After recently writing about the world’s climate targets and roadmaps to net zero by 2050, I felt overwhelmed by the uphill climb on climate before us. I mean, we have to change the way we do everything in society! — how we make and power things, get around, grow food, spend our money, live in our buildings, consume, work together, and relate to nature.

To say this is a huge, complex task with a lot of obstacles along the way is an understatement. I’m usually optimistic in my thinking and writing. After all, as a society, we have solved other…

With the world’s countries coming together this fall at the UN Climate Summit (COP26) to revisit and amp up their commitments to solving the climate crisis, the question on my mind is “What’s it really going to take to get to net-zero before 2050?” (In a previous post, Making Sense of the World’s Climate Targets I discuss what net-zero means).

While no one knows for certain yet, one thing is for sure; we are in a race against time and need to ramp up our climate actions significantly if we are going to cut global GHG emissions in half by…

With the next UN Climate Summit coming up this year, you may hear more about climate targets and commitments and wonder what the many terms describing global climate targets mean. Net zero, carbon neutral, negative emissions, 350 parts per million, zero emissions, Paris agreement, 1.5% aligned, and climate neutral are a few of the terms being bandied about.

Are they different terms for the same thing? And what exactly are we aiming to achieve and by when?

Let me answer some of those questions.

What Do All the Different Climate Target Terms Mean?

The terms mentioned above are similar in that they set targets for the world to aim…

If you are like me, you want your climate action to make a difference. You want what you do to lead to positive and significant social change. After all, if we are going to turn the tide on climate before 2050, then we have to change almost every system that touches our daily lives.

Eager to take part, we try all kinds of actions, often never knowing if they will actually lead to the change we want and need. As individual everyday folks, we typically don’t know how to evaluate the effectiveness of our actions.

Don’t worry. You don’t need…

Have you ever been to the Bahamas and bathed in the amazing crystal turquoise waters there? Or seen videos or pictures of them, like the one above that I took when I last visited in January 2020?

Last year I received a note from a friend in South Africa in response to one of my articles. In it, he urged me to expand the scope of my writing; from being U.S. centric to having a more global perspective.

Over the past two years, it’s been clear that youth across the world care deeply about global warming. The youth movement and the voices of its powerful young leaders, like Isra Hirsi, Varshini Prakash, and Jamie Margolin in the U.S., Leah Namugerwa in Uganda, and Greta Thunberg of Sweden, have been growing stronger and louder.

2020 was a year of rude awakenings. One of those awakenings was around climate change. Even with much of the world locked down for a significant part of the year, the needle on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions did not move enough. The latest U.N. report on the state of the climate, released in early December 2020, confirms that the climate crisis was in full swing in 2020.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres put this in stark terms in a speech on the state of the planet at Columbia University. He said, “Humanity is waging war on nature.” Then, after outlining how…