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Thanks for accessing this resource.

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How to use this resource

This presentation is intended to be used with this script. The primary audience is someone you want to convince to care about climate and take part in the climate movement - think of it as the moral case for climate action.

There are 2 parts to the presentation:

Part 1 (The science / The North Star) is about grounding your audience into climate science and clearly lay out the goal humanity must accomplish,
Part 2 (Why care / How we fix it) is about providing a simple framework to help people navigate the really difficult question of “what do we do”

The “what to do” part is intentionally kept high-level - we don’t want to be prescriptive about the course of action, the goal is to encourage people to take the next step in their climate journey, wherever they may be.

Possible uses for this presentation are:

Kicking-off a climate action meeting at your workplace
Pitching to a particular stakeholder that you need on your side before you present your business case.

We encourage you to personalise the presentation according to your style and intended audience. It can be used with the current WorkforClimate branding, or you can adapt it with your own branding. Please note, the presentation and the script are under Creative Commons licence BY-NC-SA. You may reuse them, as long as you give appropriate credit, do not use the material for commercial purposes, and distribute your contribution under the same licence. We took inspiration from work by Magelan.tech ourselves.

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Climate Change

The case for action

March 2022 - 415 ppm

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The science.

The North Star.

Why care.

How we fix it.

1.

2.

3.

4.

THE CASE FOR CLIMATE ACTION

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Climate Change:

The science

Source: Environmental Graphiti

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From -12 000 to 1900, we have enjoyed a remarkably stable climate

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From -12 000 to 1900, we have enjoyed a remarkably stable climate

Homo Sapiens appears

Stable Climate

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From 1900, we started using fossil fuels massively

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Until the 1800s, the world’s energy had come from burning trees for heat and tool manufacturing.

In 1784, James Watt invented the efficient steam engine, and with that humans were now able to convert existing fossil fuels - first coal, and later oil and gas - into mechanical work. For example, lifting very heavy objects, or turning the wheels of a very heavy train.

We started building machines to dig up more of these fossil fuels, and this led to an exponential growth in our energy usage.

If you look closer on the graph, you will notice that the discovery of new types of fuels such as oil and gas did not replace the use of existing fuels. It just fuelled additional growth.

And if you want to spot renewable sources of energy, you might need to grab your glasses. Yep, they are the small bits at the top, and they have been stacking up on top of fossil fuels which never stopped growing.

We use these fossil fuels for basically everything in our life. We use them to power our homes, to fly planes and drive our cars. If you look around you, every object in your home required fossil fuels at some point to make them.

So fossil fuels have been really helpful. Unfortunately, this comes at a high price.

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By burning these fossil fuels, we transferred carbon from the soil into the atmosphere

C

O

Carbon from fossil fuels (in the soil)

Air

O

C

Carbon Dioxide

(Atmosphere)

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Adding this CO2 to the atmosphere causes warming of the system

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That concentration is the green line on this graph. It is measured in parts per million. For one million molecules in the atmosphere, today 415 of them are CO2. So again, for every tonne of CO2 we add to the atmosphere, that number keeps rising.

The other thing you need to know about CO₂ is that it’s a greenhouse gas. It means that it has a distinctive feature of retaining the radiation arriving on Earth from the sun.

Imagine our atmosphere is a blanket. Every year, we wrap an extra layer of this blanket, so we keep more and more heat in the system.

On the graph you can see very clearly the link between the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the average temperature.

The link between the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the average temperature has been established by the scientific community since the 1850s.

We’ve known about this for more than 150 years. [PAUSE]

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The warming is unequivocal

Year

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We are �at 1.1°

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We are �at 1.1°

Australia is at �1.4° already

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A few more degrees

What difference

does it make?

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The ice age continent of Sahul. Damian O'Grady, Michael Bird

A big

one.

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THE CASE FOR CLIMATE ACTION

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Climate Change:

The North Star

Source: Environmental Graphiti

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The North Star

Stay below

2°

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Science on climate change tells us that we should aim at capping the warming at 2 degrees.

This is the threshold that pretty much every country in the world - Australia included - agreed not to exceed when they signed into the Paris agreement in 2015.

2 degrees is already a world that is profoundly different from the one we know today. And the difference between a 1.5 world and a 2 degrees world is massive.

For example, 1.5 and 2 degrees is the difference between having a Great Barrier Reef and losing it entirely.

The other reason why the 2 degrees threshold was chosen is because any warming above this threshold increases the likelihood of exceeding some very dangerous tipping points, which could see our climate spiral out of control.

In other words, past 2 degrees, it’s pretty much game over. [PAUSE]

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Here is our current emissions trajectory

Annual CO2 emissions

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And here is the path we must take

Annual CO2 emissions

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We need to achieve

NET ZERO

It’s not too late to act

Photo by Martin Magnemyr on Unsplash

AMPLIFY YOUR CLIMATE IMPACT

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Climate Change:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Climate Haiku – Kim Nicholas

THE CASE FOR CLIMATE ACTION

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So, to sum up, I’m going to use this framework that a brilliant climate communicator came up with.

Here’s the bottom line.

It’s warming. We’re already at 1.1 degree warming. 5 degrees is what separates our climate today from an ice age. Our human civilization would not exist in a +4 or 5 degree world.

It’s us. Humans are entirely responsible for the shifting climate. This is happening because we are hooked on fossil fuels.

We’re sure. There is a 100% consensus amongst scientists.

It’s bad. Unless we start taking drastic action, we are heading into a world that is not desirable for anyone.

We can fix it. Not only we can fix it, but we have the single most exciting opportunity to reverse the trend, change the course of history and safeguard our future and our children’s.

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Photo by Faris Mohammed on Unsplash

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.”

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Data Sources

Slide 4 - Climate Institute

Slide 5 - Our World in Data

Slide 7 - Climate Central – Carbon & Temperature

Slide 8 - NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)

Slide 9 – IPCC

Slide 10 – Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology (BOM)

Slide 16 – Our World in Data – CO2 Emissions

Slide 18 – IPCC

Slide 19 – IPCC

Slide 22 – Our World in Data – based on Robbie Andrews & Global Carbon Project

What can I do?

Cut my carbon

Push for change

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This presentation takes inspiration from work by Magelan.tech and is licenced under

You may re-use and remix this presentation

As long as you give appropriate credit

You do not use the material for commercial purposes

You distribute your contribution under the same licence

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