Two questions/comments below.

First on the one about my self being somehow ‘catastrophic’ and ‘not going to happen’. I lived last winter in the Arctic and saw systematic changes personally. I almost got hit by a falling tree just a couple of weeks ago during freak thunderstorm in Helsinki, Finland.

I got friends all over the world who are seeing impacts. I began the piece with a satellite image of North America because it literally shows what is going on. Record fires, record flooding, record storms. Cannot deny it anymore. This is the physical reality I and everyone else alive will live with forever.

Second question on EROEI and recoverable fossil fuel. The concept of ‘carbon budget’ matters here — I study it now for an organisation which is a structural part of Finnish high-level decion making on climate change, resource smartness and circular economies, called Sitra.

Recoverable (accessible, fairly economic) fossil fuels amount up to 3000 gigatonnes in carbon pollution. Decent chance to meet the Paris Agreement (literally all governments of the world agreed on the wording) 2°C stabilisation target allows only for very small amount of carbon to be added to the carbon cycle, increment ending up in the atmosphere. There is a lag time between human carbon pollution and final temperature increase (‘stabilisation’).

My call for warranted political and personal action results from scientific findings of cumulative carbon budgets (which are risk constructs, not linear end results). Large amounts of fossil fuels have to be left unburned if those depictions of our physical reality are to be respected. We can choose not to do that, but it would be honest to make the choice knowingly and explain why it needs to be done. Young people deserve to know.