Carbon consultant Heidi Fog sent a letter to her friends and family in Denmark. Subject: ‘Emergency call and solutions from Australia’. It provided 10 suggestions for doable ways to cut your own individual carbon footprint in half, as the climate scientists have told us we need to do before 2030.

PREFACE AND PERSPECTIVEHeidi Fog wrote her 10 suggestions in the light of the scientific warning that humanity needs to half its carbon emissions during the 2020s, and had been inspired by Gene Blackley’s Drawdown Australia presentation at Geelong Library in March 2020. In October 2018, the United Nations’ panel of climate scientists, the IPCC, issued a special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C. The scientists had found that,

“…limiting global warming to 1.5°C will require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” ~ Global Warming of 1.5ºC, special report, IPCC

The report found that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching” transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities, and it clarified to the world’s leaders that “global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050.” Remaining emissions would then “need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air.”

That is what the scientists tell us needs to happen. The rest is up to us and the leaders we elect.

HEIDI FOG’S EMAIL TO HER FRIENDS AND FAMILY IN DENMARK:

Emergency call and solutions from Australia

“Good morning to all

You are probably all busy with absorbing the CV-19 news and the changes that it brings. I hope you all are okay and remain safe.

For some time I have been writing on an email for you about our shared climate. The climate issue has not gone away even though it has slipped out of the media over the past few weeks. The imbalance is here to stay for many years to come because you, I and those we know have consumed too much.

You have probably seen images of the bushfires in Australia which have burned areas that are larger than all of Denmark. That is all animals, all people, all infrastructure… Gone. In many places, they will not return. The fire was too hot, caused too much damage. Most people could drive, sail, and fly away from the affected areas, but the animals could not, including all birds, because it was too hot.

Here in our city, my children and I received our share of climate refugees, and for a longer period we had to stay indoors due to the air pollution coming from fires over 300 kilometres away with such intensity that we could not see our neighbours’ houses for smoke. At times we wondered if there were fires burning in our neighbourhood as the visibility and air quality were so poor.

Some of you have followed my journey as an environmental consultant. Despite the science and our individual observa...