Our House is On Fire

Earth from space
Panel 4. Our House is on Fire. Graphic showing a city overwhelmed by darkening clouds.
Humans have only been around for 200,000 years, a tiny blip in the 4.5 billion years of our planet’s history. Yet we have had a greater impact on the Earth than any other species.
Our industrial civilisation has been built using fossil fuels. We rely on them for everything we do. Many of us live longer, healthier lives that would seem extraordinary to earlier generations. But billions of people across the world struggle for their daily needs.
How close are we to 1.5 degrees C. Human induced warming reached approximately 1 degree C above pre industrial levels in 2017
We need to stop burning fossil fuels – and fast. If we reduce carbon dioxide emissions immediately and the whole world reaches zero by 2055, temperatures will continue to rise for a while but will then fall back towards normal. Exactly how much and how fast is uncertain – as shown by the green area of the graph above.
Impacts of climate change graphic. Drivers of climate change include: greenhouse gases, aerosol emissions and land use change. Changes to the climate system include: changes to the hydrological cycle, warmer land and air, warming oceans, melting ice, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, global greening, chaning ocean currents, and more extreme weather. Impacts include: risk to water supplies, conflict and climate migrants, localised flooding, flodding of coastal regions, damage to marine ecosystems, fisheries failing, loss of biodiversity, change in seasonality, heat stress, expaning habital region of pests, forest mortality and increased risk of fire, damage to infrastructure, food insecurity
Human activity has already made the world 1ºC warmer than it was before the industrial revolution. 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 were the hottest years ever recorded. If we carry on like this, global temperatures will be 1.5 ºC above pre-industrial levels by 2040 and a catastrophic 4 ºC by the end of the century.
We need to stop taking and wasting and move towards a circular economy. Our globalised economy relies on extracting ever more resources and shipping products long distances before they become waste that pollutes land, air and water
Three principles of a circular economy • Design out waste and pollution • Keep products and materials in use • Regenerate natural systems ELLEN MACARTHUR FOUNDATION
Pollution, defilement, squalor are words that never would have been created had man lived conformably to Nature. JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS 1875: THE UNPUBLISHED JOURNALS OF JOHN MUIR. EDITED BY LINNIE MARSH WOLFE, 1938
“The Covid-19 pandemic has unleashed humanity’s instinct to transform itself in the face of a universal threat and it can help us do the same to create a livable planet for future generations.” CHRISTIANA FIGUERES: EXEC SEC UN CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE 2010 - 2016
panel 3 | our well being & connection
panel 5 | changing the system – what can we do?