The Sayings of Abu Francis
I say, the bad news is the good news.
Last April, so quietly that nobody I know heard anything about it, UN Climate Change Chief Simon Stiell told an audience at London's Chatham House that we have two years to save the world. “You may think the title of today’s event is overly dramatic – melodramatic, even,” he said. “We know the stakes. You’ve heard me talk before about record-shattering heat and massive damage to economies, and how there’s no room for half-measures.”
Stiell's two-year timeframe is based on climate data. As it turns out, 2024 was not only the warmest year globally (temperatures finally 1.6 Celsius above pre-industrial times) but also the warmest ever measured for the global ocean. Earth passed its first full calendar year with warming above the 1.5 C., the point of no return predicted by the scientific community for decades.
Nobody knows if ecological collapse is nigh or will be catastrophic (LA has been a disaster waiting to happen that is no longer waiting). We do know carbon emissions are still at all all-time high and the climate as we have known it is at a tipping point.
The bad news is we have only two years to save the world. The good news is we have two whole years to save the world. Happy Two Year!
Nick Flores recently invited me onto his “Growing Pains” podcast to discuss what we face – and most important, what we can do – in the next two years.