Despite the constant barrage of bad news surrounding the climate crisis, there is actually good news to be found. This video highlights the progress that has been made in the fight against climate change, emphasizing that the future is looking brighter than it did a decade ago.
One of the positive developments is the significant reduction in the expected warming of the Earth by 2100. Current government policies are expected to limit global warming to 2.7 degrees Celsius, with potential for further reductions if long-term targets are met. This progress demonstrates that economic growth and emissions can be decoupled, offering hope for a sustainable future.
Additionally, the rapid growth of renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind power, is a significant step towards decarbonizing electricity generation. China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon, has shown a commitment to reducing emissions and investing in renewables, with predictions that its emissions may have already peaked.
While progress has been made in decarbonizing electricity generation, there are still challenges in sectors like heating, transport, and manufacturing that remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels. However, there are promising solutions being developed and growing public support for climate action.
The video concludes by emphasizing the importance of acknowledging and celebrating the progress made in addressing the climate crisis, while also recognizing the need for continued action and support from government policy. Despair and complacency are not useful emotions in the fight against climate change, and the path towards a sustainable future requires ongoing effort and commitment.
Watch the video by Simon Clark
Video Transcript
Thanks to nebula for sponsoring this video yes we are constantly bombarded with bad news about the climate crisis and that’s because it’s a very serious issue the stakes are high you probably shouldn’t be eating those by the way it’s already affecting people and the price of not solving this problem is
Vast almost too large to imagine but amidst all of the terrible headlines there is good news out there and I don’t think people talk about it often enough so that’s what we’re going to talk about in this video to be clear I’m not talking about the unexpected upsides of
A warmer climate like Summers being warmer or there being more CO2 for our crops because that’s bad and actually that’s bad I’m talking about how much progress we have made towards fighting the climate crisis and how the future is looking brighter than it did a decade
Ago prior to the Paris agreement in 2016 this is how much warming scientists expected the Earth to experience by 2100 4° C and to be clear that would have been a total disaster like almost certain collapse of global civilization disaster now however current government policy that’s actually in effect is
Expected to limit that warming to 2.7 de by 2100 with an aabar 2030 targets that are a little bit beyond what we currently have in policy are expected to limit it to 2.5 de celius and long-term targets that aren’t anywhere near policy just yet are expected to limit the
Warming to 2.1 de all of this by the way is courtesy of climate action tracker definitely check out their website now you’ve probably heard that we wants to limit global warming this Century to less than 2° C ideally less than 1 and 1 12° C so this 2.1 degree number well
It’s not good enough but two things firstly consider just how much we’ve already brought that number down remember this is action that has happened since the Paris agreement so in less than 10 years is and while that number isn’t low enough yet we shouldn’t lose sight of just how much we’ve
Accomplished so far and secondly this number is only based on submitted long-term Targets in other words this isn’t as good as it gets there’s still plenty of scope this Century to bring the number down further to less than 2° though achieving any Target is another matter and if we’re optimistic and
Assume that all long-term Net Zero targets are met then that number goes down to 1.8 de c as I say that is optimistic but it is far too soon to say for sure whether we will hit those long-term targets or not stay on target but the early signs indicate maybe we
Will and I say that because the world has demonstrated we can decouple economic growth from emissions the average person today is wealthier than the average person 10 years ago and yet does not emit more carbon dioxide in Europe specifically the emissions per per person have fallen dramatically as
They have in the United States and yet both of those economies have continued to grow and no that’s not because they Outsource their emissions and their manufacturing to somewhere else like China you can account for that this is genuine decoupling and it’s a huge deal because for the time being at least we
Live in a world governed by capitalism and so the most important thing to governments is increasing individual economic Prosperity what’s been demonstrated recently is that they can do this without wrecking the planet and in fact in many cases doing so the lowcar carbon way is now the cheaper way
Of doing it but you might say that’s all fine for Europe what about China the world’s largest emitter their carbon emissions are still going up are they even though analysis indicates that China’s emissions probably peaked last year and will systematically fall going forwards that’s in part because China
Has rolled out a truly breathtaking amount of Renewables did you know that last year China added more solar capacity than the United States has in its entire history solar and wind capacity in China will overtake coal capacity this year globally solar will have the largest install capacity of any
Way we generate electricity sometime next year and in less than 5 years Renewables will account for 42% of global electricity generation the installation of Renewables worldwide is happening so much faster than most people realize the International Energy agency reckons we may very well hit the ambitious goal of tripling Renewables
Capacity by 2030 I see this is an absolute win but to be clear while we are really successfully decarbonizing how we generate electricity electricity is only part of how Society uses energy it’s actually about 20% so progress here is going really well progress here not so much heating transport various other
Smaller sectors these are all still vastly dependent on fossil fuels and in fact the overall share of energy that comes from fossil fuels hasn’t changed all of that much over the past couple of decades decarbonizing this bit that is the mountain we still have to climb but here’s the thing with cheaper renewable
Electricity it’s now becoming increasingly viable to Electrify some of those sectors see heat pumps or electric cars for example yes before you comment better options are available but these can be electrified too I did a whole video about transport but there are still several sectors that have been historically labeled hard to decarbonize
Such as cement and steel you can’t really Electrify those and their current manufacturing techniques inherently produce CO2 but Solutions have now been found to those hard to decarbonized sectors I previously made a whole video that was an in-depth look at one possible solution to decarbonizing cement production and we think that we
Can decarbonize steel production through the use of green hydrogen amongst other techniques what we previously thought were impossible challenges to overcome now have practical Solutions and that’s kind of true across the board those Solutions now just need effective support from government policy to be rolled out at scale and on that note
More voters than ever care about the climate crisis and in fact most people in the 20 most polluting Nations on earth support policy on CL climate change and generally speaking the younger you are the more likely you are to support such action such policy so as
More members of gen Z become eligible to vote we’re going to see a continuation of the current trend for more and more ambitious policy to limit climate change because political parties now know that not taking action on climate is only going to cost them votes your local
Mileage may vary which raises the hope that our current government here in the UK of cartoonishly incompetent ghouls willing to sell future Generations down the polluted river for short-term profit may not be in power that much longer I think that was impartial enough now I’m sure that there are several people out
There who have watched the video to this point and have laughed at what I have called good news saying that it’s just not good enough and yeah the action that we have taken today on climate is not enough but there is no contradiction between acknowledging the severity of
The situation we are in and the insufficiency of action to date and acknowledging the progress made to date towards sufficient action I don’t want need to leave this video thinking that we have solved the climate crisis because we haven’t we are nowhere near minimizing the threat we face in 201100
But to say that there is no good news about the climate crisis is simply not true the recent past has shown us that activism political pressure and lifestyle changes have worked and to ignore that fact only invites Despair and despair is not a useful emotion despair only limits future action which
We know will make a difference we need to keep going until our response is sufficient so no giving up we cannot solve a crisis that we do not understand but fortunately there are some excellent climate journalists and authors and indeed video creators covering this crisis finding these creators can be difficult however with
The YouTube algorithm often serving you the video equivalent of fast food fortunately though a curated list of climate creators including climate town our changing climate and myself are all on a platform that prioritizes the viewer experience so that means carefully selected creators no advertising and high quality independently produced exclusive content
It’s called nebula and uh I partly Own It nebula was created by a roster of educational creators as an alternative to YouTube a place where we didn’t have to run adverts and crucially that we owned and we had say over how the platform developed and nebula has developed into a powerful force and
Innovative funding model in online video we’ve financed films new series like jet lag and classes I for example got funding to make a class on how to communicate at science through video turning data into stories recently we’ve also funded real Sciences archaeology Quest and real life laws epic video
Essay on the Yugoslav wars nebula’s mission is to create a place for people like you people who watch lots of educational video and who want to see it develop and if my recent comments are anything to go by develop away from the monolithic YouTube algorithm and in that
Space you can enjoy content from your favorite creators videos and podcasts and know that with a view on nebula you are supporting those creators far more than with a view on YouTube if that all sounds good then check out nebula at nebula.com Clark check it out massive thanks to my patrons over at
Asked me are my executive producer patrons patrons get early access to videos they get exclusive behind the scenes content including a vlog every month and producer tier patrons and above gets a vote on a video topic every month if you like the stuff I make and
You’d like me to make more then please do consider supporting me over on patreon thank you so much for watching this was the first video I’ve made since publicly announcing that I am somewhat pivoting how I come up with video ideas so let me know what you thought of this
Down in the comments if you’d like some viewing next here’s some I made earlier and that just leads me to say please consider doing the YouTube pleasantries dropping a like subscribing and thank you again for watching I’ll see you in the next one
Video “Is there any good news about climate change?” was uploaded on 02/14/2024 to Youtube Channel Simon Clark