There are a few weeks left of 2020. They might take a few days, or perhaps another few months, to pass—time didn’t move quite logically this year. It seems like a lot of people just want to fast forward through to get to 2021, a year still full with the hope that the vaccine will bring everything back to normal. I’d like to make a counterproposal: what if instead of wishing away what was for most people a bizarre year, we stop for a moment and look back at it? And what if instead of wishing for a return to the normal, we embrace the good that comes of change?
2020 was the year of COVID, of race protests, of isolation, one of the most dramatic U.S. elections in living memory. It was the year of the unprecedented. The borders closed between European countries for the first time since the establishment of the European Union. The border between the U.S. and Europe closed for the first time ever—and seems to be staying that way. Everything we accepted as normal, the good and the bad, tore away to reveal a messy, imperfect world. It’s a dark planet, but even from space it glitters with the lights of all our cities, grids connecting billions of people’s lives and stories. Perhaps in this year’s darkness the lights shone even brighter, because there was so much good in 2020, too.
This year, global conflict became unavoidably personal for everyone. This article phrases it perfectly, “In some ways, the pandemic has been a dress rehearsal for the climate crisis. Human beings throughout the world have been called upon to embrace science, change their lifestyles and make sacrifices for the common good.” This year was about awareness—maybe that’s why Americans’ concern about the climate crisis rose from 44% to an all-time high of 60% this year. Perhaps they realized that it’s no coincidence emissions dropped 9% at the same time that travel and consumption slowed—the biggest yearly drop on record. Though emissions are expected to increase again next year, they still won’t be higher than any year since 1990. Yet another reason this year’s timeline feels off: in some ways we’ve been time traveling. In San Francisco, traffic levels across the Golden Gate Bridge fell to levels similar to the 1950s, resulting in coyotes wandering across. The drop in noise from our usually bustling cities caused a change in bird song: “While it might have seemed to human ears that bird song got louder, the sparrows actually sang more quietly,” explains Dr. Elizabeth Derryberry of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
We also moved forward in time, making huge and exciting progress toward the future of global energy, renewables. During shutdowns, with reduced demand for power, grid operators relied more on cheaper renewable energy sources, and almost 10% of electricity generation in most parts of the world were sourced from renewable energy sources. Denmark, already a leader in wind energy, just announced that it will stop providing licenses for oil exploration in the North Sea, preventing the extraction of about 150 million barrels of oil by 2050. The plan, which Climate and Energy Minister Dan Jorgensen announced as a historic step toward a fossil-free future that will “resonate around the world,” was created as an economic response to the pandemic.
So with the present as an exciting conglomeration of the future and past, all de-familiarized by the fact that we’re still living through it, I ask…now what? What does the future need to look like, across government, business, and society, to create a clean and just world? In the United States, leaders would do well to learn from Nordic countries, China and India, and Sub-Saharan Africa. President-elect Biden’s outline of some of his climate goals, including rejoining the Paris Agreement, is cause for hope, but the support of the judiciary, in addition to the executive and lawmakers, is necessary. Globally, a total of 1,587 cases of climate litigation have been brought between 1986 and mid-2020: 1,213 cases in the U.S. and 374 cases in 36 other countries and eight regional or international jurisdictions. These numbers are increasing rapidly, and according to this LSE study, “These cases play an important supporting role in ensuring the national implementation of international emissions-reduction commitments, the alignment of national laws with the Paris Agreement, and the enforcement of laws and policies relating to climate resilience.” This year, in the U.S., a federal judge ruled that the highly controversial Dakota Access Pipeline be shut down because federal officials failed to adequately analyze the project’s environmental impact. Also this year, in Portugal, six young people filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, demanding accountability from 33 top-emitting countries for the climate crisis and that funds for economic restoration from the pandemic are spent in a way that ensures a rapid transition to renewable energy. While individual executive leadership is important, the role of other branches of government, and of international organizations, cannot be dismissed.
Change on a government level is infamously slow—passing progressive plans through multiple levels of bureaucracy and special interests can hardly be the only way to enact change, though it’s undoubtedly an important one. Businesses also have a role to play in ensuring a rapid transition to sustainability. From simplifying global supply chains to replacing physical structures with digital platforms, businesses occupy a unique position that enables not just rapid reaction to shifting norms but also the ability to spearhead change. One hundred companies are responsible for 71% of greenhouse gas emissions, and massive corporations must be accountable for their impact on the planet. In this area, there is good news. Walmart has cut 230 million metric tons of greenhouse gases out of its supply chain in the past three years, Uniliver vowed to replace the petrochemicals found in its detergents and household cleaners with renewable or recycled alternatives, Apple committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2030, and Lyft said 100% of its trips will be in electric vehicles within the decade. In the realm of startups and investors, a changing mindset is even more evident. Green startups are more common than ever, reimagining everything from how nitrogen fertilizer is created for global agriculture to how to simultaneously reduce food waste and hunger.
More than simply building back better, we need to build back equal, creating social change that reduces inequality as we focus on green growth. What a just transition entails varies by country, depending on the place’s particular culture, norms, and historical legacies, so there is no one solution to be prescribed in order to ensure equality and effective reform everywhere. But there is one commonality, one overarching goal we must keep in mind as the world pulls itself out of this chaotic year, and this unsustainable epoch of human history: what comes next is entirely up to us. The actions that governments, businesses, and individuals take now will affect everyone for generations to come. There is only one global climate future—the one whose foundations are being built by the decisions we make today.
Featured image from La Croix
