2 Towards a Sustainable Future Earth
the city centre, and investing in energy efficiency measures for all its buildings. At the time the Paris Agreement was signed, cities were using a large share of the world’s energy supply and were responsible for something like 70 per cent of global energy-related GHG emissions. London and other cities in the world have played an essential role in increasing energy efficiency and reducing these emissions.
Globally, much of the efforts to reduce GHG emissions were focused on the 90 investor- and government-owned businesses involved in the production of fossil fuels and cement that had emitted about two-thirds of historic carbon dioxide (CO2
and local governments worked tirelessly to make sure those companies stopped profiting from pollution, while also making sure their employees were equipped with the new skills needed for environmentally regenerative jobs and were ready to move into them.
Many places around the globe created low- carbon food systems through innovation, local production, and decreased meat consumption.
63 ) and methane emissions. National
Energy utility companies also redesigned their energy systems to incorporate renewable energy sources in the energy mix. They made sure there was enough energy stored in batteries for times when the sun wasn’t shining or the wind wasn’t blowing enough. Utility companies made it easier for homeowners to save money by installing solar panels on their roofs. During the transition to renewable energy, policies were instituted to keep fossil fuels in the ground and a great deal of innovation went into developing more environmentally friendly alternatives to products like plastics and electronics that previously were energy-intensive to produce and required fossil fuel inputs. While we’ve significantly reduced waste through reducing, reusing and recycling processes, the remaining waste is often used to generate energy and heat for homes in clean power plants.
Since it was clear that all these investments in reducing GHG emissions would not be enough to stabilize the climate, investments were also made in planting trees and inventing low-cost technologies to capture existing carbon from the atmosphere and store it or create products
from it. Efforts to reduce emissions came with co-benefits for human health, as concentrations of dangerous air pollutants have been drastically reduced and the number of premature deaths has fallen (UNEP 2019a).
However, with all these efforts the planet has still changed drastically. Climate change has already caused enormous harm, and it is likely that things will worsen before they get better. Today, in 2050, almost 40 per cent of the global population is exposed to severe heat at least once every five years; sea level rise is approaching half a metre, regularly causing floods in major cities globally; ecosystems are shifting geographically; crop yields are decreasing; coral reefs are almost entirely gone; and every year record-breaking extreme weather events displace millions of people (IPCC 2018). These are all logical consequences of many decades of unsustainable growth (mainly between the Industrial Revolution and the 2020s). However, this has not discouraged us from working to reverse climate change. We know that some real, positive effects can only be felt many years from now.
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