What is the climate brink?
The Choice is Ours: Climate Disaster or a Sustainable Future
As a global community, we currently find ourselves standing at the edge of two very different brinks. One represents the disastrous consequences of unmitigated climate change, and the other represents the hope of innovative solutions, renewable energy, and a sustainable future. In this Substack, we will explore these two precipices and discuss how we can navigate between them to secure a prosperous and resilient future for ourselves and generations to come.
The Brink of Disaster: The undeniable truth is that we are on track for a best-estimate of just under 3°C of warming under policies in place today, and could end up with significantly more if we get unlucky with the climate’s response to our emissions. No one knows what this means for humanity and the natural world, but severe and irreversible consequences may certainly be the result. This disaster is no longer a distant threat; its impacts are already evident around the world, manifesting as more frequent and intense heatwaves, precipitation events, sea level rise, more damaging hurricanes, etc.
And it’s not a distant threat in another way: today’s kids and young adults will live through this climate change. We have a limited window of opportunity to prevent it, and that window is rapidly closing.
The Brink of the Solution: Despite the grim outlook, there is hope because we are on the brink of incredible solutions to help us mitigate and possibly even reverse the climate change. Clean energy, such as solar and wind power, has become more affordable than ever before. Research on how to integrate this variable renewable energy into the grid shows that we can largely decarbonize our economy using technology we have today. In other words, we can get to, say, a 90% clean-energy grid and pay costs comparable to what we’re paying today with existing technology.
The last 10% of decarbonization for the grid will be a lot harder than the first 90% and other sectors of the economy may be more challenging, but innovation is flourishing in the climate change solution space. From carbon capture and storage technologies to the development of new storage technologies, there is no shortage of promising ideas that can help us transition to a low-carbon economy.
Navigating Between the Two Cliffs: This is what our substack will be about: At this point, climate change is not a scientific or technical problem — it’s a political problem. But only with a comprehensive knowledge of the challenges we face and the potential solutions at our disposal can we navigate the politics. Of course, there are a lot of bad actors out there who don’t want people to understand this, and we hope our substack helps push back against those who misrepresent reality.
Here is Andy giving his talk The Brink: Climate disaster or climate solution? at NASA Goddard in March 2023.
I admire the work of both of you. I’ve really learnt a lot and you have changed my way of thinking about many, many things, even outside climate space. I know it may sound weird, I am just some random guy from some obscure place, but it is what is. 🙃 That’s the power of the internet. Anyway, thank you for the substack, I will be following closely and I will also consider some subscription fee if you keep your fantastic work coming. One question: why the binary framing in the manifesto? Haven’t you been insisting that it’s not some do or die exercise, but a question of degrees of how bad it’s going to get?
I hope your science is better than your style-choices. "Navigating between two brinks" is fine for situations described in times bygone as "between Scylla and Charybdis"- In classical mythology, Scylla was a horrible six-headed monster who lived on a rock on one side of a narrow strait. Charybdis was a whirlpool on the other side. When ships passed close to Scylla's rock in order to avoid Charybdis, she would seize and devour their sailors. In short: two BAD things, and you must steer a careful course in the middle.
While you write about "either very bad or all-smiles A-okay". Kindergarten-Kids could tell you where to steer to.
Reality looks potentially much more Scylla and Charybdis: Either too much warming (et al.) too fast OR economic stagnation/depression by "last generation"-Gretas panickly strangling both economic growth (growth saves many lifes. less growth saves less, recessions kill) AND research (grants for geo-engineering research anyone? Bans more likely. - How many fusion-reactors are being built presently? Oh, one. Better than zero, I admit. - Greta&friends endorsing GM-food? Surprisingly not. )