In 2024 everyone one has a role to play in meeting our greatest challenge

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to improve their climate literacy so as to understand the projected impacts from the expanding climate crisis and how to adapt their workplaces in the face of these impacts.

As the Climate Crisis expands we need to do everything we can to reduce emissions.

This is the challenge in 2024, as outlined in the UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2023:

The lack of stringent emission reductions means that the required emission cuts from now to 2030 have increased significantly. To reach emission levels consistent with a below 2°C pathway in 2030, the cuts required per year are now 5.3 per cent from 2024, reaching 8.7 per cent per year on average for the 1.5°C pathway. To compare, the fall in total global GHG emissions from 2019 to 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic was 4.7 per cent (UNEP 2022).

This task involves:

Every government
Every local municipality
Every business
Every community
Every family
Every individual

Everyone has a part to play.

When it comes to individual action here are the top 10 choices individuals can make in order of impact:

Note: Governments play a critical role in enabling individuals to make these choices.

A note on individual action.

Research has been able to calculate the energy required for what is known as a decent living standard for an individual.

That is between 20-50 GJ/yr – as indicated by the blue bar in this graphic:

A just clean energy transition requires helping those below this threshold get the clean energy they need for a decent living standard and encouraging those consuming beyond this threshold to adopt the above consumption choices in order to cut excessive energy use.

Have you determined your contribution to the task at hand?