We must change food production to save the world, says leaked report

Attempts to solve the climate crisis by cutting carbon emissions from only cars, factories and power plants are doomed to failure, scientists will warn this week.

Hereford beef cattle. The IPCC report says meat
consumption should be cut to reduce methane emissions.

A leaked draft of a report on climate change and land use, which is now being debated in Geneva by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), states that it will be impossible to keep global temperatures at safe levels unless there is also a transformation in the way the world produces food and manages land.

Humans now exploit 72% of the planet’s ice-free surface to feed, clothe and support Earth’s growing population, the report warns. At the same time, agriculture, forestry and other land use produces almost a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.

Read the story from The Guardian by Robin McKie - “We must change food production to save the world, says leaked report.”

Australian towns going off the grid

Australia is facing an energy crisis.

Some turned to solar panels and battery storage technology to solve their bill woes.

As prices rose to new highs last year and the ever-constant threat of blackouts hung over the east coast, many Australians looked for energy alternatives.

Some turned to solar panels and battery storage technology to solve their bill woes, gain greater control of their own power and make a real change in terms of their impact on the climate.

While they are taking steps at the individual level, others are looking to take full advantage of the push for more renewable energy and shift away from centralised power systems on a larger scale.

Read Cole Latimer’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Australian towns going off the grid.”

The Real Politics of the Planetary Crisis

(This is part three of a work in progress. The series begins with The Last Decade and You, and continues with On Climate, Speed is Everything.

In the last two pieces, I pointed out how getting on the right emissions reduction curve for this era means taking bold action, now. We must peak global emissions by 2020. Then we must cut them in half by 2030 — and then cut them in half again by 2040, and then again, by 2050 — while restoring the natural world and spreading sustainable prosperity. 

Because the planetary crisis is steepening — the longer we wait, the harder it becomes to solve the problems we face — failing to get on the right curve will mean that we end up, very quickly, on an even steeper curve. Wait too long and the curves we face become essentially impossible to meet.

We can fail catastrophically on climate. We’ll know that failure when we have delayed action so long that we find ourselves confronting an insurmountable emissions reduction challenge coupled with rising and untenable losses — a crisis where all humanity’s choices are bad ones. We will have then reached a point where a even drastic program of global carbon austerity — even when combined with our wildest gambles on trying to pull CO2 out of the air and engineer the planet’s temperature — will simply not be enough to avoid tragic, essentially permanent losses for all humanity.

Read the story by Alex Steffen - “The Real Politics of the Planetary Crisis.”