This is the subject of Transport for Melbourne’s next forum to be held on 4th December 2020.
It is our belief that planning is a waste of time if you have no idea what future you are planning for. As the covid pandemic has demonstrated It certainly will not be business as usual, yet that is what many politicians continue to hope and plan for and is reflected in many of the major transport projects being pursued or advocated for by government – even today.
Whilst the covid pandemic will be transformative in many ways, its impact will be quickly overtaken by other global changes – principally of an environmental nature which will have a profound impact on everything we do – our way of life. It will also have implications for our values and aspirations and the choices we make now and in the future.
As Prof Johan Rockstrom (Director Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, Germany) stated recently the Earth is fast approaching a tipping point ie 2 degrees above pre industrial levels which will put it into a new state – Hot House Earth in which global temperatures will rise rapidly to 7 degrees or more by the end of the century fed by positive reinforcing loops which will be impossible to reverse. A 1.5 degree increase was established years ago as the point at which the planet enters the danger zone. According to a new report by the World Meteorological Organisation this may be reached as soon as 2024, and further increases are locked in until 2040 even if we stopped all greenhouse emissions immediately.
It should be noted that global temperatures have been tightly constrained for the last three million years ie within minus four and plus two degrees which defined the glacial/interglacial states for the duration of the Pleistocene. It has been the capacity of the earth’s biosphere to self regulate that has kept global temperatures within this very narrow temperature range during this period despite variations in solar intensity, volcanism and other external factors and maintain the world we know. But Hot House Earth will be very different. It will be a very harsh and alien world and provide a pathway to mass extinction – a process that is already well advanced.
If we want to avoid runaway climate change and Hot House Earth we are running out of time. Indeed Prof Will Steffen reported more than a decade ago there is strong scientific evidence that we have already left the interglacial state – known as the Holocene and entered a new state – the Anthropocene. It is likely this occurred in the 1950’s.
Since that time the impact of human activity on planet has escalated at an unprecedented rate affecting all elements of the earth system. This has been the result of a huge increase in the exploitation of the planet’s natural resources, escalation of pollution, environmental degradation and species loss. The planet is rapidly warming at a time when it should be cooling. One can see evidence of this as the great ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic melt at an accelerating rate. Much of the Arctic sea ice has gone and permafrost is thawing releasing methane gas. We are now witnessing extreme weather events on a scale and frequency well above, by orders of magnitude, that could be explained in terms of natural variability.
As Will Steffen stated recently the Holocene is gone and we will not get it back. The climate emergency is real and there is an imperative to act now and reduce global greenhouse emissions to avoid runaway climate change but that on its own will not be sufficient. It will also be necessary to reverse the impact of much of the human activity on this planet ie pollution, environmental degradation, forest clearing and species loss which has weakened the earth’s self regulating capacity and given us even less time to act.
This is the world we must plan for.