Is the vision too big?
Our stated vision as a business and as a team :
“A world without anthropogenic (human-caused) carbon emissions and where cross-generational climate justice is delivered with less than 1.5C of warming”
Have we overstretched? Is it reasonable for a built environment specialist energy consultancy to shoot for the moon, with a target that is global in scale and scope, and lengthy in timescale?
Let’s explore the three key facets of the vision first.
No human-caused carbon emissions
Cross-generational climate justice
Less than 1.5C of global climate warming
No human-caused carbon emissions
At its simplest, this means that human societies globally have moved beyond the combustion of fossil fuels as a source of energy, and have ceased to increase radiative forcing through other activities such as methane emissions, deforestation, degradation of ocean climate moderators.
Humans have therefore moved into a balanced world where ecological systems are maintained or enhanced, and energy systems are entirely without associated climate-altering effects. We can imagine renewable energy systems providing all electrical power, and bio-energy systems used in balance with global afforestation and sustainable forest management. Similarly, all materials used as throughput in the global economy are fundamentally circular in nature, reused countless times.
The above is difficult to imagine in the context of our current globalised industrial and growth-focused economic system, but not impossible.
Cross-generational climate justice
Climate justice is a catch-all phrase intending to describe a world where those who have least responsibility for historic climate altering behaviours and emissions are not made to pay the present and future price of any changes to climate. Cross-generational refers to the long timescales that climate change takes place in, and that future generations of humans from any part of the globe should not be paying the price for the activities of the present generation.
This phrase could be summarised by the imperative to be a good ancestor. It calls us to think beyond quarterly business reporting, annual carbon emissions calculations, or even 60-years of whole-life carbon emissions from a proposed building.
Less than 1.5C of global climate warming
This part of the vision follows conventional climate science and the IPCC target of less than 1.5C of average global temperature change over pre-industrial climate, typically referenced as 1850. This figure is a global average over land and sea, and is not intended as a guide to real climate change in the places where people live.
As of June 2024, the last 12 months have exceeded this 1.5C warming target globally for the first time in known human history. The target above, however, is taken as a long term trend over a number of years, so while recent history is not encouraging, it does not mean that the overall target has been surpassed.
Scientists and experts are divided as to whether the overall 1.5C limit is still manageable, but even if it is exceeded in the coming years or decades, it is still imperative that our human actions allow the climate to regulate back down below 1.5C again in the nearest possible future.
Agency and overstretching
So has Beyond Carbon overstretched with our vision of a globally different human society, environment and economy? Is our vision even a possibility?
As a small but focused team of people, we do not have agency to alter the course of human behaviour at a global scale, and further, our expertise is focused on the built environment specifically. We therefore do not have the power to fully realise our vision on our own.
But… neither does anyone else, whether organisation, individual, government or collective. There is no ‘Global Government’ that we can turn to collectively for leadership and action. We would see this vision then, as a collective and collaborative target for the human species at this precarious moment in history, and we recognise our part in achieving it will be small from a global perspective, as will most other contributions. In the absence of an easy global source of authority and leadership, each contribution becomes vital to the collective.
Our theatre of operations at Beyond Carbon is the built environment – this is our place of agency and the context in which we are experts and professional practitioners. Here we can make a meaningful difference through our projects and through our voice. A secondary sphere of influence is that of the business world, particularly in the UK. By mapping a path towards better business values, culture and behaviour, we can signpost others to new ways of thinking and working. These new paths can lead us collectively towards the bold and global vision that we have set out. Our vision unfolds over multiple human generations, so our business must plan for our impact to continue over these timescales.
Instead of seeing our global vision as overstretching therefore, we would invite other groups, businesses and collectives to join us in advancing towards this vision, each in our own area of agency, planning for multi-generational impact.