Halting fossil expansion and subsidies by 2020, doubling wind and solar energy capacity every four years, pricing fossil fuels to reflect their true cost, and improving refrigerant management by 2020 are among the 10 calls to action in a climate emergency plan the Club of Rome plans to formally launch at the European Parliament December 4.
The plan also calls on governments to encourage exponential technology development by 2020, boost material efficiency and circularity by 2025, accelerate regenerative land use, put a lid on population growth while prioritizing education and health care for girls and women, ensure a just transition for fossil communities, and replace GDP growth as the main measure of societal progress.
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#WeDon’tHaveTime founder Ingmar Rentzhog opened a global webcast on the plan last week by staging a mock fire alarm, complete with bells, live smoke, and video of smoke and flames, Below2°C reports. He asked participants in the ground-floor seminar room to imagine they were on the top floor of a high-rise.
“You hear the alarm,” he said. “You feel worried and you look at your neighbours and they don’t do anything. Everyone, I mean just everyone, is carrying on business as usual,” and at first the emergency looks like a false alarm.
“A couple of minutes later, you start to smell some smoke, and you even see the smoke, and now you’re feeling really worried. You look at your neighbours, but they don’t do anything at all. They just carry on business as usual…
“This is exactly how most of us are reacting to the ongoing climate crisis,” he added. “Scientists have been ringing the alarm bells for over a century now. We do see the flashes and the warning signs, we even smell and see the smoke, and some of us have already died in that fire. We still have time to act. But we don’t have time to wait.”
