Chapter 2 - Challenges to humanity

The scientific and social advances of recent centuries put humanity in a unique position to view, and at least partially understand, some of the major challenges it will face over the course of the next 100 years.

It remains to be seen whether humanity will develop the capacity for action that matches its knowledge-building capabilities.

Measures of the ecological “footprint” of humanity generally reflect humanity’s depletion of non-renewable and slow-to-renew resources and the impact we are having on natural systems important to human society.

To achieve ecological sustainability – the ability of present societies to live in a way that does not compromise the welfare of future societies – is a challenge that will require an enormous effort to steer the economy from one state to another.

In a 100-year perspective, we shall have to cut total emissions by 75 percent while the absolute size of the global economy grows by a factor of seven or more. The global economy must therefore improve its carbon productivity dramatically by 2109.

This is a true carbon revolution, which will depend on rapid technological change, the development of large new markets, and balanced policy that encourages both without excessive disruption of trade and development more broadly.

How much is one tonne of carbon dioxide with today´s technology?

To combat global warming we need to cut annual emission of greenhouse gases to one tonne of carbon dioxide per person in 2109. Today the global average is close to seven tonnes. This is your CO2 budget for one day;

• Shop - 1 new T-shirt (walk or bike to the shop) or
• Stay at home - Heating the house every fifth day (Northen Europé) or
• Eat - 2 meals a day of 150g meat, 100g fries and tap water or
• Travel - 10-20 km car ride.

The 1-tonne society

If we meet this massive challenge, the result will be an annual emission level of about one tonne of CO2 equivalents per person in 2109.
In today’s economy such a level would allow a person daily carbon emissions equivalent only to a single automobile journey (10–20 km), or the purchase of one article of clothing, or two meals that included beef.

So success will necessarily mean human activities with a radically lower carbon content, based on fundamentally different energy consumption patterns and a completely overhauled energy infrastructure.

The goal of this book is to consider how life in the 1-tonne society could be lived in practice, what steps humanity will have to take to get there, and how these can be facilitated.

The tools for achieving emissions reductions by 2030 have, largely, been identified. Studies undertaken by McKinsey & Co and Vattenfall have inventoried the potential of more than 200 carbon abatement measures globally and across most sectors of the economy. These studies indicate that sufficient abatement potential exists at costs that are not prohibitive, given that appropriate policy action is taken.

Awidening gap

The graph shows the difference between current trends and what must be done to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations.

Click here to enlarge the picture (PDF 55 kb)

A solution to the climate challenge will require millions of good decisions – at the highest level of policy-making and at the level of our daily lives as individuals.

In the end it will be human power – insight, innovation, entrepreneurship, and most of all leadership – that rises to meet these challenges. Unleashing this human power is, in many ways, the key to the next 100 years.