Stopping climate change is like the weather. We complain. But nothing changes. The problem is global. How can I make a difference? Each of us is in the same place as the other 319 million Americans, or the more than 7 billion people in the world.
The good news is that there’s a practical standard we can use to measure if we’re living sustainably.
It’s simple. It’s 3 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per person per year. At the average individual rate of 3 tons, yearly total global carbon dioxide emissions would be 21 gigatons. That’s equal to the global natural carbon sinks in the ocean, soil, biomass that keeps the amount of global carbon dioxide in the atmosphere level.
The global average is now 4.5 tons carbon dioxide a person per year. Drop from 4.5 tons of carbon dioxide per year to 3 tons and game over. Seven billion people times 3 tons each is 21 gigatons. That’s it for climate change. Forget about rising seas, crop failures, Miami and New York underwater. Back to watching football.
But the devil is in the details. While the global average is 4.5 tons, the U.S. average per person is 17.5 tons a person per year. China is 6.4 tons a person per year. Since there’s a lot more people in China, they have now passed us as carbon dioxide champ.
For the big rich emitters like the U.S., reaching 3 tons a person means a transformation of our polluting ways. Fossil fuels must be used without carbon pollution or left in the ground if there’s any hope of getting to 3 tons a person.
For small poor emitters, it means following a development path that goes directly to sustainable renewable resources and skips the high pollution fossil fuel road.
If everyone followed the path of the U.S., and now China, relying on polluting fossil fuels, we would need several Earths to deal with the consequences of our pollution. If we do not pursue a global convergence on emissions of 3 tons per person of carbon dioxide, and instead continue our mega-pollution, we will destroy our civilization and ourselves.
A global convergence on 3 tons per person per year of carbon dioxide emissions is the real global measure for social and climate justice. This should be the basis for policy, diplomacy, and action.
The solution is an aggressive pursuit of an ecological global growth initiative that makes economic growth mean ecological improvement, makes us all sustainably richer and tackles climate change.
We need to invest trillions in building the renewable resource infrastructure and the sustainable ecological industrial systems where all outputs are used as inputs in other systems.
Trillions of productive investment over the next 30 years means enormous profits, millions of sustainable jobs in sustainable communities. It means transforming agriculture, and forestry as well as industry. It means using existing proven technology, which is only getting better by the day.
Investment of $90 billion a year in photovoltaics for 20 years, at $1.50 per watt with storage, could replace coal generation. It would cover a block of land 137 miles on each side, or 217.5 square miles per state. This can be from roadways, rooftops, marginal land. Renewables will increasingly come not in big plants but in building materials, from roads and small vertical axis wind turbines.
The United States and China, the world’s two biggest economies and biggest emitters can lead the way by starting the Global Climate Club and committing to meet the sustainable 3 ton carbon dioxide per person target.
The stick is that nations who don’t join the Climate Club will be subject to stiff import tariffs.
The carrot is the establishment of a means to transfer capital and technology for renewable energy and sustainability from rich polluters to poor nations. A Basic Energy Entitlement would place assessments on all energy use, 1 cent per kilowatt hour equivalent, and invest in renewables in poor nations. A commitment of 1 percent of GDP will support global investment in renewable transformation and drive the global convergence on 3 tons of carbon.
This is the basis for a sustainable and prosperous future.
(Roy Morrison’s latest book, “Sustainability Sutra: An Ecological Investigation,” will be published March 7, 2017 by Select Books. The Chinese translation of his book “Ecological Democracy” will be published in 2016 by China Environmental Press in Beijing.)