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STUDENTS FOR FUTURE FREIBURG
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Title Slide That´s how bad it is The current situation
Our options
What we can achieve
Image Source: Climate Stripes, Ed Hawkins. License CC-BY 4.0 Climate Stripes by Ed Hawkins (University of Reading), CC-BY 4.0
Content Slide 1 Climate Crisis Climate Stripes by Ed Hawkins (University of Reading), CC-BY 4.0 Current global warming Source: Copernicus Global Temperature Trend Monitor Bildquelle: Climate Stripes, Ed Hawkins. License CC-BY 4.0 Currently, the global mean temperature is 1.21°C above the pre-industrial level. 1.5°C will be reached around 2034.
If we keep on emitting as much as currently, we will overshoot the political target of 1.5°C substantially.
Masking effect Burning fossil fuels produces aerosols emissions which reflect sunlight into space, thereby cooling the earth´s atmosphere.
This means that by stopping to burn fossil fuels, the earth will heat up by another 0.5°C. Even though this does not mean that
the effort to reduce the use of fossil fuels isn´t good or necessary, the masking effect needs to be accounted for when looking
at the expected warming in the next decades.
Source: Samset, B.H. et. al: Climate Impacts From a Removal of Anthropogenic Aerosol Emissions
Content Slide 1 Climate crisis Pattern Effect Source: Zhou, Chen et.al.: Greater commited warming after accounting for the pattern effect Until now, global warming hasn´t happened equally depending on the region. When visualising previous heating patterns, zones can be identified that have warmed up by a much lower amount. Due to their apperance like fingerprints on the map, many researchers call them just that.
Partly the reason for these fingerprints are stable, bright cloud formations. Climate models show though, that these won´t stay stable for longer periods of time - due to climate change. Thus, these areas will also warm up as the cloud formations disappear.
This leads to an additional warming of about 0.3°C.
Commited Warming Our emissions until now lead to a commited warming of 2.01°C.
It consists of the current warming, mask and pattern effect.
Image Source: Climate Stripes, Ed Hawkins. License CC-BY 4.0 Climate Stripes by Ed Hawkins (University of Reading), CC-BY 4.0
Content Slide 1 Global Biodiversity Crisis Depending on the animal, the extenction rates are currently between 10 and 100 times higher than 10,000 years ago.
This puts us into the 6th mass extinction - which ich entirely due to anthropogenic (i.e. human-made) causes.
Source: Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
Content Slide 1 Global Biodiversity Crisis Loss of natural areas due to
soil sealing and deforestation
Source: Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES):
All image sources: pexels.com
Use of pesticides and monocropping
in agriculature
Eutrophication of waterways
and soil due to nitrogen input
Hunting endangered
species
Climate change:
More extreme weather events
Climate change:
Increase in ocean temperature
Climate change:
Soil salinization
Erosion due to
groundwork
Content Slide 1 Global Biodiversity Crisis All these courses are mutually reinforcing.
Additionally mass extinction isn´t linear but cascading. This means, that the extinction of one species leads to the extinction of many others.
Thus, the whole system becomes increasingly unstable and thus more vulnerable e.g. to pandemics..
Source: Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
Content Slide 1 Impacts of the ecological crises Food Insecurity The probability of so-called "multiple breadbasket failures" increases substantially.
At a 50% percent chance, the production of wheat and corn will abrutly decrease by 10%.
Source: Quiggin, Daniel et.al.: What near-term climate impacts should worry us most? Agriculture Fields in Central Poland (NASA) Image Source: Agricultural Fields in Poland. NASA
Content Slide 1 Impacts of the ecological crises Mass Migration Currently, 0.8% of global land area is considered uninhabitable.
Scientists expect this to increase to 17% by 2070 - this affects 3.5 billion people
Source: Quiggin, Daniel et.al.: What near-term climate impacts should worry us most? Simpson Desert, Australia NASA Image Source: Simpson Desert, Australia. NASA
Content Slide 1 Impacts of the ecological crises Coast Floodings At one meter of global sea rise, the probability of a once-in-a-century flooding increases by 40 times in Shanghai, 200 times in New York and 1000 times in Kalkutta.
The surface area less than one meter above the sea surface is currently inhabitated by 230 million people.
Source: Quiggin, Daniel et.al.: What near-term climate impacts should worry us most? Floods Swamp Historic City in Thailand. NASA Image Source: Floods Swamp Historic City in Thailand. NASA
Content Slide 1 Our options To mitigate the effects of the climate crisis, immediate measures need to be taken to reduce greenhouse gasses.
To limit warming to 1.5°C in the long run, emissions need to be lowered by 43% in the next eight years - till 2030. Net-zero needs to be accomplished by 2050.
These calculations target 1.5°C warming long-term, but allow for a greater warming in the meantime ("limited overshoot"). Additionally, the probability for this path is set to as low as >= 50%.

Whats´s important to keep in mind: Even 1.5°C warming means catastrophic consequences for lots of people today and in the future, but every tenth degree more leads to millions of additional affected people.
Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): Mitigation of Climate Change 2022. Summary for Policy Makers
Content Slide 1 Measures that are most effective Extending
wind energy
All image sources: pexels.com Extending
solar energy
Renaturation and recultivation
of ecosystems
Reducing the conversion
of forest areas.
Carbon storage
in agriculture
Changing industrially
used fuels
Reducing the use and emission
of fluorid greenhouse gases
Changing our
diet
Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): Mitigation of Climate Change 2022. Summary for Policy Makers
Content Slide 1 Our options Additional to the necessary big changes, there are simple, easily and fast implementable measures that reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a relevant amount.

For example, a speed limit of 100km/h on german motorways would lead to a reduce in emissions of about 6.2 million tons of carbon dioxide - that´s 14% of total carbon dioxide emissions on the motorway and 1% of total german emissions.
Source: Umweltbundesamt: Klimaschutz durch Tempolimit
Content Slide 1 What we can achieve The most important reason for climate protection is the mitigation of the mentioned consequences due to the climate catastrophy.
Additionally, transformation towards a climate just society leads to other, concrete advantages. For example, less air pollution due to using emission-free modes of transportation and renewable energies can prevent up to 6.5 million premature deaths - every year.
Even though the goal of creating jobs can and should be considered critically, the notion that energy and transport transformation would lead to mass joblessness is baseless since this exact transformation will create millions of new jobs world-wide.
Sources: Eloise Howse et al 2021 Environ. Res. Lett. 16 065002
Landrigan P J et al 2018 The Lancet Commission on pollution and health Lancet 391 462–512
Höhne Prof. Dr. Niklas et al 2018 Climate Opportunity Report New Climate Institute
Content Slide 1 What we can achieve Especially in cities - like Freiburg - transforming traffic towards more public transport and non-motorised traffic leads to better quality of life. Citizens spend less time in traffic jams, air quality gets better and noise emissions decrease.
Besides preventing premature deaths, burden of disease - both mental and physical diseases - decreases, wide-spread diseases like arteriosclerosis and heart attacks appear less often and less severe, the health system is reliefed.
A climate just transformation additionally creates the chance to reduce global injustice and distribute wealth as well as power more equally.
Sources: Floater G et al 2016 Co-benefits of urban climate action London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.
Robinson, M., Shine, T. Achieving a climate justice pathway to 1.5 °C. Nature Clim Change 8, 564–569 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0189-7
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