Why the next five years are an opportunity to buy us time to solve climate change
Each time it bubbles up we're told taking action will result in job losses and disruption to the Australian way of life, and we're better off waiting.
But strip away all the politics, and the maths tells a different story: reducing emissions now will buy us more time to get to zero, but inaction dramatically cuts the time we have to act.
The Paris Agreement, which Australia and the world has signed up to, aims to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible to prevent "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system".
The Paris Agreement is often talked about alongside "net zero by 2050", but this is the tricky bit about understanding climate change. While we have a set amount of CO2 we can emit before the rise in temperatures gets dangerous, how long we have to act isn't set in stone.
It's like having a set amount of money in the bank; how quickly you spend it determines how long it will last. The more CO2 we emit each year, the closer the date we have to stop gets.
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