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May
10, 2023
By
Marlowe Hood
World near positive 'tipping point' on climate
solutions:
![](images/images_07_24_2023/the-climate-crisis-wil.jpg)
'The climate crisis will be changed in culture and business and
technology, not politics': Drawdown Project ex
With
climate-enhanced droughts, heatwaves and fires ravaging three
continents and the threat of a new surge in global warming, the world
urgently needs to ramp-up solutions for slashing carbon pollution. But
which solutions are most critical?
The organization Project Drawdown has detailed the potential,
feasibility and cost of nearly a hundred climate solutions since it
was set up in 2017.
Executive director Jonathan Foley, a leading climate scientist, spoke
to AFP about how to assess and prioritize the actions needed to keep
Earth liveable.
The following interview has been edited for length and flow:
Q:
What are the three most important questions in assessing the
usefulness and integrity of carbon-cutting solutions?
A:
Is it available now and ready to deploy? Because we need to start
bending the emissions curve immediately.
Is it cost-effective? Otherwise, it's not going to scale effectively.
Does it create co-benefits for people, especially in terms of health,
jobs, equity, and justice? This will make it far more appealing.
Q:
A lot of hope—and investment—is going into technological solutions
such as filtering fossil fuel pollution or pulling CO2 out of the air.
Comment?
A:
While some very limited carbon removal will be needed by mid-century,
the vast, vast majority of the work we need to do—more than 95
percent—is cutting emissions, and doing it now.
Of the five percent focused on carbon removal, I think it should be
more than 90 percent nature-based removal, such as ecological
restoration and regenerative agriculture. Machine-based removal is
unlikely to work at any meaningful scale.
Q:
We often hear that solutions are
already available, all that's missing is political will. Is that it?
![](images/images_07_24_2023/governments-arent-lead.jpg)
'Governments aren't leading, not at all. At best,
they're followers,' says Foley .
A: It's not political will. It's money and
power, which right now is still with fossil fuels, polluting
industries, and unsustainable agriculture. That's why too many
politicians are still in bed with them.
But effective climate solutions are here, now, and they are starting
to growing exponentially and beat the older, polluting systems at
their own game—in the marketplace. When renewables and other climate
solutions are cheaper, better, faster, and more popular than the old
systems, we will hit a dramatic tipping point on climate solutions. We
are getting close to that now. It's finally a real race.
Q: Government, business, consumers -– who's not pulling their
weight on climate action?
A: The climate crisis will be changed in culture and business
and technology, not politics. Governments aren't leading, not at all.
At best, they're followers.
Government regulation has been a very small contributor. So far,
businesses and communities are leading on climate action. We have
already seen dramatic reductions in emissions—20 percent in the US
since peaking in 2007, and 40 percent since the mid-1990s in the UK—in
major economies around the world, fuelled by changes in technology,
business, investment, and culture.
Activists have also contributed to these positive changes, largely
pushing how businesses and investors see the climate problem.
Q: Is greenwashing the new climate denial?
A: Sadly, yes. Outright denial of climate change as an issue is
no longer credible. So the new approach is focused on delay and
greenwashing—making it look like we are doing things, but nothing
really changes. One could also say delay is the new denial.
But we should also be aware of "doom-washing": the narrative that
nothing good is happening on climate change and that we have no hope
to stop the climate crisis. Neither of these is true.
Q: Is mainstream media conveying the balanced portfolio of
climate action needed?
A: No. Far too much of the coverage is focused on the problem
and impacts of climate change—roughly 99 percent in the US media—and
almost nothing focusing on the solutions.
Mainstream media is doing more harm than good in some cases by
promoting more fear and anxiety, leading to disengagement and
inaction. This feeds a terrible feedback loop in our broken politics
and activists cultures. We need a better, more balanced conversation
on how climate solutions can benefit communities around the world.
© 2023 AFP
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