10 years to transform the future of humanity -- or destabilize the planet | Johan Rockström

308,076 views ・ 2020-10-15

TED


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Transcriber: TED Translators Admin Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
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Ten years is a long time for us humans on earth.
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Ten turns around the sun.
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When I was on the TED stage a decade ago,
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I talked about planetary boundaries
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that keep our planet in a state that allowed humanity to prosper.
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The main point is that once you transgress one,
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the risks start multiplying.
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The planetary boundaries are all deeply connected,
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but climate, alongside biodiversity, are core boundaries.
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They impact on all others.
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Back then we really thought we had more time.
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The warning lights were on, absolutely,
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but no unstoppable change had been triggered.
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Since my talk, we have increasing evidence
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that we are rapidly moving away
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from the safe operating space for humanity on earth.
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Climate has reached a global crisis point.
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We have now had 10 years of record-breaking climate extremes:
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fires blaze in Australia, Siberia, California and the Amazon,
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floods in China, Bangladesh and India.
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We're now enduring heat waves across the entire northern hemisphere.
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We risk crossing tipping points
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that shift the planet from being our best resilient friend,
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dampening our impacts,
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to start working against us, amplifying the heat.
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For the first time, we are forced to consider the real risk
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of destabilizing the entire planet.
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Our children can see this.
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They are walking out of school to demand action,
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looking with disbelief at our inability to deviate away
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from potentially catastrophic risks.
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The next 10 years, to 2030,
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must see the most profound transformation the world has ever known.
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This is our mission.
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This is the countdown.
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(Clock ticks)
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When my scientific colleagues summarized, about a decade ago,
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for the first time,
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the state of knowledge on climate tipping points,
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just one place had strong evidence that it was on a serious downward spiral.
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Arctic sea ice. (Water sounds)
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Other tipping points were long way off --
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50 or 100 turns around the sun.
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Just last year we revisited these systems,
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and I got the shock of my career.
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We are only a few decades away from an Arctic without sea ice in summer.
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In Siberia, permafrost is now thawing at dramatic scales.
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Greenland is losing trillions of tons of ice
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and may be approaching a tipping point.
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The great forests of the North
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are burning with plumes of smoke the size of Europe.
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The Atlantic ocean circulation is slowing.
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The Amazon rainforest is weakening
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and may start emitting carbon within 15 years.
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Half of the coral of the Great Barrier Reef has died.
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West Antarctica may have crossed the tipping point already today.
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And now, the most solid of glaciers on earth, East Antarctica,
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parts of it are becoming unstable.
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Nine out of the 15 big biophysical systems that regulate climate are now on the move,
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showing worrying signs of decline
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and potentially approaching tipping points.
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Tipping points bring three threats.
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First, sea level rise.
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We can already expect up to one meter this century.
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This will endanger the homes of 200 million people.
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But when we add the melting ice from Antarctica and Greenland
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into the equation,
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this might lead to a two meter rise.
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But it won't stop there, it will keep on getting worse.
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Second, if our carbon stores like permafrost and forest
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flip to belching carbon,
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then this makes the job of stabilizing temperatures so much harder.
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And third, these systems are all linked like dominoes:
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If you cross one tipping point, you lurch closer to others.
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Let's stop for a moment and look at where we are.
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The foundation of our civilization is a stable climate
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and a rich diversity of life.
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Everything, I mean everything, is based on this.
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Civilization has thrived in a Goldilocks zone:
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not too hot, not too cold.
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This is what we have had for 10,000 years since we left the last ice age.
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Let's zoom out a little here.
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Three million years --
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temperatures have never broken through the two degrees Celsius limit.
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Earth has self-regulated within a very narrow range
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of plus two degrees in a warm interglacial,
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minus four degrees, deep ice age.
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Now, we are following a path
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that would take us to a three to four degree world
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in just three generations.
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We would be rewinding the climate clock, not one million, not two million,
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but five to 10 million years.
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We are drifting towards hot-house earth.
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For each one degree rise,
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one billion people will be forced to live in conditions
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that we today largely consider uninhabitable.
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This is not a climate emergency, it is a planetary emergency.
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My fear is not that Earth will fall over a cliff
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on the 1st of January, 2030.
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My fear is that we press unstoppable buttons in the Earth system.
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What happens in the next 10 years
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will likely determine the state of the planet we hand over
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for future generations.
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Our children have every reason to be alarmed.
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We need to get serious about stabilizing our planet.
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Two frontiers will guide this transformation.
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The first one is in science.
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Here's a new equation for a sustainable planet:
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planetary boundaries plus global commons
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equals planetary stewardship.
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We need to a safe corridor for humanity
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to allow us all to become stewards of the entire planet,
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not to save the planet but to provide a good future for all people.
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And the second frontier is in society.
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We need a new economic logic based on well-being.
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We are now in a position to provide science-based targets
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for all global commons for all companies and cities in the world.
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First task, we need to cut global emissions by half by 2030
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and reach net-zero by 2050 or sooner.
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This means decarbonizing the big systems that run our lives:
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energy, industry, transport, buildings.
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The fossil fuel era is over.
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We need to transform agriculture from a source of emissions
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to a store of carbon,
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and critically, we must protect our oceans and land,
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the natural ecosystems that absorb half of our emissions.
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The good news is, we can do this.
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We have the knowledge. We have the technology.
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We know it makes social and economic sense.
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And when we succeed, we can all take lungfuls of fresh air.
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We will be saying hello to healthy lifestyles
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and resilient economies in livable cities.
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We are all on this journey around the sun together.
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This is our only home.
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This is our mission: to protect our children's future.
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Thank you.
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(Lights click off)
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