Bright spots for the climate future

I consider myself an optimist. I try my best to maintain a positive outlook on life. So when the editor-in-chief of DUB asked me how I remain hopeful about the future, I started thinking: where do I get my hope from?

Let me stick to my expertise, climate science. Yes, there is a climate crisis, as Utrecht University officially acknowledged in 2023. And yes, there are more than enough climate scenarios that paint a very frightening picture of the future.

But some things are going well. The world is slowly moving away from fossil fuels. Our UU colleague Detlef van Vuuren and his team recently played a key role in adjusting the official IPCC emission scenarios: the worst-case scenario with very high CO2 emissions is no longer realistic. A pessimist might rightly argue that the best-case scenario with very low emissions has also been scrapped, but there now is less reason for doom-mongering: according to the IPCC – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the future looks slightly less dramatic.

And that is mainly because the world is moving away from fossil fuels incredibly quickly. Energy from renewable sources such as wind and sun has been significantly cheaper than fossil energy for a few years now.

In any case, the energy transition is actually going quite well. The amount of oil the global industry needs per added euro is 50 percent lower than in the 1970s!

And just imagine what the climate would look like if climate science didn't exist? If John Tyndall hadn't discovered in 1859 that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. If there hadn't been a report from the Club of Rome or a US Senate hearing with James Hansen. In short, if society had simply continued happily burning coal since the 1980s. Then we would be at a significantly higher CO2 level now, heading towards an extremely high level. That would be truly catastrophic. In short, a great deal of climate change has already been prevented.

One of the heroes in this story is Guus Velders, who works in the office next to me. He helped ensure that several chemical substances were banned, preventing an additional temperature rise of up to half a degree Celsius. Talk about impact! He made it onto Time's list of most influential people in 2017 for this.

Of course, the present impacts of climate change are grave: more storms, heatwaves, and other disasters. But the hopeful news is that global society really seems to be succeeding in reversing the CO2 trend. From ever-increasing emissions to lower emissions every year. And hopefully, in a few years, even net-negative emissions, so that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere decreases from then on. It is possible. We just have to do it.

So I am hopeful. And I am most about the students. Their world is improving faster than we sometimes realize. When I graduated in climate physics in 2005, almost 30 percent of my classmates went to work at Shell. Current climate physics students have a very different idea about a good career. They are mostly idealists, like fellow DUB columnists Sara Niknam and Hubert Matuszewski. They want a better world. And I am hopeful that they will succeed. Because I see it as my mission to remain hopeful. For if there is no hope left, what remains?

On Staff's Viewpoint, UU's employees share their views with the UU community. The Oceanography professor Erik van Sebille is one of the columnists invited for this space. You can also read students' perspectives on Students' Viewpoint and click here to check out students' and staff's columns in Dutch.