A United Nations report has found that the world will warm to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Climate solutions advocate Ayana Elizabeth Johnson urges a quicker implementation of known strategies – and determination rather than despair.
This week, the United Nations report found that the world will warm to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the next few years. This is a big deal. We've known we've been on track for that threshold, but this report is far more definitive than any data we have had so far. The bleak status update comes just days after a melting glacier collapse in Nepal and Tibet, killed more than 1,000 people with thousands still missing.
But the U.N. report, called Limiting Overshoot, also said there is still a path for return. So we've called up Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, founder of the Urban Ocean Lab think tank and a conservation strategist. She has written a book all about climate solutions called "What If We Get It Right?" and is the host of a podcast of the same name with Bill McKibben. Welcome to the program.
AYANA ELIZABETH JOHNSON: Thanks for having me.
ROSE: The 1.5 degree limit was the target agreed to in the 2015 global agreement signed in Paris by just about every country in the world to limit climate change. Tell me what your reaction was to this U.N. report this week.
JOHNSON: We've been predicting this for years, that at the rate we're burning fossil fuels and destroying ecosystems and releasing all these greenhouse gases, this was almost inevitable. So I'm not surprised, but I'm really glad to see all the information distilled in this U.N. report because I think it makes it clear just how urgent it is.
ROSE: It's fair to say that the solutions to limiting the climate crisis are already pretty well known. The big one is to reduce fossil fuel pollution, which warms the planet. What are the conditions for getting us unstuck from where we are?
JOHNSON: Unfortunately, I think a lot of that has to do with policy because relying on the goodwill of fossil fuel executives doesn't seem to be a terribly effective strategy. And it was really wonderful to see the U.N. be extremely clear about that in a way that they haven't really in previous reports. They've often tiptoed around even using the term fossil fuels in the past. And here, in this new report, they're extremely clear not only that we need to phase out fossil fuels, but also that the existing pledges from individual countries about their emission reductions are insufficient, and the implementation of those weak pledges is also weak. They're really calling on all of us, all nations in the world, to step it up.
ROSE: What needs to happen in order to bring about that kind of policy change?
JOHNSON: That's sort of a social science and culture change question. We're here in the U.S. just two months before the midterm elections. Obviously, who we elect has a huge impact on what kinds of policies are possible to put in place and how they're implemented and how those things are funded.
ROSE: What are the practical solutions then, from your vantage point, as we near and then pass this 1.5 degree change?
JOHNSON: Everything from electrifying our homes and investing in public transit and protecting and restoring ecosystems to green roofs and wind turbines and anything you can think of. It's just a matter of speed. We've been too slow, and now the risks are so much higher. And of course, the impacts of climate change are not distributed evenly, as we've just seen in Nepal and Tibet, places that have an incredibly low carbon footprint and are bearing the brunt of these sorts of things.
ROSE: You're a scientist, and much of your work has focused on the importance of studying oceans as part of addressing the climate crisis. Why? What's the connection there?
JOHNSON: Well, I studied oceans simply because I was enamored with them and thought it could use more advocates. I mean, I was reading this U.N. report and looking to the parts about what the risks are for coral reefs, the ecosystem that I studied for my PhD, thinking about fisheries collapsing on coral reefs that hundreds of millions of people around the world depend on for their food security, thinking about all the jobs that are at risk there, thinking about the loss of coastal ecosystems due to development, due to sea level rise and storms. We are, like, really in a lot of trouble.
But it's also really important to note that the ocean is a source of climate solutions as well from offshore renewable energy, restoring coastal ecosystems that can protect us from storm surges as well as absorb often more carbon than a tropical forest. I know the ocean is an incredibly important part of this climate puzzle.
