Climate Change and Human Impact Quiz

Lecture 11: Climate Change

• Climate change is a period of great change, life 25 years ago is very different to now (e.g., no phones)
• The difference between our lives now and those 200 years ago is much greater than the difference between the years 1400 and 1600, or 200 and 400
• In the year 0 there were only 190 million people in the world (less than the USA currently)
• In 1804 AD, the world's population was only 1 billion (less than China or India today)
• There are 8 billion people today, predicted to peak at 11 billion in 2100
• Thanos's snap (removing half the population) would only bring the world back to 1974.
• Human population growth has been exponential since 10,000 BCE
• The graph of the world's population shows exponential growth with many large increases (e.g., year 0, 1800)
• Growth in living standards is also exponential from 1 to 2018
• In 2018, the US, Canada, France, UK, Peru, Indonesia, and India's GDP per capita is shown (with a significant increase since the first year)
• Capitalism has reduced absolute poverty, defined as living below the poverty line of $2.15/day
• But development brings emissions, specifically CO2 emissions, in the years 1802-2018
• Climate change was first predicted in 1896! (Arrhenius)
• Carbon dioxide emissions depend on population and CO2 usage per person.
• The world population has increased dramatically as has average CO2 emissions per person.
• The speed of change in human development in the past 200 years is exponential allowing cooperation like never before.
• This increased living standards dramatically, but also increased carbon footprints.
• US CO2/capita emissions have increased by 44,450% since 1800.
• Atmospheric CO2 concentration is rising from803719 BCE to 2018.
• Global temperatures have risen over the same period (from 1850-2018)
• The world is viewed to be a national park, where livestock is 60%, humans are 36%, and the remaining are wild mammals (4%).
• Humans are living outside the 'safe operating space' for the global ecosystem (Rockström et al. 2009), and using natural resources 1.7 times faster than they can regenerate (Lin et al. 2018).
• CO2 emissions need to be reduced by 45% by 2030 (Change 2014).
• Loss of land and inhabitable regimes, migrant crises, and mass extinctions are amongst the consequences of inaction.
• Climate science models vary wildly in their predictions made worse by vicious cycles (e.g., melting ice-sheets expose buried methane, warming seas less able to act as carbon sinks)
• These vicious circles are very hard to stop, but very hard to predict when they start, contributing to uncertainty.
• Is climate change going to be an apocalypse? Can we adapt to it? Who will be affected? We don't know!
• This makes planning, convincing people to make sacrifices, and knowing how much carbon-cutting is necessary, hard.
• Nothing stops people polluting and it is cheaper to pollute (indeed), therefore no need for costly climate-neutral policies.
• Industrial pollution affects current and future generations with downstream effects and the need for regulation.
• Carbon dioxide is colourless, odorless, and invisible, unlike smog.
• Humans are not good at dealing with threats they cannot sense, and the effects of carbon dioxide are delayed.
• The market fails on climate change due to the long timescale and the market only considering current generations (future generations cannot reward for sacrifices necessary to cut emissions), therefore time travel isn't real.
• Where carbon is produced needs consideration and the concept of the "polluter pays principle".
• Rich countries should sacrifice the most, given they've been capable of polluting for years and outsourcing to poorer countries (which aren't expected to sacrifice as much).
• Companies aim to make money and often do not care about ethics, companies would be more environmentally friendly if consumers only demanded green goods.
• Consumption patterns are not very environmentally friendly and disconnect from appearing green and actual sacrificing consumption, even in the case of having fewer children.
• Households are responsible for 72% of CO2 emissions.
• One proposed solution is government intervention with carbon taxes.
• Politicians are elected every 3–6 years, making this mandate too short-term to tackle climate change (incentives to pay lip-service).
• Climate change falls more heavily on poorer equatorial countries with past polluters dying before effects occur.
• National average emissions figures hid significant variance.
• Super-rich pollute much more, with billionaires’ jets/yaughts emitting the same emissions a month as the average person does their entire lifetime.
• Solutions for climate change include pulling carbon out (currently too expensive) and reducing carbon.
• Sustainability may require an end to economic growth, a change to "green growth", and falling standards of living, or radical changes to our lifestyles.
• Areas to reduce emissions include electricity, transport, manufacturing, buildings, industry, land-use, aviation, and other fuel combustion
• Fossil fuels (for power generation, with coal, oil, and gas) have very high carbon intensities.
• We need a climate-friendly, reliable power-source we can build anywhere (e.g., nuclear), but nuclear is more expensive than fossil fuels, not including future costs of climate change
• For renewable energy, 20 countries have over 90% renewable electricity generation and 31% of global supply is produced by China
• The biggest problem of renewable energy is the electricity cannot be stored at scale, and this leaves various renewable sources (e.g., solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, tidal) unsuitable.
• Reforestation (removing 1m tonnes of CO2) needs 862km2 of arable land.
• Direct carbon capture (removing 1m tonnes of CO2) needs just 0.4km2 of land.
• Adaptation (a less habitable planet) will be costly.
• Richer areas will likely have gated communities and enforced higher levels of security, and intolerance.
• This adaptation scenario may mean that many people die.
• Fatalism (doomerism) is one result of dealing with climate change.
• Human innovation is astonishing given necessary incentives are present, similar to the development of COVID vaccines.
• Capitalism responds to current problems, and sadly, climate change looks set to affect poorer, equatorial areas first.
• Good news includes environmental progress (e.g., Montreal protocol).
• Everyone(and companies) has a role to combat climate change.
• Capitalism gives us what we want, but we need to want to fix climate change

Test your knowledge on how climate change affects human living standards and resource consumption. This quiz covers statistics on CO2 emissions, energy sources, and the necessary actions to tackle the climate crisis effectively. Challenge yourself and learn about the environmental issues we face today.