Policy positions and interventions show global warming is still underestimated, or misunderstood. Can we still win back the chance of surviving and thriving?
In this talk, Professor Sir David King argues that ‘climate repair’ offers a scalable, safe recipe for future climate stability. The strategy applies immediate climate repair measures: very rapid progress to net zero global emissions; additional reduction of the volume of atmospheric greenhouse gases; and halting the heating of the Earth and its oceans. ‘Climate repair’ will refreeze Earth’s poles and the glaciers of the Himalayas. It will stabilise sea level and break feedback loops that relentlessly accelerate global warming.
Net zero emissions exist as a target for about 70% of the world’s economies, over a range of timescales. This target offers an important starting point for climate repair. But emissions reductions must become more rapid than current proposals. And combined with speedy expansion of carbon sinks to create negative growth of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs).
‘Net-zero’ alone is insufficient. Net-negative emissions will provide foundations for shifting current dangerous GHGs back towards pre-industrial levels that underpinned stable, hospitable climate patterns for millennia.
