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Keynote speech for Act Now for an Equitable and Sustainable World (22/9/2021)
“Thank you for the chance to speak at this event!
I have studied and worked with climate action since 2014 concentrating on mitigation which means reducing climate-heating emissions from human activities. We also have to adapt to global environmental change and sadly there will be loss and damage from past and still ongoing pollution.
I understood the situation from three perspectives early on:
First, URGENCY which has mainstreamed nowadays in rhetoric, from the Secretary-General of the United Nations to heads of state, parliaments and even some companies have declared climate emergencies.
Secondly, the RATE and SCALE of impacts such as extreme weather events and climate trends such as drought and sea-level rise that are accelerating also in the Northern Hemisphere — the young people all around the world are very worried because they see and feel the impacts in practice and scientists can attribute them to carbon pollution that has historically come from the industrialization of wealthy countries.
AND thirdly STABILIZATION:
All nations, especially the rich ones with large historical emissions have to act now in respect of equity to reach science and evidence-based net-zero emissions as fast as possible.
This is because carbon dioxide is a stock pollutant and we roughly know the available budgets for the Paris Agreement targets from historical fossil fuel use and linear increase of global temperature trends.
Methane is also a big contributor: it causes half a degree of global heating to this day.
As I became aware of the facts above I wanted to try deeper mitigation which means living without fossil fuels as much as possible and also taking part in a society that wants to reduce the contribution to the problem quicker than many Western nations.
The Nordic electricity grid is rather low-carbon so living on clean electricity is the substitute for fossil fuels.
What I’ve done was cutting my oil and other consumption to the bare minimum which means below two tonnes per year on a 1.5°C pathway in 2030, but I achieved this already in 2020. My…
