Next week, on the 7th June, I’m attending a talk by Bill McKibben co-founder of 350.org called “Do the Math” and it promises to be a very interesting event.

“Do the Math” has been published in many places and is featured on the cover of Rolling Stone. Read the intro here: But what does it all mean?

 We have 5 times more fossil fuels than it is safe to burn!

In a nutshell, it boils down to Three simple numbers

2 degrees — In Copenhagen, almost every country agreed to a 2 degree C (3.6F) target for temperature rise. We have already raised the temperature 0.8 degrees C, and that has caused far more damage than most scientists expected. A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere over the oceans is a shocking five percent wetter, loading the dice for devastating floods.

565 gigatons — Scientists estimate that humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by mid-century and still have some reasonable hope of staying below two degrees. But since we’ve increased the Earth’s temperature by 0.8 degrees so far, we’re currently less than halfway to the target. But, in fact, computer models calculate that even if we stopped increasing CO2 now, the temperature would still rise another 0.8 degrees, as previously released carbon continues to overheat the atmosphere. That means we’re already 3/4 of the way to the 2 degree target.

2,795 gigatons– The Carbon Tracker Initiative, a team of London financial analysts and environmentalists estimate that proven coal, oil, and gas reserves of the fossil- fuel companies, and the countries (think Venezuela or Kuwait) that act like fossil-fuel companies, equals about 2795 gigatons, or five times the amount we can burn to avoid 2 degrees.

The problem

• Known reserves of oil, coal and gas companies exceed 2,795 gigatons of CO2, or 5 times what we can burn if we want a decent shot at avoiding runaway climate change.
• The fossil-fuel industry is allowed to dump its main waste, carbon dioxide, for free. They have no economic incentive to stop business as usual.
• Our political system is broken and has not yet grasped the seriousness of the problem.

The solution

• Only a global movement can gain enough strength to change our politics.
• A price on carbon is necessary to make renewable energy price competitive with fossil fuels, and to convince the biggest polluters to become clean energy producers
• We need to understand as a society that fossil fuel companies and their business plans are the problem.

So come and join other people equally committed to taking positive action at the “Do the Math” tour in Australia and be a part of this event. Clink on the link below for details

http://maths.350.org/australia/