hi hello we've got another giant climate
report out the third and final major
part of the intergovernmental panel on
climate change's sixth assessment report
the science report came out last august
and the impacts and adaptation report
just came out a month ago and finally
finally we've got the mitigation report
and a lot of people have been waiting
for this one because they want it to be
a road map for how we get out of this
climate mess the easy answer stop
burning coal oil and gas but how we do
that is a totally different question
the summary for policy makers and the
full report start in the same place so
we might as well too how are we managing
that whole rising temperatures thing
uh not great miriam oh hey there that's
climate adam a fellow climate scientist
and youtuber
all right so it isn't great but we have
seen some improvements since the ipc's
fifth assessment report in 2014. yeah
well around the world we've seen new
laws and policies which mean we've
admitted less than we otherwise would
have this has made the worst case
scenario where the world heats up by
four or five degrees celsius
unlikely all right so progress
yup enough progress nope because
emissions are still going up for every
major greenhouse gas continuing to use
existing fossil fuel infrastructure puts
us on a path well above 1.5 degrees
celsius of warming we're already seeing
stronger storms and devastating fire
seasons with just one degree of warming
so keeping things below 1.5 should be
our goal well the report doesn't
actually say that i know but it should
have so the ipcc doesn't actually tell
us what we should do
more what the consequences are of what
we could do and speaking of the
consequences of our actions our actions
just aren't good enough to limit global
warming to what the entire world has
agreed
would be safe what the report does make
clear is that everyone's current climate
targets created for the paris agreement
also overshoot 1.5 degrees and make
limiting warming to 2 degrees difficult
so building new infrastructure needs to
be completely off the table
looking at you enbridge in the us thanks
to this lock called nepa the national
environmental policy act any federally
funded project has to perform an
environmental impact assessment this
report is pretty strong evidence that no
fossil fuel project should ever get
federal funding in the u.s again
whether that happens is still another
story but still and did you know that
other countries exist too that aren't
the us i had heard that yeah and around
the world countries are getting better
and better at talking about stopping
climate change and then still investing
in new fossil fuel infrastructure of
course it'd be pretty hypocritical of us
to knock talking about climate change
but what we really need is to replace
fossil fuels renewables everywhere we
can and according to this report that is
more doable now than ever before the
cost of solar wind and batteries have
plummeted in the last 20 years and as a
result we've been building more and more
of them
although if we zoom in a bit yeah just a
bit more you can see that despite all
this growth renewables are still a small
percentage of our overall energy mix now
i know what you're thinking we need to
increase those percentages as quickly
and cheaply as possible unfortunately
the report has just the figure for you
it packs in a whole load of information
so let's break it down
it shows just how much each approach for
decarbonization could cut emissions by
2030 so that's the length of each bar
the longer the bar the better
i've heard that before the colors of
each bar show how cost effective each
approach would be so blue bars mean
you're actually saving money compared to
what you're replacing whereas red bars
mean you're spending a lot more money so
in this case the bluer the bar the
better
i've not heard that before obviously
wind is crushing because wind turbines
are majestic and beautiful
yeah and solar is doing a stellar job
too so both have huge decarbonization
potential and often save us money this
decade but this figure is also
interesting to see what is
less helpful take carbon capture and
storage for example often held up as
some kind of magical silver bullet we
see here that its potential to cut
carbon is actually pretty small to make
matters worse it's seriously costly so
the only thing it actually has in common
with a silver bullet
is that it's pointlessly expensive okay
we gotta talk about nuclear i already
know someone's gonna give me a hard time
in the comments if we don't talk about
nuclear well it could certainly help
more than carbon capture and storage but
it's still pretty expensive and nothing
compared to solar and wind so take your
comments up with the ipcc now granted
this figure only takes us up to 2030
after which certain tech could become
more effective or more cheap but given
that we need to cut carbon as quickly as
possible and as much as possible
this is a pretty awesome cheat sheet on
how to do exactly that but just cutting
emissions isn't enough to get into that
we need to talk about net zero okay so
big picture carbon dioxide emissions are
building up in our atmosphere like water
filling up a glass the fuller the
atmosphere gets
the hotter the world gets
so just turn the tap off stop emitting
greenhouse gasses i said that already
yes that is exactly what we need to do
but unfortunately there are some carbon
dioxide emissions that we just can't get
rid of so we need to cut our carbon
emissions as much as we possibly can and
then we need to use some form of carbon
dioxide removal cdr to suck up that last
little bit of emissions that we can't
otherwise cut and this is what we call
net zero emissions
the report makes absolutely clear that
we need carbon dioxide removal it is
unavoidable if net zero co2 or
greenhouse gas emissions are to be
achieved
in other words if stopping global
warming is to be achieved which i mean
let's hope it is but in the very same
paragraph that the report points out
that we need carbon dioxide removal the
report also points out that our ability
to use this technology
depends on developing effective
approaches to address feasibility and
sustainability constraints in other
words we know we're going to need to
remove carbon from the atmosphere to
solve this problem but at the moment we
don't know how to do this so we should
probably work that out
asap
like the first two reports there isn't
anything new here we've been talking
about the need to phase out fossil fuels
for decades this report just piles
together all the evidence and there is a
lot of evidence that we need to stop
using fossil fuels as quickly as
possible this will require restructuring
how global and local economies work
rethinking how and what we build and
create and as we do that we cannot just
focus on reducing co2 molecules in the
atmosphere the whole point of this is to
build a livable world we can all enjoy
so that restructuring needs to be done
with equity and justice in mind
thanks so much for watching if you want
to learn more about the sixth assessment
report i made videos about part one and
two here and i put together a video on
exactly why the ipcc's reports are so
important which you can watch right here