If we wait too long before taking action, politics and society will not only lose increasingly all choices, but we will also increase the risks. Aiming towards net-zero CO
2
emissions now is much easier than striving towards negative CO
2
emissions later. This is because the option of storing CO
2
securely in geological reservoirs, for instance, is still a remote and uncertain option, requiring enormous efforts.
Yes, we can…
We want to clearly highlight one point: Limiting global warming to 1.5°C, though challenging, is still possible. But we have to act quickly and consistently, because CO
2
remains in the air for millennia. We need immediate decarbonisation, which means learning to live in ways that emit simply no CO
2
. We need energy, more electrical energy in fact – so we need to fundamentally restructure our energy supply, our industry, and above all our urban environments. We have to invest quickly and consistently in an energy supply that is truly sustainable, meaning renewable. We will never be able to halt climate change if we continue to burn coal and oil as in the past.
And – although this may be unwelcome news for some – we can all make an individual contribution to the solution by changing our behaviour and our lifestyles. That doesn't mean renouncing to everything, but even switching to electric cars or train travel can make a difference. Are such major changes possible in the brief amount of time we have to act? This is difficult to say at present. Developments in society can happen very quickly – think about how quickly the switch to smart phones happened. The measures that countries have announced so far are nowhere nearly sufficient. But with a targeted, continual restructuring of our society and our infrastructure, we still have a shot at keeping to the 1.5°C limit. Innovative Switzerland, with its strengths in the high-tech sector, can contribute a great deal to this and even profit from this development.
Sonia Seneviratne is Professor of Land-Climate Dynamics at ETH Zurich and is a Lead author of the IPCC SR15 report. Andreas Fischlin is Vice-President of IPCC Working Group II, review editor of the IPCC SR15 report, and Professor emeritus of the Terrestrial Systems Ecology group at ETH Zurich, which he led until 2015. The two scientists have been working with IPCC for many years.
