A Call to Action

Patrick Adam Lincoln,

National Director – Denmark

for the ScientistsWarning.org initiative

and author of the blog at http://www.2savehumanity.com

In this letter I provide recommendations (six tools) on what we as individuals can do to address the world’s climate crisis, which, if carried out by a sufficiently large portion of the population will improve our odds of averting potential catastrophe. In the second half of the letter, I provide evidence for the level of urgency of the need to take such action. I expect that most people are already familiar with the evidence for human caused climate change, but most will not be familiar with the severity of the problem and how important it is that we address it immediately. I therefore write to raise your awareness to the appropriate level which, if I have done my job right, will empower you to act as a global-minded citizen. We all have a part to play in the solution and I am hopeful that humanity will come out of the climate crisis alive on the other end, but we first must learn what is necessary and put these plans into action.

Introduction

You will need to be open to the reality that serious cuts in energy demand and hence a sacrifice of economic growth will be necessary in order to allow for the carbon free energy forms to become fully developed. At this time, the availability of non-carbon energy sources is not adequate, figure 1, but this is part of a broader problem of not prioritizing climate changing behavior. Our environmental impact in general will begin to be mitigated if we transition from the universally practiced philosophy of growth economics to one of ecological economics. By “ecological economics” I mean a practical economic approach that prioritizes ecological health over economic growth. This approach includes incentives and regulations that ensure world ecosystem health, as well as human well-being, is prioritized. Growth for its own sake is secondary. (The concept of ecological economics is promoted by Stuart Scott, producer of Climate Matters TV, and founder of the ScientistsWarning.org initiative.) Had we adopted ecological economics as early as 1950, we would likely not be in the dangerous situation we are in now. The long-term survival of our species will require that we all prioritize an ecological approach to living. Our future is in your hands.

As discussed in the second half of this letter, the climate summits of the world’s nations have at no time addressed the severity of the climate change problem. The trajectory of our current behavior, and those adopted (for example in the 2015 Paris Agreement) will potentially result in billions of human deaths, even based on conservative models. In the history of our planet, changes in climate are the common causes of extinctions, and this is the future we are making for ourselves if we carry on with emissions.

If you are skeptical of any of the claims so far, please skip ahead and read through the evidence in the second half of this letter. I need you to make solving the climate crisis your personal responsibility. So please do take the time to inform yourself fully of the severity of the crisis before you hear my recommendations on how we each can work to solve it. This is neither a small problem, nor someone else’s problem.

FIGURE 1

PART I: You have a part to play

I present these “six tools” to help you become an impactful part of the solution. This is how to be an ecologically-minded citizen, and that is what I expect of you.

Six Tools

Recognize that it will be necessary to sacrifice economic growth for decades so that we can give emission free energy sources a chance to replace the sources of energy that will destroy civilization. You may not vote for leaders who fail to espouse the importance of this point. Growth economy politics are not consistent with environmental consciousness.
Vote only for leaders who set solving the anthropogenic climate change problem as their highest priority. This means refusing to vote for leaders who fail to communicate how much time and how they specifically will work to solve the anthropogenic climate change crisis. Require the leaders of the world to use a majority of their time solving the anthropogenic climate change problem. Anthropogenic climate change is by far the hugest crises facing humanity and almost all the governments of the world are offering no solutions. The amount of time that the government spends on solving the different problems of our society should be proportional to the magnitude of the problems. Most leaders have failed to invest enough time to even understand the magnitude of the problem. So much delay and inaction has been generated by offering false solutions (such as the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement, etc). Solving the problem will necessarily mean decarbonizing our entire economy. Listen for this. Vote for this.
Spread the message that solving the climate crisis will necessarily mean decarbonizing our entire economy. Do this as if the lives of your children and grandchildren depends on it. I recommend sharing these six tools with 100 individuals. Take the time to actually sit down and have a chat with as many people as you can. Share several copies of this message, perhaps deliver one to each mailbox on your block. Join scientistswarning.org by endorsing the World scientists’ warning to humanity at http://www.scientistswarning.org/join/individual-endorsement-form/ You do not need to be a scientist to endorse the warning. A QR code to this link is included below at the end of Part I. I, like you, will be following through on approaches 1-6 of this list. In any case, the latest version of my recommendation to this point will be able to be seen at my blog www.2savehumanity.com , which can assist in digital sharing.
Accept and understand that some form of geoengineering, will likely be necessary to offset our current trajectory. Geoengineering projects, such as spraying the atmosphere near the poles with sulfur oxide particles may be a necessary action. (These particles are naturally released by volcanic eruptions and often result in temperature drops for months or years.) As it stands right now geoengineering is politically unpopular and it is important that the leaders of the world feel empowered to use this form of solution. You do not need to vote for leaders based on the opinion concerning point 4. If they use a majority of their work time on solving climate change, they will figure it out. I demand point 4 of the reader because I do not want the leaders of the world to feel pressured not to use geoengineering to solve our problems. I emphasize however that this is not an alternative to carbon emissions reduction. Rather, these two ideas must be simultaneously considered.
Reduce your carbon footprint, specifically your emissions, and inform others of your actions. In your efforts to reduce your emissions, you should make significant sacrifices. You will make yourself individually responsible for reducing your emissions. One of the reasons point 5 is very important is because being a heavy emitter of greenhouse gases is counterproductive to your work as a messenger for ecological economics. Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio have been heavily criticized for lecturing people on climate change while they simultaneously fly around in their private jets.The more we reduce our emissions, the more time will be available for our leaders and scientists to solve the problem. How much individuals are willing to sacrifice to make cuts in their emissions will ultimately be a personal choice. I avoid all driving that I can. I bicycle my 5-year-old daughter to her daycare and I bicycle to and from work (a few kilometers). I don’t drive my older children to their activities. Grocery shopping is done by bicycle. I work to keep my electricity consumption down, by avoiding use of the dryer, making sure that lights are not on unnecessarily and keeping track of our home electricity consumption on a daily basis. Even diet can make a huge difference. If every American ate three less cheeseburgers per week, it would be the equivalent of taking all of the American SUV’s off the road! I have cut all meat from my diet except sea food (which adds very little to my carbon budget compared to a vegan or vegetarian diet). I avoid dairy nearly every day, because cows cause a lot of methane emissions. I substitute soy milk for milk, and plant-based margarine as a substitute for butter. I don’t force this on my other family members, but I hope they see and learn from my example.Be aware that if you want to keep your carbon budget below the amount of emissions generated by the average person, then your annual carbon budget will instantly be destroyed by taking a long distance flight. If you can avoid it, do not fly. I am an American who lives in Denmark and I have been pushing for a stop to flights in my nuclear family, and I get a lot of pressure from my extended family back home to take flights. I anticipate that when this message is posted on my blog, that they will start to understand why I resist choosing to fly to the States. I admire professor Kevin Anderson greatly for his decision to not fly in airplanes. He calculated what type of emissions cuts it would take to meet the goals of the Paris agreement and he says, “because we have a carbon budget….as we step onto a plane we are saying to the poor people, less energy for you, poorer quality of life”. You can hear what he has to say about his decision to stop flying in this video [1] and hear what he has to say about the impacts of flying as they pertain to the poor as a consequence of the existing carbon budget in this video [2] (listen from 43:00 to 44:30).A good place to start looking for ways to reduce your emissions is https://www.drawdown.org/solutions [3]. Surprisingly, proper disposal of refrigerants is number one on the list. The coolants in freezers, refrigerators and air conditioners are extremely potent greenhouse gases. These gases need to be destroyed properly when these units are disposed, so make their disposal a priority of yours as an ecologically-minded citizen.
Recognize and accept that a global environmental authority, is probably necessary to address the anthropogenic climate change crisis. This would be similar to a group such as the U.S.’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but international in scope. This global environmental authority, would decide how the above mentioned geoengineering would be implemented (because it will affect different regions differently). The authority shall additionally be responsible for the enforcement of all international agreements concerning the environment and shall moreover, be endowed with significant teeth. We are an international community now and agreeing to sacrifice some decades of economic growth and a mutual willingness to not compete, will be essential to achieving our goals.Among the individuals who satisfy tools 1 and 2 with respect to winning your vote, prioritize voting for individuals who agree to work with such an authority. I seriously question whether the nations of the world would be willing to participate on this level of cooperation without establishing such an environmental authority. Such an international authority will help the nations of the world work for common goals and adopt philosophies of ecological economics. I recommend that the global environmental authority be headed by an official who is an expert in a relevant field (such as climatology, the energy sector or ecological economics). The position should be regularly changed out with a new expert every 4 years to avoid corruption.

Your Personal Obligation to Solve the Climate Crisis

As will be shown in Part II, the Climate Crisis is almost certainly a mass extinction event (one that likely includes humans). Read and understand that you are now empowered to be part of solving this problem. However, if you decide not to follow through with items 1-6, then I will hold you personally responsible for the destruction of human civilization. The reason I am so harsh on you is because if a sufficiently large portion of the population does not follow these guidelines or their equivalent then we will not solve the problem. I am doing my part and I am expecting you to do your part. Your individual efforts, political awareness and activism will be essential to enact change.

We at the ScientistsWarning.org initiative are working on interventions that nations can apply to alter civilization’s present disastrous course. Such interventions will allow nations to minimize present carbon emissions, maximize drawdown of past emissions, while maintaining economic stability. My hope is that the above six tools will help create sufficient public awareness to mobilize the political will among the leadership of nations.

The generation of a tool bag of such interventions, and their acceptance as a standard tool, was severely lacking at the Paris talks in 2015. The Paris Agreement was not a solution to eliminate the crisis because the nations of the world were given too much freedom to decide for themselves how to cut their emissions. Most nations chose proven to fail methods for cutting emissions and have adopted carbon budget plans which assume that future technology to remove massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere will come to the rescue. Such technology has not proven to be scalable, and even if it was, the magnitude of the solution being proposed does not prevent climate crisis events from ravaging the most vulnerable nations. I urge those who work on agreements concerning greenhouse gas emissions, to apply the above six tools, and recognize the need for a global environmental authority.

Join the Scientists Warning

PART II: The Magnitude of the Climate Crisis

In this portion of the letter, I explain the problem, what progress has been made so far, and urge the adoption of the six tools mentioned above. Awareness of the magnitude of the climate crisis is the first step in reducing the risk of what otherwise appears to be an inevitable collapse of human civilization. This message is an attempt to organize humanity to prevent our extinction.

The Enormity of the Problem

There already has been an enormous contribution of carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases, by human beings to our atmosphere. The relentless rate, can been seen in figure 2. The current amount of CO₂ present exceeds all others in history and is accelerating a warming trend that is likely to result in a world-wide increase in temperature beyond which there may be no turning back on any timescale meaningful to humans.

FIGURE 2

The human contribution is at least 3 parts per million per year of CO₂. Note that normal would be below 300 ppm and we have risen to over 400. However, CO₂is not the only greenhouse gas humans have been expelling. Human activity also includes polluting the air with N₂O(nitrous oxide), CH₄ (methane), chlorofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and SF₆ (sulfur hexafluoride).

To properly assess the impact of the combined effect of all these greenhouse gases in an easier way we often express the total impact of the greenhouse gases as if it were all carbon dioxide alone. This way of simplifying the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is usually written as “CO₂e in ppm,” read as “carbon dioxide equivalent in parts per million.” In table 1 below [5], the other gases are included in the column most to the left. The chart compares what temperature is expected when we reach these levels. The temperature increases listed are compared to the preindustrial levels (1750-1850 surface temperature averages). We have to compare to the past because the temperature has already increased.

This chart is intended to work as a predictor of future temperatures, given that the concentration of greenhouse gases stabilizes at a fixed value. Given these conditions, the average surface temperature of the earth would continue to warm, until the energy that earth receives from the sun is in balance with the energy that the earth radiates to space (this is called equilibrium). This process takes approximately 1000 years on a planet with ice caps [6]. As an example, let’s suppose that humanity wises up enough to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations when we reach 500 ppm CO₂e. Then according to the table we can read that there is a 96 % chance that we will reach 2°C or more above the preindustrial average, a 44 % chance that we will reach 3°C or more above the preindustrial average and a 24 % chance that we will reach 4°C or more above the preindustrial average. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association [7] we were already at 493 ppm CO₂e as of 2017.

We therefore have a 96 % chance that we will reach a 2°C world assuming we instantly cut our emissions drastically enough to stabilize at the current concentration of greenhouse gases. That might sound strange to the reader who is familiar with the Paris agreement of 2015 which was a legal agreement binding the nations of the world to no more than 2°C warming, and striving to keep the warming below 1.5°C . As we shall see, in order to justify being able to burn fossil fuels now, the nations of the world are assuming that future technology that sucks CO₂ out of the atmosphere which is projected to cost hundreds of trillions of dollars will come to the rescue. Why should we be content to let our leaders get away with assuming that we will develop an industry that will remove a sizable fraction of all the byproducts of nearly all of the industries on our planet combined? Why should we be content to let our leaders get away with tacitly pouring hundreds of trillions of dollars of debt onto our children and grandchildren? I do not believe that this is acceptable. We need to demand more from our leaders.

Given the situation we are in, one might consider that trying to limit warming to 2°C is an impossible goal. From the table, we see that there is an 11 % chance of reaching a 4°C world or worse, assuming we severely reduced the release of greenhouse gases today. Such a reduction is not probable without a worldwide shift in priorities. But, how bad would a 4°C worldwide temperature increase be?

The 4°C World

It is widely accepted that a 4°C world is not compatible with human civilization. Four degrees may not sound like much, but because the ocean is extremely good at absorbing heat, it turns out that a 4 degrees increase globally means about twice that increase on land (about 8°C !). Please study this 2014 cartoon [8] which is useful in explaining why 4°C makes a big difference.

Cartoon

Here, “86 years” corresponds to 2100. For 2100, the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) report predicted a 4°C degree world assuming we take no action to address the rate at which we burn fossil fuels. The cartoon equates 4.5°C with what it calls “one ice age unit.” One ice age unit in the colder direction corresponds to the last ice age. Four ice age units in the colder direction corresponds to a time when glaciers covered the earth from pole to pole. Two ice age units in the warmer direction corresponds to the cretaceous period, “hot house earth,” when sea levels were 200 meters higher and there were palm trees at the poles. The question the author is trying to hint at is, what will the world look like when we hit 4.5°C ? If the reader is interested in having a look at a more thorough description of what a 4°C world would look like, I recommend the referenced studies [9]. But for now I will provide a brief description along with some quotes from some experts from relevant fields.

Firstly, we should expect an increased difficulty growing food. The combination of sea level rise and increased frequency of crop killing heatwaves will be devastating [9]. There will be hurricanes and typhoons which are a continent’s diameter in size (based on paleoclimate data) [11]. There will be a mass extinction event which will impact the food chain and hence our own possible extinction [12]. Below is a series of quotes from experts on this topic.

“A 4 degrees C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond adaptation, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable.”

– Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change in Britain [6]

“Some scientists are saying that we should make plans to adapt to a hotter world. While prudent, one wonders what portion of the world could adapt to such a world. My view is that it is just a few thousand people seeking refuge in the Arctic or Antarctica.”

– Ira Liefer, PhD (Atmospheric Science) [13]

“What is the difference between two degrees (of temperature increase) and four degrees? The difference is human civilization.”

– Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and former climate adviser to the German Chancellor [14]

“A 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation. There is no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible.”

– The World Bank [15]

Skynews also has a video which informs the public about the dangers of a 4°C or above world. You can see that video here [16]. The video explains how “above 4 degrees we are looking at a vastly different planet.”

The Tipping Point

It should be clear to the reader by now that a 4°C world should be avoided at all costs. Even as I was trying to complete this document, a new article was published in the esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The article is titled “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene” [17] published August 6^th 2018. In the article the authors stress that there exists a “tipping point,” where if the average surface temperature of the earth were to become too high, then the earth would undergo irreversible runaway warming caused by positive feedback effects. (For example, forest fires caused by global warming are a positive feedback effect. Warming causes forest fires, which releases CO₂, which causes more warming, which causes more forest fires and on and on.) Tipping points are inherently difficult to calculate, but that is exactly what this article was an attempt to do. The article illustrated the situation with figure 3 [17].

FIGURE 3

This figure illustrates two possible pathways of the earth’s average surface temperature through time, one where humans practice stewardship of the earth system leading to a stabilized earth and another where emissions push us over the tipping point threshold and irreversibly into a “hothouse earth” environment, where a hothouse earth environment is a world with an average surface temperature which is well over 4°C.

In the article they estimate the tipping point to be at around 2°C, but the they don’t really know exactly where it is and they cannot promise that the tipping point is not below 2°C! Taken directly from the article: “This analysis implies that, even if the Paris Accord target of a 1.5 °C to 2.0 °C rise in temperature is met, we cannot exclude the risk that a cascade of feedbacks could push the Earth System irreversibly onto a “Hothouse Earth” pathway. The challenge that humanity faces is to create a “Stabilized Earth” pathway that steers the Earth System away from its current trajectory toward the threshold beyond which is Hothouse Earth”. New knowledge impacts probability and if we knew that the tipping point was at 2°C, then the implication of Table 1 would be that the column of 2°C now corresponds to 3°C and 4°C. To make it easier on the reader, I include a table showing what this would look like, Table 2. This would imply that even if we slashed greenhouse gas emissions enough to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations today, we would still have about a 95 % chance of hitting 4°C or above.

TABLE 2

Stabilization level in parts per million	2 °C	3 °C	4 °C
450	78	78	78
500	96	96	96
550	99	99	99
650	100	100	100
750	100	100	100

The risk of entering a 4°C or above world is unacceptably high. If you are skeptical of this, note that multiple sources which have used different methodologies converge on conclusions consistent with this claim. I am speaking here of results from the top scientists in climatology. For example, according to Michael Mann, we will hit a 2°C world (with respect to an average taken over the Northern Hemisphere) as early as 2036 given our current fossil fuel burning trajectory [19]. That’s just 18 years from now! In the same article he calculated that we are already locked in for reaching a 2°C world by 2100 (again with respect to the Northern Hemisphere).

“We have ZERO years left to solve climate change. Emissions have to come down steadily in the years ahead to avoid committing to catastrophic climate change impacts.”

– Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmosphere Science, Pennsylvania State University

Patrick T. Brown and Ken Caldeira used statistical analysis to conclude that there is a 93 % chance [20] that we will hit a 4°C world or worse by 2100 given that we continue burning fossil fuels on the business as usual trajectory. There are worse predictions elsewhere. The article “Nonlinear climate sensitivity and its implications for greenhouse warming” [21] concludes that a “business as usual” emissions pathway would lead to a 4.78°C to a 7.36°C world by 2100. This was reviewed by Michael Mann who said of the study that it was “sound and the conclusion quite defensible”. [22]

We could already be beyond the point of no return at this moment and just not know it, and you have every right to be upset at your government for failing to take this problem seriously.

Insufficient Progress and its Consequences

CO₂is increasing in atmospheric concentration at a rate of 3 parts per million per year. Figure 4 shows global energy consumption over time (all sources; cars, power plants, etc). We are not even halfway addressing this problem! While both fossil fuels and carbon free energy sources are growing, the fossil fuels have a gigantic head start. We will need to be emboldened to sacrifice growth in fossil fuels consumption in order to give carbon free energy sources a chance to catch up.

FIGURE 4

The Paris Agreement of 2015 does not address this problem. James Hansen, the father of modern climatology, speaks very critically of the Paris Agreement [23]. Essentially, the world’s leaders are doing nearly the same thing they agreed to in 1992, and clapped each other on the back, while emissions just keep increasing year after year. They propose to remove CO₂ out of the atmosphere with unproven technologies which will cost hundreds of trillions of dollars to stabilize the earth climate system (assuming we can actually do that).

There has not been adequate funding set aside to address the creation and implementation of carbon reducing technology. This source [24] lists the climate change performance index for all the nations of the world. They left first, second, and third place intentionally empty on their homepage, because as they put it “no nation is doing enough to prevent dangerous climate change”.

We live in a world where you can buy bottled water that is sent all the way from Fiji, people regularly drive SUVs, and airlines promote frequent flyer programs. There are no restrictions on human diet, no incentives not to have children, and next to no government education programs to help people minimize on energy consumption in their own homes.

This problem is NOT being taken seriously considering the extreme dangers we face.

Ecological Economics over Growth Economics

Having a worldwide perspective and a long view of our future, can embolden individuals with a sense of empowerment to reduce their environmental impacts. It can be hard to give up the luxury of flying in planes, or having goods shipped all the way from China. The politics of economic growth can be a powerful force, and the wealthy elite will not want to give up short term economic growth, nor do our world leaders who campaign and govern on a philosophy of growth economics and international competition. But we do not have to remain held hostage to GDP and unlimited growth economics thinking. The addiction to short term economic growth locks us into trading a habitable planet for money. To cure this addiction, we must learn to sacrifice short term economic growth in order to allow for maturity of carbon-free energy sources along with cuts in energy demand. Humanity’s survival will depend on learning this.

To be sure, the regions of the world which are closer to the equator are more vulnerable to climate change. During the international climate meeting in Copenhagen in 2009, the Africans protested because they were aware that the agreement was a suicide pact for Africa. Citing the IPCC report which said that a 2°C world would mean 3.5°C for much of Africa, they chanted, “one Africa, one degree, and 2 degrees is suicide.”[25]. We all know that the Paris agreement ended with a 2°C limit, and we have already arrived in a 1°C world, a world where Somalia among other nations are being hit hard by extreme drought. I find it upsetting that we have let down an entire continent in this way. It makes me wonder how much people are willing to do to push the limits to achieve economic growth.

I understand why bad choices were made and I understand the forces at play. This crisis pits western world leaders who are spoiled by riches in the middle of a conflict between wealthy business owners, the short term economic interests of western nations and the long term interests of another continent (Africa).

We as individuals can do our part, but we cannot sit back and hope that our leaders will do their part. As a concerned citizen, you will be vocal on these points, bring them up at town hall meetings, and insist that your leaders will make these their highest priorities if they want your vote. So far, all of them are still making the situation worse with their current policies. They have not written a survivable future for us. We must raise awareness and be more active. All of us.

Our Chance to Prevent the Mass Extinction

Despite there being a fair chance that we are beyond the tipping point that will push us into the 4°C world and beyond, and despite the social machinery that has addicted us to short term economic growth at the expense of our habitable world, there is a chance we can prevent our extinction and prevent the collapse of civilization.

While the costs of carbon dioxide removal are estimated at hundreds of trillions of dollars, a possible solution via solar radiation management (shading) is much cheaper. There is a relatively inexpensive geoengineering trick, which involves blocking sun light near the poles which in my opinion improves our odds. According to James Hansen (the father of modern climatology), David Keith has done the most credible work in the field of geoengineering. So I believe what David Keith has to say. [26] There is a good chance that sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide particles can be sprayed into the atmosphere and engineered to migrate to the poles and to levitate at appropriate layers of the atmosphere so as not to damage the ozone layer. While this sounds like an easy fix, we must be cautious, because these methods are theoretical and are not proven in practice yet. There is no way we can be sure that it would give the desired results without unacceptable side effects.

Modelling of such methods [27] points to a world where temperature can be brought under control, but where precipitation patterns are still severely altered. We also know that while this technique can help to lower the global average surface temperature, it does nothing to prevent CO₂from acidifying the oceans (the pH value of the oceans has been lowered from 8.2 to 8.1). The only way to test these methods would be to experiment with them on a large scale. One of the major hazards associated with researching this technology is that knowledge of its existence can prevent humans from reducing emissions. It is exactly this moral hazard which has made this type of geoengineering massively politically incorrect to speak of. Our inability to cut emissions is preventing us from researching a promising form of technology, which has the potential of saving us if indeed we passed the hot house earth tipping point already.

Conclusion

I have proposed some solutions, and I have had a few things to say about what we are up against, and what lessons humanity should take from this crisis as we attempt to avoid a long term extinction. We need to recognize that we are collectively suffering from a mental illness. We go about our day to day business driving our cars, flying in our planes, eating meat heavy diets, and we leave the lights on in our houses when it is unnecessary. Yet at the same time, our behavior is destroying our habitat. Some of us are more aware of the consequences than others. We are all active participants in the extinction, and while that may sound extreme to the reader, it is a conclusion that I cannot avoid given the evidence. We cannot justify our participation in this greatest crime in history because we feel powerless to do anything about it.

Yet, as an individual, even if you went 100 % carbon neutral it would not put a dent in other peoples’ behavior. The consequences of such a move would merely be destructive of your social life. Instead of that extreme, make it your ambition to recruit others to a low-emissions lifestyle and have it be an overt part of your personal philosophy. This is my call to action. Take this action now. The probability of human extinction will decrease significantly if we act immediately, both in our individual efforts, and in our efforts to compel our leaders to follow through with the six tools listed above. I hope all my readers will take those tools to heart and to the hearts of their respective representatives.

This is where my message ends. Remember to share this message. Remember also that success is much more likely to happen if we make an effort to commit to our goals immediately. If we tell ourselves that we will start tomorrow, we are much more likely to fail.

Sincerely,

Patrick Adam Lincoln