Thanks for playing!
We hope you’ve enjoyed thinking about what the rest of the century might look like, and that you’re inspired to have some influence in the real world.
The climate has already changed, and it will continue to change. But that doesn’t mean it’s over.
Imagine you’re driving on a highway. You start at a world that’s 1°C hotter than pre-industrial times. 1°C isn’t paradise, but it’s a pretty good place to live. But the further you drive from 1°C, the more difficult things get for us. We’re already driving on the highway.
The highway goes from here all the way to 4°C by the end of the century. 4°C sucks. We do not want to live there. 4°C doesn’t mean that the whole human race ends, but it does mean that we will have to withstand more disasters, more disease, more fights over scarce resources. Millions of people and animals will die, and life will be harder for most people. We want to get off the highway long before we get to 4°C.
Right now, in 2022, we’re coming up to the offramp that goes to 1.5°C. It is still plausible that we could take bold action now and get off the highway here. 1.5°C is a worse neighbourhood than 1°C, but it’s MUCH better than 4°C. We could adapt to 1.5°C. We could flourish.
And yes, at some point, we will have driven past the 1.5°C exit (we haven’t yet, but we’re getting close and haven’t even pulled into the slow lane yet). But when we drive past the 1.5°C exit, should we just throw our hands up and say “oh well, I guess we’re going to 4°C then”. No! We should try to get off at 1.6°C. Or 1.7°C. Or 1.8°C. Every 0.1°C matters, and we will have to keep fighting over each fraction of a degree. And at every single one of those exits, there are twisty side roads that lead to vastly different worlds. Worlds that are more or less equal, worlds with more or less biodiversity, worlds with more or less responsive governments and corporations and media machines. As well as fighting to limit degrees of temperature rise, efforts to address climate change are about making the future that we and those who come after us will share.
Climate change is made and experienced by people. How the future will play out is going to be shaped by choices taken by people today, and tomorrow, and the day after.
Our choices matter. It’s not over. There are many choices still ahead of us.
Now, make a choice in the real world.
