Rethinking Climate Change
by James Arbib, Adam Dorr, Tony Seba
As a thought leader who joined the conversation about our earlier reports, "Rethinking Transportation," "Rethinking Food & Agriculture," "Rethinking Energy," and "Rethinking Humanity," we wanted to alert you to our latest report analyzing how, if we make the right choices, disruptive technologies can enable the world to eliminate 90 percent of carbon emissions within the next 15 years, and go beyond net zero after 2040 – far faster, and with far greater consequence, than is conventionally believed possible.
Today, RethinkX is releasing, “Rethinking Climate Change: How Humanity Can Choose to Reduce Emissions 90% by 2035 through the Disruption of Energy, Transportation, and Food with Existing Technologies.” In this new report, we show that with the right societal choices these three disruptions can eliminate the overwhelming majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide within 15 years, and that market forces can be leveraged to do the bulk of the mitigation work because the technologies required are either already commercially available and competitive today, or can be deployed to market before 2025. This also means we can fight climate change while simultaneously saving trillions of dollars and fostering prosperity worldwide. Furthermore, these very same technologies will also make the cost of carbon withdrawal affordable, meaning that moonshot breakthrough technologies are not required to go beyond net zero from 2035 onwards. Regions, nations, cities, communities, businesses, and investors that choose to embrace and lead the disruptions will reap enormous economic and social rewards as well as environmental benefits, allowing less-developed areas to level the playing field and leapfrog over previous barriers to human development. Therefore, the greatest barrier to fighting climate change is our mindset. It is up to us to decide whether or not we deploy these technologies worldwide rapidly enough to avoid dangerous climate change.
Our goal is to inspire a global conversation about the opportunities and threats of this technology-driven disruption and, importantly, the choices that can lead to a more equitable, healthy, resilient, and stable society. Your participation in this conversation is crucial.
We invite you to explore our key findings below and share your thoughts via social media. You can find the report here, and you can follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
KEY FINDINGS
We already have the energy, transportation and food technologies needed to reduce over 90 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide in the next 15 years. With the right societal choices, we can stop climate pollution at the levels needed to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius.
Technology disruptions over the course of history – including automobiles, cameras and smartphones – have happened quickly and exponentially, making legacy industries obsolete within 10 to 15 years. Adopting a technology disruption mindset will allow policymakers to recognize the speed of the most critical disruptions, making more informed choices about where to focus action for maximum impact.
We can achieve a net zero future – affordably, on time, and opening up huge opportunities for carbon-free prosperity – if policymakers make smart choices to enable these highest impact technologies and stop supporting legacy industries that are getting in the way. If they are not decisive in this regard, we’ll lose precious time in responding to this crisis which will mean far larger planetary risks and trillions of dollars worth of losses that are otherwise avoidable.
Policymaker choices should strategically target and support the highest impact technologies and avoid other “scattershot” climate approaches that are far more costly and unfeasible, such as clean coal and carbon capture, as well as remove barriers that are stymying disruptive technologies. This approach can allow markets to do the bulk of the deployment work.
Highest impact technology sector opportunities include:
ENERGY: The largest, most immediate opportunity is in the energy sector (57.6 percent of GHGs) which is rapidly being transformed by affordable, scalable low-carbon technologies in the form of solar PVs, wind power and lithium-ion storage batteries.
TRANSPORTATION: The transportation sector (16.2 percent of GHGs) will face dramatic disruptions as electric vehicles (EVs) and autonomous EVs enable transportation-as-a-service and bring an end to internal combustion engines and private vehicle ownership.
FOOD: Rapidly advancing technologies will drive disruption in the food sector (18 percent of GHGs) from precision fermentation and cellular agriculture, which will eventually replace meat and animal-based food products – freeing up the 2.7 billion hectares of land they rely on.
Each of these energy, transportation and food technologies will achieve significant GHG reductions within their own sectors, but when factoring in the impact of various feedback loops between these sectors their potential is exponentially larger. For example: global virgin steel production, which accounts for 7 percent of global GHGs, will fall dramatically as transportation reductions reduce the number of vehicles on the road, as energy disruptions reduce the number of cargo ships needed to transport coal and oil in all parts of the world, and as scrap from obsolete combustion vehicles and oil industry infrastructure makes large volumes of recycled steel cheaply available.
Disruptive technologies can help close the wealth and technology gaps between rich and poor countries. For example: rapidly scaling solar, wind and batteries would help deliver electricity to billions of people who have no electricity today.
The report outlines three different scenarios for policymakers:
THE ‘GET SERIOUS’ SCENARIO: This most ambitious response, where policymakers proactively accelerate the disruption of energy, transportation and food technologies over the 2020s and reforest just 20 percent of land freed up by food sector disruptions, would enable a GHG emission decline of over 60 percent by 2030 and 100 percent before 2035. The disruptions would also dramatically bring down the costs of carbon sequestration. By 2040, carbon emissions would be 20 percent below ‘net zero’ – good news indeed.
THE ‘BE SENSIBLE’ SCENARIO: By choosing to deploy and scale only those core technologies available today with positive economic impacts, humanity can achieve the GHG emissions reductions well within the timeline needed to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, as called for under the international Paris Climate Agreement. By removing barriers to deployment and support for incumbent monopolies, 90% GHG reductions can be achieved by 2035. We can then reach net zero by 2040 through passive reforestation on land freed up by the food disruptions, and can continue to drawdown carbon from the atmosphere below ‘net zero’ from there onwards.
THE ‘GET STUCK’ SCENARIO: Policymakers might unwittingly or otherwise delay the disruptions, an approach with some of the markings of our situation today, such as subsidies and financial support for fossil fuels, utility monopolies and the livestock sector, resulting in emissions rising for another five years and global temperatures exceeding 2 degrees – placing us squarely in the “climate danger zone.”
The report provides a decision-making framework to help policymakers evaluate the ‘mitigation-readiness’ of climate solution technologies. This will help them effectively target technologies that are commercially available and competitive today to achieve the largest, fastest emissions reductions.