I love Wednesdays.

Organic Vegetable Box

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Five days of the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona have left us with around 2.500 photos (see a selection on Flickr). Our task now is to catalogue them to make them useful for IUCN in the long term. I covered the Opening Ceremony yesterday. Could you guess who standing on the picture below?

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The Australian organization Learning Fundamentals has drawn an excellent mind map with ways how individuals can help to fight climate change. Two comments, though: Local food is not always more carbon-efficient. And: Apart from using less, you can also buy less (and share more) and waste less (and reuse more).

Everybody is talking about climate change, and still I’m always deeply moved when I’m reading the actual figures of how serious climate change really is. This speech – given at the Brussels based Black Forest Toastmasters Club – builds on figures from the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It’s very easy these days to catch a cold, and I’m sure some of you already had this misfortune this winter. Is there anyone who even had to stay home because of high temperature? Someone had his temperature over 39°C? How did that feel?

Two degrees more have a huge impact on our wellbeing, and our quality of life. That not only applies to the human body. Two degrees more also mean a big problem for our planet. A couple of month ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a report where they summarized all known science on climate change and its implications. This is what they say will happen if planet Earth warms by two degrees:

• Hundreds of millions of people exposed to increased water stress
• Up to 30% of species at increased risk of extinction
• Most corals bleached
• Lower agricultural yields close to the equator
• Increased damage from floods and storms, heat waves and droughts
• Millions more affected by coastal flooding each year
• and an increasing burden from malnutrition and infectious diseases

Not a pleasant outlook, I can assure you. This is also one of the reasons why the European Union says that we have to ensure that under no circumstances global warming exceeds two degrees.

The bad news is: Even if we breathing now – and stop all other activities with it, we have already committed ourselves to about 1.3°C global warming. That is because of the greenhouse gases we’ve blown already into the atmosphere.

But I don’t want you to stop breathing. Actually, I want you to take a deep breath. What you’ve just taken in has about 0.038% carbon dioxide, that is 380 ppm. In the last 400.000 years that figure never exceeded 300 ppm, and if we continue emitting the way we do at the moment, we’ll soon be at 500, 600, 700 ppm. The Intergovernmental Panel tells us where we have to stabilize emissions in order to stay under two degrees: That is at 450ppm. They also calculate how much we have to reduce our emissions to reach this target. For us Europeans, we have to reduce emissions by 80%.

80%. Can you imagine how Europe looks like with 80% less carbon emissions than at the moment? 80% is not going to be easy, so let’s have a look at where our emissions come from at the moment.

• 25% of global emissions come from energy supply: Can you imagine a world where our energy comes from renewable sources, from wind, sun and waves? Where energy is produced where and when we need it?
• 20% of emissions come from industry. Can you imagine a world that does not produce the cheapest possible things, but the most efficient, in the most efficient way? And that designs them so that we don’t have to throw them away after a day of use?
• 17% come from forests, and especially deforestation. Can you imagine a world where we let our rainforests grow, in peace?
• 13% of emissions come from agriculture. Can you imagine a world that grows crops to feed people, and not millions of animals in cages?
• The last 13% of emissions go to transport. Can you imagine a world where we don’t have to run around from A to B to C to D, but where we take the time to be where we want to be, where we need to be?

Two very different worlds we can leave to our children: A planet that has a serious temperature problem with climate change, or a planet that has managed to rid itself of its carbon addiction.

It is your choice.

If you don’t want to read through the dry science of the IPCC reports, I highly recommend the following books that develop scenarios on how to overcome the ecological crisis:

• George Monbiot (2007): Heat – How We Can Stop the Planet Burning
• Lester Brown (2006): Plan B 2.0 – Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble

To take action, join Greenpeace’s Energy [R]evolution, or the Climate Action Network.

Worried about climate change? Sure. But unfortunately it’s not the only way humans are changing the life-support systems of our planet. Biodiversity – the net of genes, species and ecosystems – itself is in danger: Since 1970 we’ve lost 40% of species abundance, endangered every fourth mammal and driven two thirds of ecosystem services into decline.

Wait – but don’t we have more species than we can handle? Yes and no: While scientist have only named 1.8 mio of the up to 100 mio species on this planet, these unknown organisms are still crucial parts of the web of life. Most of them are tiny insects, algae or bacteria: Hard to find, even harder to distinguish and not at all part of the ‘charismatic megafauna’ that conservationists so cherish.

In his book ‘The Diversity of Life‘, E.O. Wilson, the celebrity biologist from the US, describes how this diversity came about, how extinctions change entire ecosystems and what threats biodiversity faces. A scientist, his mission is to catalogue and assemble all existing knowledge on species in one ‘encyclopedia of life’. This year’s TED conference granted him this wish.