2050Today
Climate Change is in your hands
By measuring your greenhouse gas emissions and by reducing them accordingly you can be the change you want to see as of today
2050Today is here to reverse the trend with your institution
Why it matters :
The planet has entered a state of emergency with unprecedented risk of damage to humanity and the environment. Global warming and the collapse of biodiversity are having fatal consequences on an exponential scale. Urgent action is needed at all levels – everywhere and now – to confront the threat.
United for zero emissions
Imagine a world where climate action for zero emissions is the natural course of action for everyone, entity or individual. 2050Today is about measuring our greenhouse gas emissions and reducing them accordingly to bring about the change we want today.
United by this vision, 60 institutions in international Geneva have decided to take action to confront the challenge of climate change by implementing 2050Today. Permanent Missions, international organisations and civil society entities have committed to measure and reduce their emissions while confirming their willingness to cooperate together for effective, inclusive and sustainable climate action.
Joining or supporting 2050Today means participating in a coalition of entities resolutely committed to reducing emissions and concerned about acting in accordance with a sustainable planet for future generations.
Climate news
Deep seabed mining plans pit renewable energy demand against ocean life in a largely unexplored frontier
As companies race to expand renewable energy and the batteries to store it, finding sufficient amounts of rare earth metals to build the technology is no easy feat. That’s leading mining companies to take a closer look at a largely unexplored frontier – the deep ocean seabed.
Source : The Conversation
January 23, 2023
Relentless Rise of Ocean Heat Content Drives Deadly Extremes
The heat of global warming will keep penetrating deeper into the oceans for centuries after greenhouse gas emissions cease.
Source : Inside Climate News
January 16, 2023
Indigenous Forests Are Some of the Amazon’s Last Carbon Sinks
Forests around the world play a major role in curbing or contributing to climate change. Standing, healthy forests sequester more atmospheric carbon than they emit and act as a carbon sink; degraded and deforested areas release stored carbon and are a carbon source.
Source : World Resources Institute
January 13, 2023
Supersonic Aviation Program Could Cause ‘Climate Debacle,’ Environmentalists Warn
In a letter to NASA’s administrator, environmental advocates call for “rigorous” independent analysis of the climate implications of putting supersonic passenger jets back in the sky.
Source : Inside Climate News
January 12, 2023
What on Earth is a polar vortex? And what’s global warming got to do with it?
Meteorologist Bob Henson answers pressing questions about a chilly winter weather phenomenon.
Source : Yale Climate Connections
December 29, 2022
Warming beyond 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) will escalate risk of triggering multiple tipping points
Assessing more than 200 recent studies on climate modelling, authors of a new paper published in Science identified nine critical tipping points. These tipping points occur when changes in parts of the climate system become self-perpetuating above warming thresholds, and once triggered, these changes will likely lead to abrupt, irreversible and increasingly disastrous impacts for people around the world. Already, current levels of global warming (1.1 degree C or about 2 degrees F) put the world within range of reaching five tipping points, including the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and West Antarctic ice sheet, shutdown of the sub-polar gyre in the North Atlantic Ocean, widespread mortality of low-latitude coral reefs, and abrupt permafrost thaw in the boreal region. (Picture by Annie Spratt on Unsplash)
Source : World Resources Institute / Science
December 22, 2022
What Could a “Bioeconomy” in the Amazon Look Like?
News coverage of the Amazon rainforest in the past few years has been grim. Deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon increased 15% during 2021, with 9,770 square kilometers of native vegetation lost, an area the size of Puerto Rico. If deforestation continues, a tipping point may be reached, where the Amazon rainforest becomes a net emitter of carbon rather than a carbon sink.
Aside from fueling climate change, deforestation poses risks to biodiversity: the Amazon is home to one out of every 10 species known to science.
The problem is that the current regional economic model in the Amazon is highly dependent on resource extraction and exploitation, pushing the rainforest closer to its tipping point. Changes in land use account for almost half of Brazil’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and of those emissions, approximately 80% are linked to deforestation in the Amazon.
It’s clear that heavily forested nations like Brazil need a new economic model — one fit for a low-carbon, sustainable and prosperous future.
Enter the “bioeconomy.”
Source : World Resources Institute
December 5, 2022
How Forests Near and Far Benefit People in Cities
A New Yorker may not think about the forested Catskills Mountain Range upstate as she pours a glass of water. Londoners probably don’t consider the Amazon rainforest as they watch the rain falling on city parks. And folks in Addis Ababa are probably not thinking about the Congo Basin as they eat injera, an Ethiopian staple made from the grain teff.
And yet, forests near and far affect these urbanites’ daily lives far more than most people realize.
Source : World Resources Institute
November 30, 2022
Countries Want to Plant Trees to Offset Their Carbon Emissions, but There Isn’t Enough Land on Earth to Grow Them
Researchers behind the Land Gap Report say we can’t plant our way out of global warming—and it’s disingenuous to pretend that we can.
Source : Inside Climate News
November 2, 2022
Is the Amazon rainforest on the verge of collapse?
The Amazon has existed as a dense and humid rainforest teeming with life for at least 55 million years. But in a new paper, scientists claim that over 75% of the ecosystem has been losing resilience since the early 2000s due to climate change. This process appears to be most prominent in areas that are closer to human activity, as well as in those receiving less rainfall.
Source : The Conversation
November 2, 2022
New Data Confirms: Forest Fires Are Getting Worse
New data on forest fires confirms what has been long feared: Forest fires are becoming more widespread, burning nearly twice as much tree cover today as they did 20 years ago.
Using data from a new study by researchers at the University of Maryland, the World Resources Institute calculated that forest fires now result in 3 million more hectares of tree cover loss per year compared to 2001 — an area roughly the size of Belgium — and accounted for more than a quarter of all tree cover loss over the past 20 years.
Source : World Resources Institute
October 24, 2022
Jointly, we participate in the transition
Time to act
To keep global warming below 1.5°, we must at all costs avoid depleting our carbon budget. All organisations must therefore reduce their emissions as much as possible – and as soon as possible – in order to comply with the IPCC special report’s warning to limit global warming to 1.5°C. At current emissions levels, this budget will be exhausted within a few years and well before 2030. Every moment is counting and the countdown is not stopping. So the time to act is today.
Act now ! Amanda Gorman, American Youth Poet Laureate
That’s how fast the carbon clock is ticking
The MCC Carbon Clock shows how much CO2 can be released into the atmosphere to limit global warming to a maximum of 1.5°C and 2°C, respectively. Once the remaining time has elapsed these thresholds will be exceeded. With just a few clicks, you can compare the estimates for both temperature targets and see how much time is left in each scenario.
2050Today
Carbon footprint
The world total carbon footprint in 2019 due to human emissions was around 37 gigatons of CO2 eq. These huge emissions are the accumulation of many and many … billions of big and small emissions that are the result of life styles and consumption.
To reach net zero emissions by 2050, the individual carbon footprint should not exceed 700 kg/ year of CO2 eq.
For the time being, the average individual footprint in Switzerland is 14 t CO2 eq. It means, we should divide our carbon footprint by 20. Let’s start and take up the challenge today.
Here is the carbon footprint of some everyday life aspects, be it the production of goods or the consumption of services (average values):
The weight of CO2
160 g can be compared to the weight a banana. It means that for each km by car we send a CO2 banana in the atmosphere …
Just imagine how it would be if these bananas were left on the roads
| Sources | Co2 Equivalent kg |
|---|---|
| One car | 4000 - 7000 |
| One personal computer | 165 |
| One smartphone | 33 |
| One e-mail | 0.020 |
| One kg of office paper | 1.2 |
| One Plastic bottle (33 cl.) | 0.070 |
| Vegetarian meal | 1.7 |
| Non-vegetarian meal | 3.6 |
| Coffee (1cup) | 0.113 |
| Green Electricity (kWh) | 0.007 |
| 1 km by petrol car | 0.160 |
| 1 km by train (in Switzerland) | 0.007 |
The global human footprint
The carbon footprint is only one part of the impact of human beings on planet Earth. To get a glimpse of our global impact, take a look at the graphic below.
We should also keep in mind how quickly our impact has grown. The Earth, our only available habitat, appeared some 4.5 billion years ago. The ancestors of human beings first appeared less than 10 million years ago.
In other words, if you were to compress the entire history of the Earth into 24 hours, the first Homo sapiens would only arrive in the last few seconds and the advent of agriculture would only be a blink of an eye before midnight.
To have a closer look, follow Living in the Age of Humans, a series of stories that examine the impacts of human presence on Earth.
The human impact so far
Major environmental-change categories expressed as a percentage relative to intact baseline. Red indicates percentage of category damaged, lost or otherwise affected; blue indicates percentage intact, remaining or unaffected. Frontiers in Conservation Science
