Major leadership challenges ahead

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.

“Business-as-usual” since the Covid-19 pandemic has created this situation as described in the most recent UNEP Emissions Gap Report:

“The lack of stringent emission reductions means that the required emission cuts from now to 2030 have increased significantly.”

Study the graphic. We are going to miss the required 2024 targets pictured here.

Here is our current situation:

We also have our first projections for 2024’s fossil CO2 emissions, which make up the largest portion of global GHG emissions:

There are enormous consequences to the global and regional economy as a result of this, mainly from lost productivity and large scale infrastructure damage from extreme events.

The leadership task ahead has become decidedly more complex, as now, not only do we need to prevent a very bad situation from becoming decidedly worse – every 0.1°C matters very much – we now also need to deal with the consequences of a world at these new heating thresholds.

“Global warming, reaching 1.5°C in the near-term, would cause unavoidable increases in multiple climate hazards and present multiple risks to ecosystems and humans (very high confidence).”

IPCC 2022 Adaptation Report

Has this conversation entered your boardroom chat yet?