By Professor Sigrun Wagner, School of Business and Management
When it comes to addressing climate change, it often seems like we’re waiting for a magic silver bullet – the one single solution or technology that will help us to solve the climate crisis. What many people don’t know is that we already have all the solutions to tackle climate change at our fingertips. There is no need to wait for that illusionary, magical technological solution – which, even if it existed, wouldn’t help with solving the complex nature of the climate emergency, as that requires action from different angles by multiple actors, using a variety of levers.
Despite the complexity, there are two simple key solutions we need to adopt - one is to reduce emissions, the other is to take carbon out of the atmosphere. In reducing emissions, we address the sources of climate change and in taking carbon out of the atmosphere we support the so-called carbon sinks, which absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Only in tackling both can we really solve climate change and reach drawdown – the point at which greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop rising and start to decline steadily. Project Drawdown highlights the solutions we have at hand and crucially adds a third area of action – improving society in order to foster equality for all, acknowledging the interconnected nature of social and environmental challenges.
The key areas for taking carbon out of the atmosphere are the supporting of sinks – land sinks as well as coastal and ocean sinks. These are key nature-based solutions and include using degraded land, protecting, and restoring ecosystems (such as coastal wetlands) and most importantly, shifting agriculture practice (such as for example silvopasture, regenerative cropping, managed grazing, conservation agriculture using cover crops, crop rotation and minimizing tilling). Engineered sinks that remove and store carbon play less of a role and it is here where there is often a misplaced hope in technological solutions that are not yet available at scale (or at a viable cost).
The key areas for reducing our emissions centre on a reconsideration of our sources of electricity –we need to shift production and enhance efficiency. As regards food, agriculture, and land use we need to address waste and our own diets at the same time as we shift agricultural practices and protect ecosystems. In terms of industry, it is clear that the use of refrigerants (F-gases) needs to be rethought, as well as how the materials in the manufacture of refrigerators are implemented and disposed of. Transport is another key area where we need to shift to alternatives, enhance efficiency and electrify vehicles. Our approach to buildings needs to prioritise a shift to renewable energy sources and a far greater focus on how they can function in terms of efficiency.
So why aren’t we seeing we more of these solutions in everyday life? What’s lacking? Is it political will and knowledge? And what can we do in our own lives, at home, at work, in the community? That’s probably the topic for another blog post and one key reason is the complexity and multitude of areas that we need to address.
A useful tool here for exploring this complexity and the various scenarios and the high impact solutions that might get us to limiting temperature increases to 1.5C is the En-ROADS Climate Solutions Simulator which allows an interactive way to understand how changes in energy, land use, agriculture, consumption, and other policies. Have a go at building your own 1.5C or 2C scenario here.
If you want to learn more about high impact solutions, take a course in Carbon Literacy Training – at Royal Holloway we offer it to students and staff, but plenty of other organisations also offer it. In the meantime, test your knowledge of high impact solutions with this quiz, which is also used in the Carbon Literacy Training, but please don’t worry if you get a low score, even our most climate literate colleagues struggle to score highly on this quiz! Which solution could you adopt right now? And which one in the near future?
At Royal Holloway we do have some of these solutions, albeit at small scale, such as the solar panels on the Shilling building which I had the privilege of getting a tour of at last year’s COP-26 forum.