How to actually mitigate global warming

Flooding in Kerr County, Texas, United States of America (USA), heat waves in Europe with burning forests, an entire village buried in Switzerland. We see dead people, wining & praying politicians. No, God will not mitigate global warming!

Are these catastrophes related to global warming – yes, of course! Global warming causes climate change and this causes heavy rainfalls, floods, mudslides, heat waves, droughts, forest fires, ice storms, cold waves, hurricanes, breaking apart mountains, and dramatic loss of biodiversity. All of this is (technologically) unstoppable by us humans and it will accelerate, in our view exponential. There is no reason to think, this will go away, will be only temporary, will resolve by itself. No! The “bury your head in the sand” will not resolve the issue.

We are heading towards the by far greatest humanitarian catastrophe in human history due to “greenhouse gas” emissions faster than most can imagine

Global annual “greenhouse gas” (GHG) emissions are still rising, the temperature rise shows a ca. 30 years delay to the emissions (cf. see the following graph based on “Our World in Data“) and the GHG sinks are full now.

So, there is many reason to assume, all of this is “just the start”, “just the beginning”. Are we acting accordingly. No! There are (not thousands, not millions, but) billions of livelihoods and/or lives currently significantly endangered, faster than most can imagine (cf. “trans- & interdisciplinary global warming scenario“)

The solution is theoretically very simple

There is so much noise around global warming, so I want to clarify. Most important is to keep “it” (the admittable very complex correlations) as simple as possible.

To stop global warming, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity, we have to reduce the global annual GHG emissions (according to IPCC minus ca. 10% every year within the upcoming 25 years). This can be done by (1) significantly reducing burning fossil fuels – coal, oil, gas (ca. 65% of global GHG emissions) and (2) significantly reducing meat production (ca. 25% of global GHG emissions). To reach this, we have to transfer (1) energy supply and transportation to “zero emission” and we have to transfer (2) our nutrition to a healthy nutrition.

This might sound easy. But with a still growing economy, energy supply & transportation heavily powered by fossil fuels, meat being a kind of “status symbol” when it comes to food, and the time span for the needed reductions being very short, the necessary change seems very difficult or even impossible.

What is actually needed

Reducing the annual GHG emissions is clearly within the responsibility of (geo)politics. The best political method to reach the necessary reductions (minus 40% till 2030, minus 75% till 2050) is a working global GHG emissions market. Such a market includes the most important greenhouse gases “Carbon Dioxide” (CO₂), “Methane” (MH₄), and “Nitrous Oxide” (N₂O).

The “World Bank Group” shows the developments for a (global) “Carbon Dioxide” (CO₂) market – “Methane” (MH₄), and “Nitrous Oxide” (N₂O) are not included – from 1990 till today (cf. “State and Trends of Carbon Pricing Dashboard“). The map shows significant gaps & weaknesses and is only for Carbon. (see the following map)

So, the theoretical solution for the flooding in Kerr County, Texas, United States of America (USA), heat waves in Europe with burning forest, an entire village buried in Switzerland is a global binding GHG emissions market based on “science based targets” (cf. sciencebasedtargets.org).

Actually, we are very far away from that!