The Climate Emergency

Climate emergency - what does that actually mean? Well there is lots of science around technically what it means - but I guess what is more important is the recognition that the way we live our lives and what we see as normal today isn't sustainable. We're using up limited resources, and a lot of the things we consider normal in society have severe detrimental impacts to the environment.

It's time

Action on climate change has been happening for many years - and there are lots of fantastic things that have happened and continue to. What's clear though is that change isn't happening quickly enough and many world leaders appear to be waiting for a magical technological solution which doesn't exist yet.

So as with any problem, the best place to start is to look at the root cause. Identifying the root cause means we can either do something to address this or if that's not possible - minimise the impact from it.

Ok, but what will happen if we don't take action?

It's hard to summarise all the impacts into a short paragraph - and I don't think I could do it justice either. The UN list some of the key impacts of climate change - some of which are already happening but will continue to get worse. More extreme weather events, food shortages, sea levels increasing (resulting in displaced populations) and further biodiversity loss are all key areas. We'll outline more detail on specific impacts in our background topics but the key message here is that it's mostly stuff we don't want to happen - and it will impact us all - regardless of where we live, and our future generations.

What key areas are causing climate change?

As it turns out, it's quite difficult to easily attribute emissions to specific sectors - in part because there is so much overlay and also because there is sometimes disagreement in terms of which sector the emissions should be assigned to. Ironically, this simple attribution issue is often used to cause confusion and doubt during debates and discussions on climate.

Case in point - should the transport emissions of transporting livestock be attributed to "agriculture" or "transport". They can't be double counted so they have to be assigned somewhere if you are going to carve up the emissions into sectors. Essentially, many many examples like this is why you'll often see a variance in figures - e.g. one study may say 10% of emissions are attributed to agriculture, another may say it's much more at 30%.

Either way, one of the best sources I've found for looking at this data is ourworldindata.org . They are a not for profit organisation - funded by individuals, research grants and not big business with any vested interest. Their aim isn't to support any agenda (from what I can see at least) - and is just to share data to support better decision making. Their aims align nicely with the aim of The Climate Coach.

The other great thing is that their charts and visuals are open source (as long as you quote the source) so I can bring a lot of key supporting data here to save you a click. That said - if you find the bits pulled out here interesting, I would highly recommend a visit to their site so you can get into the detail.

Those 3 charts all have different figures on though?

Yep - there is definitely some differences between how emissions are attributed for reasons outlined earlier. Also - you can click each chart to go through to the respective sites that published them for more details if you wish - full source data is also shown on each image. However - at a high level, the sectors on all 3 charts are broadly the same although with varying degrees of attribution:

You can see that Energy is treated slightly differently across each. For example the first chart has Transport and Buildings within Energy - vs the second two, which split those out. Broadly though, the data aligns at a high level in that it pulls out these sectors as key contributors.

As a result, our content and recommendations are split into the sections above - with the addition of:

Investments & Pensions - because this can actually impact all of the sectors above.

Each topic is labelled with a category and includes data and recommendations to help you make a difference.

Ok - got it, let's go

So having very very briefly skimmed the surface in terms of climate change, what impact it is having and will continue to and finally what is causing it - let's jump in to what you can do about it.

We've broken down the topics into easily digestible bitesize chunks which hopefully make quite a daunting topic less so. Our aim is to inspire you and demonstrate that you can and will make a difference.