How much would it cost to stop global warming?
$300 billion according to the United Nations. Ok that’s the end of the article, thanks for reading…
To provide some context, that number is the amount of money it would take to halt the current rise in greenhouse gases. That money would buy us nearly 20 years of time to fix global warming. Though it sounds like a hefty number it is also the same amount of money the world spends on its military every two months.
According to Rene Castro Salazar, an assistant director general at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, “2 billion hectares of land around the world that has been degraded by misuse, overgrazing, deforestation and other largely human factors.” Of those 2 billion hectares, 900 million hectares could be restored with this funding. “Returning that land to pasture, food crops or trees would convert enough carbon into biomass to stabilize emissions of CO2, the biggest greenhouse gas, for 15-20 years, giving the world time to adopt carbon-neutral technologies” said Salazar.
One of the biggest problems that would be tackled with this money is desertification. Desertification is the degradation of land to the point where it can no longer support life. Around a third of the world’s land has been degraded to some extent, directly affecting the lives of 2 billion people, said Eduardo Mansur, the director of the land and water division at the Food and Agricultural Organization. “The idea is to put more carbon into the soil,” said Barron J. Orr, lead scientist for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. “…keeping the carbon in the soil and getting that natural vegetation, grazing land etc. thriving again – that’s the key.” Solving desertification will not be easy. In India, more than 20% of the country is now considered to be wasteland. Chile is home to the world’s driest desert, the Atacama. Their government is spending $138 million to improve irrigation as this has been the region’s driest decade on record. In Brazil, the worst fires in decades have ravaged the world’s largest rainforest.
At a recent UN conference regarding desertification, 196 countries agreed that they each would adopt measures needed to restore degraded land by 2030. Key to returning dry lands to vegetation is the use of fertilizer, said Mansur. “Fertilizers are essential for increasing productivity. Good fertilizer in the right quantity is very good for the soil.” Kenya, for example, will be planting 2 billion trees to restore 10% of its forest cover. In Costa Rica, farmers are using deforested land to produce CO2 neutral coffee. CR is also replanting rainforest to encourage ecotourism, which has become the country’s biggest money maker.
Fun Facts – These countries are doing the most to combat climate change:
- Morocco’s National Energy Strategy calls for generating 52 percent of its electricity production from renewables by 2030. It is already at 35 percent, due in large part to its investment in projects like the Noor Ouarzazate complex, the largest solar farm in the world. It covers an area the size of 3,500 football fields, and generates enough electricity to power two large cities.
- The Gambia: The country has also launched a project to restore 10,000 hectares of forests, mangroves, and savannas. It is also replacing flooded rice paddies with dry upland rice fields and promoting adoption of efficient cook stoves to reduce the overuse of forest resources.
- Costa Rica aims for its electricity production to be 100 percent renewable by 2021 and it’s already extremely close. In 2018 it generated 98 percent of its electricity from renewable sources for the fourth year in a row. Two-thirds of its greenhouse gas emissions are from transportation, and the country has made it a national priority to use renewable energy across all of its roads and rails. In February 2019 Costa Rica extended a moratorium on oil extraction until the end of 2050.
The rest of the world needs to step their game up if we want to make a real dent in stopping the harm we are doing to our planet.
Sources: forbes.com, bloomberg.com, nationalgeographic.com, theguardian.com
