💫 #002 For Future Reference
A new green deal | Planetary time-lapse machine | Nature does better | Depopulated world | A song for the last ones
WOW! I wanted to thank everyone who subscribed to this newsletter. The response to the launch last Saturday has been so positive and unexpected, and I’m looking forward to digging into some great stories for you here.
Still basking in the afterglow of what last week was for me, I wanted to reflect on what the past days meant to Earth.
This Thursday April 22, Earth Day was celebrated with the theme "Restore Our Earth". Not by chance, this coincided with a global climate summit hosted by US President Joe Biden in a pandemic-appropriate virtual conference. This was a pivotal moment heralding a new start for global action on climate change with the US back at the fore.
Are we green again?
For those following world politics, Biden’s summit indicated a big twist in the recent history of US foreign policy. Four years after the country was pulled out of the landmark Paris climate agreement, Biden unequivocally called climate change “the existential crisis of our time," and made bold commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The main take-away is this: it’s clear that unless major action is made, we won’t meet the Paris agreement’s goal of keeping average global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
Biden’s move is also a clear return to an evidence-based US climate policy, and it came just in time to confirm what scientists and climate activists have been saying for a long time about avoiding catastrophic climate change scenarios.
After Biden’s climate summit, there’s now hope that we can put climate denial officially behind us and call on world leaders to take more aggressive steps. So, here’s a quick summary of what countries have actually pledged on climate change so far:1
US: vowed to reduce US emissions by at least 50% by 2030, a decision that set the bar high for their closest allies.
China: the world’s largest polluter, re-affirmed its commitment to peak emissions before 2030 and go carbon neutral by 2060.
Canada: will slash emissions 40% to 45% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels, an ambitious goal for an oil-dependent economy.
Russia: made a vague pledge to “significantly” reduce the country’s emissions in the next three decades.
Brazil: in an audacious request to Biden, asked for $1 billion to reduce deforestation by 40%, and vowed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
Japan: pledged to curb emissions 46% by 2030 compared with 2013 levels, a 20% increase compared to previous arguably unambitious commitments.
European Union: ahead of the summit, the 27-nation bloc agreed on a provisional deal to become “climate neutral” by 2050.
Time goes fast, and so does environmental change
But while leaders put pressure on each other and gear up to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) taking place in Glasgow on 1 - 12 November, Google Earth just announced an impressive feature that provides visual evidence of how the Earth has changed due to climate change and human behavior over the past 37 years.
Timelapse is a technical feat that Google said it took two million processing hours to compile using 24 million satellite photos taken from 1984 to 2020. `You can use the search bar function to choose a location to see time in motion. Eye-opening!
Proving once again that a picture is worth a thousand words, the evidence on humanity’s growing and devastating footprint on the planet is clear. And it leads to a very important question:
What does nature do when humans leave?
Simple answer: nature does much better!
In fact, there’s plenty of evidence showing nature taking control of abandoned places and filling the void with sand, green and wild animals. And the result is as instagrammable as one would expect. My favorite so far is the ex-fishing village of Houtouwan in China, which is now carpeted with lush, overgrown greenery (SPOILER - pun intended: it has become very popular with visitors!)
Speaking of visitors, this leads us to David Attenborough’s latest documentary ‘The Year Earth Changed’ (now available on Apple TV). As the global COVID-19 pandemic has kept people inside, animals have returned to quieter urban environments across the globe. This is a small, surprising silver lining of the moment we are living in. Watch the trailer below:
Expect lots of beautiful imagery, including gliding shots of deserted international cities and penguins in South Africa exploring empty towns that are now seen without as much impact from human interference. All of this, of course, guided by Attenborough’s trademark voice!
My take: seeing how the reduction in noisy safari tours has allowed for Cheetah moms’ calls to be finally heard by their cubs has given me a stronger perspective on how we affect nature. This touching example is an easier message to digest than what Al Gore tried with his ‘inconvenient truth’.
A world without us
But the idea of a depopulated world shouldn’t be restricted to this moment in human history. I think there’s an inherent value to visualizing a world without us and thinking how long it’d take for nature to swallow mankind's traces.
Just think about it - or watch this BBC Ideas’ thought experiment to get a sense of how nature would thrive despite the awful footprint we’d have left behind.
We’re gonna be the last ones standing
I would like to leave you with a song that kind of guided me when `I was writing this piece. It’s a gorgeous duet by Imaginary Future and Kina Grannis which made me think about moments when we may try to control outcomes in a picture that is so much bigger than us.
In the little box below you’ll have a 30-sec track, but you can listen to it in its entirety in my Spotify playlist: What future?. Enjoy it!
Now that you reached the end of this, I wanted to thank you again for finding your way here. If anything you read here made you feel inspired about tomorrow, please share it with your network, for future reference.
Also, feel free to say hi to me on Linkedin and follow me on Twitter. And let me know whether one of these stories has shifted your perspectives about anything.
See you next time,
Rodrigo