4 Pieces of Good News About Climate Change

No, I’m not a climate change denier, but in this day and age of war, pandemic, mass shootings, and climate crisis, I feel the need to celebrate when I hear some good news.

This is me doing a happy dance.

The Planet Will Stop Warming in 3 to 5 years, Not 50

You have probably heard that the planet will continue to heat for another 50 years, even if we were to stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow. However, this was based on overly simplistic computer models. According to Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist from Penn State, if humans “stop emitting carbon right now… the oceans start to take up carbon more rapidly.” The actual lag effect between halting CO2 emissions and halting temperature rise is not 25 to 30 years but, “more like three to five years.”

Other scientists disagree with Mann’s assessment and estimate that temperatures would peak about a decade after we stopped burning fossil fuels. The authors of the study also point out that we wouldn’t necessarily start to cool right away, only that the heating would peak after 10 years.

While this isn’t new news, since Mann gave the interview back in 2020, and they have revised the old computer models over the past decade, it is a very important fact that the media has seldom mentioned.

While we are still a long way off from ending our relationship with oil, this is at least hopeful news that a stable climate is an achievable goal.

Natural Carbon Sinks Can Sequester 1/3 of our CO2

A 2019 study estimated that by restoring natural terrestrial carbon sinks, which include mangroves, peat bogs, forests, and the soil, we could sequester and store the equivalent of 23.8 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. The study said that restoring these areas wouldn’t be cost-effective, so a more plausible figure would be 11–15 billion tons of CO2 per year. This means that our natural carbon sinks could sequester about 30% of the CO2 we emit every year.

The Royal Society in the UK released a report in 2018 that estimated reforestation could remove three billion to 18 billion tons of CO2 per year.

So why is this good news? It means that we could remove a substantial part of our CO2 with no new technology, no fancy equipment, and no excessive costs. We just need to stop cutting down our forests and killing our soil and start repairing these carbon sinks.

Not only will this help fight the climate crisis, but it will also increase biodiversity, which is just as important because a biodiverse system is more resilient to change and more productive from an economic point of view. It is also more stable, meaning it can help protect us from things like pandemics because the system is in balance.

Rewilding is Better than Planting

This brings us to our next piece of good news. There has been a lot of talk about planting trees in recent years. A study came out in October 2019 claiming that the world had room for another 0.9 billion hectares of forest, in which we could plant over 1 trillion trees.

The study said that trees are “one of the most effective carbon draw down solutions to date,” and that 1 trillion trees would capture over 200 gigatons of CO2. That translates to about 25% of what is currently in the atmosphere.

After this study was published, it captured headlines around the world and everyone started embracing tree planting to fight climate change. Billions were invested into tree planting schemes and the Trillion Tree Challenge was set up by SalesForce.com CEO Marc Benioff and conservationist Jane Goodall, then there was the Nature Conservancy’s Plant a Billion Trees, and then there is Bonn Challenge, which existed before the study came out, but received more attention because of it.

However, there are many problems with tree planting projects. First, they often end up as monocultures, which means they lack biodiversity and are thus very susceptible to disease and are a desert for the insects, plants, and animals that depend on these ecosystems for survival.

The trees also have to be planted at the right depth, in the right place at the right time, otherwise, they end up dead. In fact, with many past projects, if you come back in 5 years, 90% of them don’t survive.

The good news is that studies have shown that protecting and rewilding are better solutions than planting. According to a study published in Nature, restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon, it says, “plantations are much poorer at storing carbon than are natural forests, which develop with little or no disturbance from humans.” The paper goes on to say that, “Natural-forest restoration is clearly the most effective approach for storing carbon. But clashing priorities are sabotaging carbon storage potential.”

We can encourage and support rewilding by putting down compost to enrich the ground, or putting up “hotels” for pollinators to breed. Some projects have also reintroduced animals that are native to the environment but may have been killed off by humans, such as wolves to Yellowstone Park, or bison to the UK.

Sometimes, where the environment is extremely damaged, we should intervene. For example, a mangrove may be so denuded due to shrimp farming or agriculture that water has stopped flowing through the area. If we restore the hydrology to its natural state, then Mother Nature can take over.

Other than that, nature is intelligent and will repair itself.

Rewilding has the advantage that it is substantially more cost-effective and less time-intensive than planting, which means it is scalable.

Fixing Nature Will Create Jobs

The most common argument against transitioning off fossil fuels is that it will cost jobs and hurt the economy, but according to the World Economic Forum, this is simply not true. A report released in 2021 said that if businesses repaired nature, they could generate $10.1 trillion in annual business and create 395 million jobs by the end of 2030.

This would require transforming the three industries that handle about 80% of nature loss: food, infrastructure, and energy.

For example, Vietnam invested $9 million to restore its damaged mangroves in 166 communities. This helped reduce flooding and soil erosion and saved them more than $15 million from damage that would have occurred from extreme weather. Mangroves are also one of the places in the world that are richest in biodiversity, and they protect the oceans from pollution while providing habitat to fish, shellfish, and birds. These communities saw their per hectare yield of aquaculture increase by between 210–789%.

A 2018 study puts the value of nature and the goods and services it provides us at $125 trillion. Our entire global economy is based on the raw resources it gives us to make things. If we started working with it rather than against it, we would all be better off.

For ideas on what you can do please read my article

10 Ways You Can Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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