November 2020 Challenge: Educating myself on climate change
”Climate change is our biggest problem”,
“We need to stay within 1-2 degrees Celsius”,
“We need to follow the Paris agreement”,
We all know that climate change is a massive and very scary problem but I’ve been struggling to really and truly grasp it.
What can I do?
It often seems as if the problem is so big, we can’t even address it.
Talking to a friend the other day, she said:
Climate change just feels overwhelming, I’ve decided to put my head in the sand on this one.
I get that, I feel the same. So just like my vegan month helped me remove my beliefs that being a vegan is ‘hard’. My intention now is to get a clear understanding of what climate change is, and what climate action, actually looks – or can look – like.
Over the last few years, the framework for sustainable development goals has spread and become a cornerstone in many businesses’ strategies and plans.
Many businesses I work with have plug themselves into the framework. This is amazing; Identifying one’s purpose, and seeing how that ties into our planetary mission is powerful.
Goal nr. 13 is Climate Change.
And this is where I find the problem with these goals. In their current layout, they all feel equally important. I’m thinking climate change is underlying most of the other goals. Or that most of the other goals tie into climate change?
November 2020: The Month of Climate Action
So I’ve decided to go dedicate this month to educating myself on the science of climate change and climate action.
Every day, I’ll look into something related to climate change. It’s obviously a massive topic, and there’s no way I can understand it all. I was listening to an interview with the founder of Beyond Meat and he talked about: You need to absorb yourself into the problem, let it become all you think about. (at 10.25 min).
I will study reports and materials primarily from:
- from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), Exponential Roadmap Initiative (https://exponentialroadmap.org/)
- Stockholm Resilience Centre: https://www.stockholmresilience.org/
Edit: Mid-month, a friend recommended this newly-released (so far, fabulous) book. It’s in Swedish, but its title translates into something like “Exponential climate action – How we can stop climate change quick enough, and how you build pioneering sustainable businesses.”
It’s the perfect book for my monthly project, and I’ll be focusing on this one rest of the month.
Edit2 Feb 2020: The above mentioned book is being translated into English! 🥳