World We Dare to Imagine

It is hard to be optimistic about the challenges we face as a society. Currently it feels like it is a race against the clock as far as climate change and we are doing too little too late. I've always thought that climate change is an impossible problem to solve given the nature of the problem itself. In my opinion the problem itself is a case of the tragedy of the commons. The phrase tragedy of the commons refers to when a group of individuals have access to a common resource and act in their own best interest using up the resource ultimately leading to the destruction of said resource. Essentially every country, company, and person on Earth is trying to maximise their experience and unfortunately that is to the detriment of the Earth. There might be a select few who are trying to alleviate the issue by making eco-friendly choices however unfortunately the effort of these few is not nearly enough to curb the damage done by the majority.  However there is hope, I think through technological innovation, and harsher environmental standards and paradigm shifts climate change can be kept in check. 

The bottom line is that we as a society are not doing enough. The standard now for companies is to be carbon neutral which means they offset their emissions through paying a tax or doing something positive that takes carbon emissions out of the atmosphere. However why should these companies that have only just in the past fifteen years started moving towards carbon neutral stop there? We should be pushing these companies to be carbon negative. Carbon negative should be the new standard, and unlike before companies shouldn't be given as long a time frame to move to this new standard. For far too long companies have claimed to be moving towards carbon neutral by giving insanely long time frames to put it off and protect their margins for as long as possible. But, we don't have forever we are very quickly approaching the point of no return. Greenhouse gas emissions need to peak by 2025 and be halved by 2030 or global warming can't be stopped. It is estimated that 250,000 additional people will die between 2030 and 2050 due to climate change. This is scary to think about, but it is a truth we must face.

Finally air travel has to evolve to be more eco-friendly. Air travel simply contributes far too much towards climate change and carbon emissions. I understand that the travel industry fuels a large portion of the economy and employs a lot of people but the technology needs to improve. If we can't improve the technology it might have to be significantly reduced. Overall it can be very overwhelming the problems we are facing, but we are making progress and have to be optimistic and keep just making progress to hopefully curb this problem.