2020.
Chelsea Harvey and Zia Weise. The state of the planet in 10 numbers. Politico.eu. November 20, 2023
Resilient Ecosystems
© Frank Wortmann + © arpitcoolboy + © Sandra-Dombrovsky + © Aleks14 | Shutterstock, Inc. [US] 2019/2023
There is no prospect of achieving climate targets without protecting ecosystems at the same time. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone is not sufficient.
Major efforts are now needed to protect the natural carbon reservoirs such as forests, soils, wetlands and oceans, in order to simultaneously mitigate the rapidly advancing loss of biodiversity.
Some 50 percent of man-made greenhouse gas emissions are absorbed by natural ecosystems on land and in the sea. Soils are, after the oceans, the second largest natural carbon sink.
Wetlands cover just 3-4% of Earth's surface but store twice as much carbon as forests. Yet are among the least understood and monitored ecosystems.
Source: Global Peatland Hotspot Atlas. 2024.
Since the pre-industrial era, it is estimated that more than 80 % of the world's wetlands have been lost due to changes in land use and drainage, and most of the remaining wetlands have been degraded.
WBGU. German Advisory Council on Global Change. Water in heated world. Summary. 2024. PDF
© Marti Bug Catcher | Shutterstock, Inc. [US] 2021
The lack of appropriate wastewater treatment and the release of pollutants from the manufacturing industry, agriculture, tourism, fisheries and shipping continue to put pressure on the ocean, with a negative impact on food security, food safety and marine biodiversity.
The ocean plays a crucial role in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and the livelihoods of billions of people. We urgently need to change how we interact with it.
The Second World Ocean Assessment. United Nations. 2021.
The «Climate Decade»
© Alexander Mak | Shutterstock, Inc. [US] 2021
We are in the «climate decade». A period where our collective actions will determine the kind of world our children and grandchildren will inherit.
We think of climate change as slow, but it is unnervingly fast. We think of the technological change necessary to avert it as fast-arriving, but unfortunately it is deceptively slow, especially judged by just how soon we need it.
David Wallace-Wells. Book: The Uninhabitable Earth. Life after Warming. 2019
The goal of halving global emissions by 2030 represents the absolute minimum we must achieve if we are to have at least a 50 per cent chance of safeguarding humanity from the worst impacts.
Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac. Book: The Future We Choose - Surviving the Climate Crisis. 2020
AI - generated image | Shutterstock, Inc. [US] 2024
The primary challenge is to stop the flow of money to oil, coal and gas and to establish a clear path towards de-carbonization.
The «sustainability» of finance can be gauged by how far and how fast it shifts us away from the fossil fuel economy, rather than simply allowing the financial sector to develop new «green» markets alongside a core business that continues to bankroll climate change.
Oscar Reyes. Change Finance - Not the Climate. 2020
The climate crisis is not interested in the promise to be climate-neutral in 2050: It doesn't matter when humanity stops burning coal, oil and gas, and thus blowing greenhouse gases like CO2 into the atmosphere. It depends on how much we burn in the meantime.
Translated from: Maria Stich. 18 Fakten über die Klimakrise, die jede:r wissen sollte. Perspective Daily. 27. März 2023