This month on Thursday, 21st September, around the world, people will be doing whatever they can to give the planet a chance to breathe, by taking a break from burning fossil fuels. Zero Emissions Day was begun in Nova Scotia in 2008, as a practical way to ‘light a candle, rather than curse the darkness’, as one might say! It is no secret that the world is burning up. Global warming, or (global boiling, as Antonio Gutierrez, the United Nations Secretary General, is now calling it,) has given us record breaking levels of rain, wind and heat (depending on where you live) and one of the prime reasons for these accelerating extremes are greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Zero Emissions Day gets its name from the global scientific requirement that humanity must reduce current greenhouse gas emissions to ‘zero’, ie. the level we emitted before the Industrial Revolution, by the year 2050. Zero Emissions Day is a good time to think: ‘how can I play my part to avoid life becoming hell on earth for our children and grandchildren?’
The graph below gives a sense of the challenge which is before us all. The greenhouse gas burden of each sector is listed, namely Energy, Industry, Buildings, Transport, Food and then Nature Based Sources. Below the zero emissions line are Carbon Sinks and Removal which are ways (such as permanent forestry) of soaking up unavoidable GHG emissions which are created by growing food, an essential activity for humans to live.
The radical changes society needs to make to reach zero GHG emissions by 2050 will test our capability of ‘loving our neighbour as ourselves’, perhaps more than any other experience to date. For all our difficulties with the rainy Irish summer we have just had, southern societies are suffering more acutely from global extremes of heat, drought and famine. Paradoxically, Irish tourism is forecast to benefit from a 9pc increase in visitor numbers, as Cyprus, Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal become too hot for vacations. (E.U. Joint Research Centre 2023). The moral questions for all Irish people, especially those claiming to be Christian, is, will be empathise with those who are suffering the most from ‘global boiling’, or will we turn our backs on these victims because there is a short term economic gain for Ireland?