Regen Notes IPCC
'combining forces to avert climate catastrophe'
Welcome to Regen Notes - a regenerative newsletter special focused on the IPCC Climate Change 2021 report launched yesterday, 9th August. Curated by Martin Brown, Regen Notes is a companion to Zoom Regenerative.
We are in a climate and ecological emergency.
Over the last two years, many individuals, groups, institutes, organisations and authorities have made the climate emergency recognition a public declaration.
However, whilst the world may have listened to the science, it has not acted, making the IPCC 6th Climate Change report stark, even brutal.
Somehow, whilst we had all been busy, while had been doing all the small things that add up to life … the future had slipped into the present. Jessie Greengrass, The High House
We simply cannot afford to wait - this is the moment.
We no longer have the time or the luxury to only reduce our impact. The IPCC #ClimateChange report reinforces the need for robust, urgent and sustained action.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote, “Only when it’s dark enough can you see the stars,” could not be more appropriate.
Subscribe now to Regen Notes and support independent climate blogging and journalism at this critical moment in history.
With our built environment being a 40% contributor to the climate and ecological crisis, we need to act urgently, reverse this statistic and become a real contributor of climate #solutions through regenerative approaches.
To ensure this, every decision, every investment, every target, every building needs to have the climate at its core.
Timely then, our Living Future Europe Masterclass (starting in Sept and running until the end of the year, concurrent with #cop26glasgow) will provide fresh, urgent and needed regenerative insights to enable and strengthen regenerative practice for your buildings, projects and organisations.
The IPCC report itself is a difficult read. Like recent local and global climate news coverage, it is a report that will make you cry in despair, anger or grief.
It’s 3:23 in the morning
and I’m awake
because my great great grandchildren
won’t let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling? Drew Dellinger
Collaboration at every level.
All is not lost, yet, “If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe” commented Antonio Guterres at the launch “But as the report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses”
What is called of us now, from the planet? What are we being called to do at this time? “To wake up together. Sarvodaya. Taking the Gandhian term, but using it in a slightly different way, but the same Sanskrit, which is “everybody wakes up together.” Joanna Macy 2017
Bite-size headlines from the report and the launch:
That climate crisis is caused by human activities is now ‘indisputable’.
Every tonne of carbon emitted worsens the climate crisis.
The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years.
Human actions still have the potential to determine the future course of climate.
What happens tomorrow depends on the decisions we make today.
The past five years have been the hottest on record since 1850.
Recent rates of sea-level rise has nearly tripled compared with 1901-1971.
Climate Change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying.
Every region of the earth is facing increasing change.
Climate change report is ‘code red for humanity’
For cities, some aspects of climate change may be amplified, including heat and flooding (from heavy precipitation events and sea level rise in coastal cities)
The report MUST be the starting point for urgent and ambitious decisions on building designs, construction and operation.
If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe… But as the report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses
“It’s very naive at this point to think we can keep on the way we’re going and make little tweaks, and somehow that will add up to enough.” —Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Interactive Atlas
The IPCC Report includes a novel Interactive Atlas, allowing for a flexible spatial and temporal analysis of both data-driven climate change information and assessment findings in the report. Link to the Interactive Atlas
Watch A video recording of today’s press conference, with Q&A.
Read the report’s press release.
Read the report itself.
Everything is Connected
Zoom Regenerative
Re-zooms on the 7th Sept and will be picking up on the issues surfaced from the IPCC report.
Keep Connected with Link Tree
