HABITABLE EARTH

On 14 March 2019, Cyclone Idai made land-fall in Mozambique. It came in as people slept, at a wind speed of close to 200 kilometres per hour; by morning, 90 percent of the major port city of Beira was destroyed. A video posted by an eyewitness showed a desolate scene, as bodies were recovered from a Catholic church to the sound of keening that is hard to listen to. ‘People didn’t stand a chance here,’ he mutters.

Idai was supercharged by warmed seas and heavy rains brought by climate change.¹ It was a stark reminder of what is to come, or rather, what is already here, and the intense vulnerability of those least equipped to deal with it – on a continent that accounts for just four percent of global emissions.

More tragedies like this one – and much worse besides – are not yet inevitable. It’s true, we’ve known this was coming for at least 30 years and have done nothing to stop it. But that story is starting to change. As the climate breaks down, disruption is shifting calculi in the realms of science, politics and economics. Alongside this, new visions are defining how we go about preserving a viable ecosystem for our children, and the best route to get there.

The shift begins with science, which has described our apocalyptic end with terrifying precision – and given us a deadline.

Hard facts

Last February, Joeri Rogelj, a bearded Danish climate scientist, stood in front of a graphic at a public lecture in the Oxford Martin School. It showed temperature anomalies since 1850, blooming like a flower of doom throwing out ever more red petals until the present day.

He’s one of 91 authors who contributed to last October’s game-changing report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which contrasts the impacts of a 1.5° and 2°C warmed world.

The report delivered a bleak message, described in as ‘a collective scream sieved through the stern, strained language of bureau-cratese’. We have hit 1°C above pre-industrial times sooner than we thought, mostly due to feedback loops in the Earth’s complex carbon cycle; on our current trajectory, we may hit 1.5°C as early as 2030. At this point up to 90 percent of coral reefs die out, heatwaves and wildfires plague the planet every year and floods, drought