An open letter to baby boomer parents to help you understand why we younger folk are getting a wee bit testy about the whole climate change thing.

Hi Mum and Dad, below is a link to a raft of resources on the 'Deep Adaptation' climate change paper that argues that we need to start looking beyond adapting to climate change by preparing for more dire futures. It explains why I'm writing this and why I think the future is going to be harder than the past. The paper is written by Jem Bendell, an academic who took a sabbatical from corporate sustainability work to review the climate science data shortly before the UNIPCC 1.5 degree report was released. He explains the science in fairly plain English and at an understandable level as to why he reaches his conclusion. His conclusions are consistent with Greata Thunbergs, who organised the recent global school strikes to protest inaction on climate change. I've also included a few other curated references and data points from a variety of sources to assist you in developing a discerning opinion on climate change and to help you understand why younger folk are a bit angry about the whole thing.

Reading some of this stuff is probably the first step to a longer journey of understanding that is important if you want to do something to help out, which I assume you do because you have always demonstrated an interest in ensuring I have the best future possible. Doing something about climate change is not just a matter of everybody taking small steps to be better at environmental stuff (such as green recycling), nor is it something that our scientists should burden alone, nor something that we should leave to technology to solve at the last hour or politicians at all (especially in Australia). It is simply too risky for us to put all our eggs in one basket because the negative outcomes of climate change are too likely, too big, and approaching from multiple directions.

We need to pursue all of the options above (behavioural change, economic change, technological change and political change) in addition to preparing for a future where we don't prevent more than 1.5c, 2c, 3c and even 5c or more of average global temperature change. That means preparing for a world that looks, feels, and operates very differently to the current world and one which is effectively rebelling and rejecting the way humans have 'developed' and 'progressed' in the past 200 years. Some of the greatest risks posed to your kids in this future will be from hungry, poor and desperate people, and there is a morbid irony that those risks will come about because of both human action (increased greenhouse gas emissions) and human in-action (at reducing greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere).

Our future, and the science discussed by Jem Bendell was recently summarised in spectacular fashion by Greta Thunberg, the young high-school student who recently instigated a global school strike to protest inaction on climate change. Speaking to the UK parliament and referencing the UNIPCCC, she said:

"Around the year 2030, 10 years 252 days and 10 hours away from now, we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, that will most likely lead to the end of our civilisation as we know it.

That is unless in that time, permanent and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society have taken place, including a reduction of CO2 emissions by at least 50%.

...and these calculations depend on inventions that have not yet been invented at scale, inventions that are supposed to clear the atmosphere of astronomical amounts of carbon dioxide."

Please take some time to digest the deep adaptation paper and Greta's speech with other family members around, as it can be quite profound and shocking if you are open-minded to the possibilities it discusses. When confronted by this information, usually, the first step in the grieving process is denial - even for seasoned sustainability professionals. Acknowledging that in advance might help you remain open-minded enough when the denial kicks in to start to comprehend why younger folk are pretty angry about inaction on climate change. The worst thing you can do right now is to embrace denial, and that includes looking for mythical solutions that won't disrupt life as you know it, which is why we are angry. As Greta says:

You don’t listen to the science because you are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before . Like now. And those answers don’t exist any more. Because you did not act in time.

We should no longer measure our wealth and success in the graph that shows economic growth, but in the curve that shows the emissions of greenhouse gases.

Slow and gradual change to our value systems that started 40 years ago when this issue was first identified would have been an ideal solution. It is not a viable solution now. Our current leaders, which is predominantly still you and your generation, need to understand this issue and come to grips with potentially radical solutions. To help start that process, I've documented some resources below.

Yes, some of the content is dense and often depressing. That is simply the reality of the situation. However, the sooner you start to understand the problem deeply and what it means for our future, I'm sure you will start to embrace the real solutions.

With a deeper understanding of the problem, the solutions that currently seem unpalatable or politically inconvenient become paramount. This is because the science is clear and has been for some time - greenhouse gas emissions need to reverse in order for our prospects to brighten. For that to happen we need united action by baby-boomer, children and grandchildren alike, to turn our value system over and focus not on economic well-being or anything else except the reduction of greenhouse gas entering or existing in the atmosphere.

Politicians, especially in Australia, listen to baby boomers. We need you to get informed and start talking to your government representatives. We are in the middle of an election campaign, there really is no better time to do this. Give them a call, write them an email, and tell your friends to do the same. Tell your representative of your new found deeper understanding of climate change and what it means for your kids. Tell them you want to see a government policy on climate change that embraces radical change to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2030. Because nothing else will be sufficient.

Sincerely (with anger, love and thanks in advance)

The average younger person who is concerned about their future.

Climate Change Deep Adaptation resources

• Deep adaptation paper by Jem Bendell
• Deep Adaptation Readers Support forum 
• A well researched web-press article that presents a few alternative views of those critical of the conclusions of the Deep Adaptation paper
• For those that ask "So, what can we do?" Rupert Read takes Bendell's paper and looks at slightly different versions of the conclusion and discusses what we can do to make those more or less likely. The action orientated stuff is toward the bottom of the article. 

Deep Adaptation, Climate change and economic impact resources

• An economic look at the deep adaptation field from Bloomberg. Even though carbon pollution largely remains external to the current economic paradigm, the cost of the impact and the value of opportunities are not.
• An ABC article summarising the expected impact of climate change as seen from businesses themselves and reported in the CDP, the worlds largest survey and study of business responses and preparation for climate change. These responses are verified by the likes of PwC (it was a previous job of mine). By reading this you can see that some businesses take climate change seriously and have been quietly preparing for the worst. This includes major petrochemical companies.
• The 'facts' on the economic impact of climate change are still best summed up by the Stern review, despite it being quite a bit dated (2006) now. Since it was released the science supports some of the worst case scenarios depicted by Stern and indicates that the costs are already at the high end of the range identified.

Scientific facts on climate change

• The UNIPCC 1.5 degree report is the latest consolidated report on the impacts of 1.5degree celsius of global warming by the UNIPCC 
• The CSIRO state of the climate report for 2018 indicates that Australia's climate has already increased by 1 degree Celsius since 1910. 
• More recently a number of international meteorological organisations got together and verified the UNIPCCC report from their national perspectives and confirmed the outcomes expected at a national level.

Why haven't I included more critical sources of information? Because they are mostly inaccurate or misleading:

• https://skepticalscience.com/fox-news-climate-28-percent-accurate.html

Still need more convincing? Greta's full Speech to the British parliament is a compelling read for any parent