2035: The Point of No Return

[Music] In some of the most popular films, writers will often use a point of no return to force their main character into action. It's a point in the story where the protagonist can't return to their former life without going through trials that bring into question who they are and what they're capable of. It's a great device for driving a narrative to a satisfying conclusion.

But is humanity ready for its point of no return? For an individual, it's a challenge to overcome so that they can return to their daily lives. But for humankind, it's a new, more dangerous world, and there is no going back to the way things were. Once we cross that threshold, our point of no return is a major climate tipping point. If we don't significantly curb our greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, we won't be able to prevent a 2°C rise in global temperatures.

And that might not sound so terrible at first glance, but that increase will create far-reaching disasters that we're not prepared for. We will be entering a more dangerous world that threatens the majority of life on Earth. It's a world with deadly heat waves, massive flooding along coastlines, and extreme storms. Entire ecosystems will be lost, and countless species will go extinct.

It's the point where our daily life is disrupted so often that government bodies won't be able to keep up, and society as we know it may start to collapse. The question most of us keep shouting into the ether is: why can't we stop catastrophe? With all the technological advances we've made in climate research at our disposal, why are we driving life on Earth to a mass extinction?

The answer is complicated, but there are a few obvious culprits. The influence of the oil and gas industry is staggering. For decades, the fossil fuel industry has spread misinformation or intentionally guided us to unrealistic climate solutions. Governments have been too vulnerable to lobbyists to tackle climate change in any serious way.

And of course, working against us is the basic fact that such a large-scale change requires a level of cooperation among nations that hasn't existed to date. And then there's greenwashing. To boost their corporate image, companies will advertise how environmentally friendly they are while their actual efforts do little to impact our climate goals.

The reason so many companies use greenwashing is because it's effective; it makes you feel good about giving them your money. But when you peel away the layers of their calculated marketing, you realize that your money isn't really helping the planet much. Over the past few years, consumers have been more aware of greenwashing, so there have been concentrated efforts to fight it.

What if you could actually see the direct impact of your eco-friendly choices? One company called Solar Slice has come up with a revolutionary solution. Solar Slice is a startup that lets you fund the construction of large-scale solar farms, accelerating the transition to clean energy. Here's how it works: first, you sponsor a slice of their large-scale solar farm, adding 50 watts of solar power to the grid and reducing harmful emissions.

Then you can use their app to track your impact with real-time data on your slice’s energy production and carbon savings. You can earn eco points as your slices generate clean energy, which you can use to buy more slices, plant trees, or fund other meaningful initiatives. With Solar Slice, you're not just offsetting emissions; you're actively building the clean energy infrastructure we desperately need.

If you want to expand your impact even further, you can share your progress with others, create group impacts with friends, or send Solar Slices as eco-conscious gifts. To learn more, visit SolarSlice.com. There, you'll find a link to their Kickstarter campaign, which will help fund the construction of the first solar farm and the development of their app.

So now you know how you can make a direct impact in the fight against climate change, but that won't be enough on its own. How can we all make enough change before it's too late? 2035 is the point of no return. But why? The specific date is somewhat arbitrary; it's a deadline chosen based on climate data and findings intended to provoke immediate action.

The idea is that we need to reduce global emissions by 60% by that date to avoid a 2°C rise in temperature and the catastrophic consequences that will unfold as a result. By 2030, we need a 43% reduction, while also lowering methane emissions by one third. It's all a part of a greater goal to reach net zero by 2050. This would lead us to a 1.5°C increase in temperature globally.

These assessments aren't guaranteed, however; climate scientists are dealing with probabilities. It's still very possible that the current plan for reducing emissions could result in a higher than expected increase in temperature. Earth is complex; it's composed of many different systems that are beyond our ability to fully predict. All we can do is make informed estimations, which is all the more reason to take action as urgently as possible.

The consequences of doing nothing, or not enough, will impact you and everyone you know. They will be fatal for many and disastrous for others. The most direct impact to humanity is an increase in temperatures leading to a rapid rise in heat-related deaths. Entire regions will soon become incapable of supporting human life for long stretches.

Even the exposure to prolonged heat can have a negative effect on people. Car crashes rise while test scores lower. We sleep worse, and chronic conditions are exacerbated. Pregnant women are more likely to have stillbirths, and violence increases in all its manifestations. Coastal areas will increasingly become flooded by storm surges, and sea levels will rise as many of the world's largest cities are completely submerged by ocean water.

37% of the world's population lives within 62 miles of a coast. In the United States alone, the lives of 3 million people will be disrupted on a monthly basis by flooding, whether that's their homes or power facilities. Rising tides will make life increasingly unbearable along the coast. The total cost from climate change in general is estimated to be $38 trillion a year by halfway through the century if not enough is done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The more obvious impacts of climate change will also have cascading effects. We will soon lose entire ecosystems, starting with Arctic and mountain zones. These systems fall apart when one source of food is disrupted. In the Arctic, melting sea ice will cause a decline in the abundance of algae. Zooplankton feed off of this plant, and their population will drop as a consequence.

This impact will continue down the food chain to cod, seals, and polar bears. Our species is also very vulnerable to a rise in global temperatures. Droughts are already causing problems for our global food supply, which will only get worse without intervention. Food shortages will often lead to mass migration and large-scale human migration. As these disruptions continue, political instability rises when billions are displaced, and food is scarce.

Society begins to crumble. This is where the world starts to become apocalyptic in nature. You're probably familiar with the Gulf Stream. It's a strong ocean current that delivers warm water from the Gulf of Mexico past the Eastern regions of North America and spreads all the way to Western Europe. The Gulf Stream keeps much of the southeastern United States warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.

It's also what makes England warmer than regions of a similar distance to the equator, such as colder areas in Canada. As Greenland's ice caps continue to melt, the resulting massive influx of freshwater will weaken the Gulf Stream until it eventually collapses. The consequences of this disruption are hard to fathom. Sea levels would rise quickly in North America, temperatures would drop in Europe, rainfall that billions of people depend on for growing food would be diminished, and storms would increase in frequency.

If climate emissions aren't dramatically cut, a controversial 2023 study published in Nature Communications outlined how the Gulf Stream could collapse by 2095. Perhaps the biggest challenges with climate change aren't the predictable outcomes, but the unforeseen consequences. Earth is composed of complicated and interconnected systems, and as we disrupt any one of them, we cause a change in many others.

The Gulf Stream collapse, for example, could intensify El Niño in the southern hemisphere. This is the world's most powerful weather pattern; its heat will grow with even greater intensity, and thunderstorms will occur with more frequency. There's an unfathomable amount of potential consequences that could devastate life on Earth.

So why exactly are we doing so little to prevent global disaster? There's a lot of money invested in spewing carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Scientists working for ExxonMobil, a $500 billion company synonymous with fossil fuels, eerily predicted global warming in the late 1970s. The entire fossil fuel industry has taken many approaches to prevent industry intervention by government bodies.

Oil and gas companies put a lot of money into discrediting climate change, from buying news coverage to intensely lobbying politicians. Global warming became a partisan issue, with right-leaning parties siding with big oil and center-left parties acknowledging the problem while doing little to help the cause. So far, few governments have been willing to upset those who profit from emissions.

But the reality of climate change has become undeniable, as forest fires rage out of control as a seasonal event, especially in North and South America. Last year alone, Canada lost over 44 million acres to flames. Fossil fuel companies have adapted to the new reality of the climate catastrophe by changing their strategy. Instead of outright denial, the oil and gas sector is emphasizing carbon capture technology rather than cutting oil and gas production.

Nations around the world simply pull carbon emissions out of the atmosphere. The glaring problem is that even a robust rollout of this technology, working as envisioned, would only scratch the surface of our emissions output. The vast majority of carbon capture projects have failed to get off the ground despite governments approving $20 billion of public funding and $200 billion earmarked for the future.

To power the capture facilities needed to limit climate change to 1.1-2°C, we would need 26,000 terawatt hours of electricity generation, which is more than the global electricity demand in 2022. The investment needed in the required rollout of technology is currently not even remotely feasible.

And even worse, three-quarters of the current capture projects insert the carbon back into the ground to improve oil and gas recovery in oil fields. They're essentially just another way of extracting more fossil fuels. These projects also pose a great risk to the people living around them. Leaks not only harm anyone in the area but also release a highly concentrated quantity of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

So far, there are plenty of examples of leaks occurring. In one case, the Sleipner storage site in Norway leaked captured carbon into a geological layer, raising concerns over how that could impact the region. These carbon capture projects are also used by some governments to justify the expansion of fossil fuel extraction. The emissions that are taken out of the atmosphere just inspire more oil and gas production.

Carbon capture is a pipe dream. While this technology might play some role in the fight against climate change, positioning it as a primary strategy will be disastrous. Programs like carbon offsetting also have similar issues; they justify the use of fossil fuels by asking people to offset their emissions with a donation. These contributions supposedly support climate-friendly projects; however, these initiatives rarely offset the equivalent amount of carbon emissions and often do nothing.

Developers who receive incentives from these programs can generate carbon credits without making any changes at all. If they cut down less trees than expected, they can be awarded more carbon credits. But these developers often just cut down less trees anyway if it suits a particular project; they just have to do better than a very low standard. It's what some would call a racket.

This isn't to suggest that all of these projects are unhelpful, but that most of these carbon credit systems don't help prevent climate change in any significant way. The truth is, you can't offset your emissions so easily; they need to be reduced. But is humanity up to honestly fighting climate change?

A lot of data cited in this video has come from climate scientists where it is relevant. In a recent survey, leading climate scientists expressed doubt about our ability to prevent global temperatures from rising to catastrophic levels. Many believed we have a semi-dystopian future ahead filled with mass migration, famine, war, wildfires, and other disasters.

[Music] We still have a path forward to mitigate emissions and a rising global temperature. The two largest sectors contributing to global emissions are electricity production and transportation. We already have potential solutions for these sources of pollution. Renewable energy is not only readily available but has been getting cheaper quickly and spreading fast.

Wind, solar, and hydro power generation are a reality now. The transition to renewable energy will also help reduce the emissions from another evolving innovation in transportation: electric cars. While EVs aren't a perfect solution for fighting climate change, they could reduce our overall carbon output substantially.

An electric vehicle powered by a clean grid is responsible for 13 tons of CO2 emissions over its lifetime. By comparison, a gas-powered vehicle contributes 80 tons of CO2. The emissions involved in EV production are bound to decrease over time as battery technology improves. To reach our net zero goal, we are actually ahead of targets when it comes to solar energy and closing in on the battery production capacity required for EVs and stationary battery usage.

Wind energy and heat pumps are lagging behind, but overall, we are making progress. If we manage to cut our emissions early, we buy more time to reduce our overall emissions. And that's time we desperately need. If you like the videos we make and would love to support us to make bigger and better projects, we just updated the Patreon.

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