Are the goals set forth in The Paris Agreement still achievable?

Data Scientist Hannah Ritchie sits down with us to offer a dose of reality — and optimism about our planet’s future.

HANNAH RITCHIE: For me personally, I tend to think that the 1.5 degree target is no longer feasible. I think the key point is that doesn't mean game over. For every increment of warming, the risk of climate change increase. So that means that we need to fight for 1.6, and 1.7 and 1.8, because it reduces the risks and impacts of climate change.

- [Narrator] Are the goals set by the Paris Agreement still achievable?

- So in the Paris Agreement, the world agreed to try to keep global temperatures well below two degrees of warming compared to pre-industrial temperatures. And as far as possible to limit this warming to 1.5 degrees. For me personally, I tend to think that the 1.5 degree target is no longer feasible. I think the scale and the pace of emissions reductions that we would need is probably out of reach at this point. I would love to see it happen, and we should pursue this as much as possible, but I think it's gonna be very, very difficult, and I don't see us achieving that target. But I think the key point is that doesn't mean game over. That doesn't mean we're flipped into a world, and to a point of no return. For every increment of warming, the risk of climate change increase. So that means that we need to fight for 1.6, and 1.7 and 1.8, because it reduces the risks and impacts of climate change. Now, I still think it's feasible to keep temperatures below two degrees. I think it will be incredibly ambitious, and incredibly difficult. But actually, if you look at the targets that each country has on the table, if they were to achieve them, we would actually possibly sneak just under two degrees. So I think there's four key areas that we need to target in order to solve climate change, energy, transport, food, and construction. So what's really key to transforming our energy system, is that we need to move away from fossil fuels to low carbon sources of energy. Now these include renewables such as solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, but it also includes nuclear energy. These are our low carbon sources of energy. Now, we need to do this in various ways. We need to decarbonize our electricity grid, which is basically replacing coal and gas with these low carbon energy sources. But we also need to do is try to shift as much of our energy towards electricity as possible. We know how to decarbonize our electricity grids, but there's other aspects of energy which are much, much harder, such as industry or transport. What we need to do is then try to shift those towards electricity so that they can then decarbonize by deploying renewables and nuclear. What's really, really key about this transition, is that the alternatives to fossil fuels need to be cost competitive. We will not make progress on this problem if solar, wind, or nuclear are more expensive than coal or gas, because countries just will not make that transition. But there's some good news here. If you go back a decade, for example, solar and wind were among the most expensive energy sources that we had. But over the last decade or so, we've seen really rapid reductions in their costs, such that they're now cost competitive, or even cheaper than coal or gas. That means that making this transition is not just about economic gains in the long term, when we factor in the impacts of climate change. It's already cost competitive and economic to make this transition today. So many people are quite rightly concerned about the potential implications for land use by moving to renewables. They picture, you know, fields full and full of solar panels, and all of our landscapes transformed into wind farms. But actually, when you run the numbers, they tell a slightly different story. When we look at how much solar we would need to meet demand for the world's electricity today, we could actually produce that on less than 1% of the world's land. For wind, obviously, the amount of land we would need would be more than this. You're probably talking between 10 and 15%. I think what's important to highlight about wind, is not necessarily about the direct impact on land use that's the problem, it's more the visual aspect. Actually, the direct impact of actually putting a wind turbine in the ground is very, very small. Much, much less than 1% of the world's land. You can actually use the land between wind turbines for uses such as farming. The farmer gets additional profit from the wind farm and can continue to farm, between the different wind turbines. So the direct impact on land use is actually very, very small there. You just have the visual impact of stuff that you can see in your eye line. I think it's important to also highlight how this contrasts with other stuff that we use land for. We often imagine that our impact on land use in the world is very much about urban landscapes, and roads, and infrastructure. But actually this makes up less than 1% of the world's land use. In contrast, we use almost half of the world's habitable land for farming. Our biggest footprint in terms of land use is farming. It's not energy infrastructure, and it's not urban infrastructure. Now, if you wanted to spare as much of the world's land as possible, your best option would be nuclear. The land footprint of nuclear is incredibly, incredibly small. It's by far the lowest of all of our energy technologies. You could feasibly power the world on probably less than 0.1% of the world's land. So if it's land use that you're most concerned about, your best option is nuclear power.