Why commit your organisation?

To date, climate action has been primarily driven by a mix of top-down policy efforts on the supply side, bottom-up citizen movements and coalitions of large cities and companies. These initiatives are instrumental and move in the right direction, but they are not yet fast and large enough to reverse global warming and stave off the worst climate change impacts. 

Reaching drawdown – the point when greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere start to decline – through drastic reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and development of carbon sinks, requires a whole-of-society approach and transformative shift in scale within the next few years. 

Reversing the trend of global warming is still possible for the following reasons. 

The report points to an acceleration and intensification of climate disruption and an increase in extreme weather events. The countries that ratified the Paris Agreement have committed to limit warming to between 1.5°C and 2°C, but the IPCC estimates that the 1.5°C threshold will be exceeded even in low greenhouse gas emission scenarios.  Only an extremely drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions could limit warming to between 1.4°C and 1.8°C by the end of the century. If humanity continues on its current path, we are heading towards the most pessimistic projections, i.e. a warming in 2100 of 2.8°C to 5.7°C. 

Cover photo credit © Clay Banks/Unsplash.