Is It a Good Time to Start Making Changes?

 We Canadians live well. Of course it does depend on how you look at it.

However, among the ~195 countries of the world Canada is one of the nicest. In this ranking from USA News we are ranked #1 in the world for 'Quality of Life'. Although in this ranking by the World Bank for the Best Countries to Live In - we don't make the top 10. We do have serious work to improve the lives of indigenous people, and other minorities, but all in all, the average person in Canada lives well.

Perhaps this is why so few of us seem to be concerned with making changes to help fight climate change?

However, this decade could be the deciding factor as to what the next few hundreds of years will look like on planet Earth. As Canadians we also have more ability to make changes to our lives to reduce GHG emissions.

To help understand this, consider this graph of GHG Emission Pathways created by Simon Donner of UBC:

This graph was prepared to demonstrate the contrasting climate policies in the 2021 federal election. However the three black lines showing the various scenarios of warming for the Earth are very useful. If we do very little to change our ways with GHG emissions we will end up in the 3˚C scenario (or worse) -  which is the gentle hill going down. If we get very aggressive with GHG emission reductions we might be able to meet these federal plans and we will follow something close to the middle line and have only 2˚C of warming overall. Or if we had reduced emissions drastically in the past two years we could have prevented more warming and followed the steepest of the lines (<1.5˚C of warming.) Here is an article from NASA for information on the difference scenarios of 1.5, 2.0 or 3.0 degrees of warming.

The title of this particular post is about whether it's a good time to make changes to help fight climate change. To really look at this topic, consider the very top of the graph where the lines begin to diverge (magnified below):

There is a grey zone in the red box highlighting the three paths, but the red arrow marks roughly January 2024 - That is about 18 months away at the time of writing this post. So will we be on the path of decreasing GHG emissions significantly (green arrow, to about 600Mt/year, or 17%) by then, or will we have made very little progress and end up following the top line? By the end of 2024 we will likely be able to see which path we are following. 

What Does It Mean to Reduce by 17% by Jan 2024?

This graph is showing the overall emissions for our country, and therefore reducing by 17% is a nationwide goal. One way to interpret this is that every citizen, regardless of age, or job, or living situation reduces their GHG emissions, including in their homes, with their transportation, and in their employment locations. What might this mean? We could all drive 17% less, or buy a vehicle that is 17% more efficient, and reducing our heating by 17%, buy 17% clothes or other material things, and buy food with with 17% less emissions such as local options. Even this goal is complicated for every Canadian to implement.

A more realistic scenario would likely include some people making decisions to reduce more than 17% while others are slower to make the transition. Not everyone has the means to make changes, and not everyone is even interested. The challenge will be to see which of us makes the changes and which don't?

Other possible scenarios involve large scale corporate or government decisions. In this previous post about the sources of GHG emissions in Canada we see that 17% reductions could be achieved by shutting down much of the oil and gas production in Canada. However, that would not be fair to those industries unless we can provide a Just Transition for the companies and their employees who would need to find new, more sustainable, jobs.

Summary

We don't know what will happen in the future, but examining this one graph should tell you that our fates will be decided in the next 8 years, and that we need to start making decisions in the years of 2022 and 2023 to begin the shift to changing our emissions. The economy is slow to change, but we as consumers have the power to make it happen by being careful with the spending decisions we make. We need to keep the overall warming of our atmosphere below 2.0˚C if possible, and we need to make decisions starting now.

Here is a video from the Economist about what a world of 3.0 degrees of warming could bring.