Part Five / What We Must Do Now

What Next?

All online sources accessed on

  1. there are over 5,000 ships criss-crossing https://www.statista.com/statistics/198227/forecast-for-global-number-of-containerships-from-2011/

    Many run on bunker fuel Hack, K., ‘US demand for residual fuel oil rose late in 2021’, Today in Energy, U.S. Energy Information Administration, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51298; Schnurr, R. E. J., and Walker, T. R., ‘Marine transportation and energy use’, Elsevier Reference Collection in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, 29 November 2019, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.09270-8.

    only about 10 percent of the plastic we recycle Ljungkvist Nordin, H., and Westöö, A.-K., Plastic in Sweden: Facts and Practical Advice. A Short Version of Kartläggning av Plastflöden i Sverige (Mapping Plastic Flows in Sweden), Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, 2019, https://www.naturvardsverket.se/globalassets/media/publikationer-pdf/8800/978-91-620-8854-5.pdf, https://www.dn.se/vetenskap/sopeldning-av-plast-varmer-svenskarna-om-vintern/.

    where a huge proportion of our recycled materials end up
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/17/recycled-plastic-america-global-crisis
    https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/whopping-91-percent-plastic-isnt-recycled
    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49827945;
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/17/plastic-recycling-myth-what-really-happens-your-rubbish

    those mighty vessels often sail back completely empty
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-why-almost-half-of-cargo-ships-are-sailing-around-empty-11623790696

  2. Every year, 8 million tonnes of plastic waste National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Reckoning with the U.S. Role in Global Ocean Plastic Waste (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2022), https://doi.org/10.17226/26132.

    Every day, we use around 100 million barrels of oil Blas, J., and Hurst, L., ‘BP says oil demand is back above 100 million barrels a day’, Bloomberg, 2 November 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-02/bp-says-oil-demand-is-back-above-100-million-barrels-a-day. BP, ‘Oil’, in Statistical Review of World Energy 2021, July 2021, https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2021-oil.pdf; Sönnichsen, N., ‘Daily global crude oil demand 2006–2019’, Statista, 2019, https://www.statista.com/statistics/271823/daily-global-crude-oil-demand-since-2006/

    Every minute, we subsidize the production and burning of coal Parry, I. W. H., et al., et al., Still Not Getting Energy Prices Right: A Global and Country Update of Fossil Fuel Subsidies, International Monetary Fund working paper, 24 September 2021, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Still-Not-Getting-Energy-Prices-Right-A-Global-and-Country-Update-of-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-466004.

    Every second … a football field of forest is cut down https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/forests-and-deserts/rate-of-deforestation.

  3. Annually, we are spending $5.9 trillion Parry, Still Not Getting Energy Prices Right.

    There are currently around 1.4 billion motor vehicles, https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2021/06/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world/.

    that figure will reach 2 billion by 2035, https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1093560_1-2-billion-vehicles-on-worlds-roads-now-2-billion-by-2035-report.

  4. 6.45 gigatonnes of CO2 emissions Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, ‘Wildfires wreaked havoc in 2021, CAMS tracked their impact’, 6 December 2021, https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/wildfires-wreaked-havoc-2021-cams-tracked-their-impact.

    Before the pandemic we were using 100 million barrels BP, ‘Oil’; Sönnichsen, ‘Daily global crude oil demand 2006–2019’.

    on track to surpass that in 2023 Rystad Energy, ‘Oil at $100 could trigger an additional 2.2 million bpd of US tight oil output by 2023’, 14 February 2022, https://www.rystadenergy.com/newsevents/news/press-releases/Oil-at-100-could-trigger-an-additional-2-2-million-bpd-of-US-tight-oil-output-by-2023/.

  5. could save us up to 8 billion tonnes of CO2 every year Springmann, M., et al., ‘Analysis and valuation of the health and climate change co-benefits of dietary change’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113 (15), 2016: 4146–51, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1523119113; Stehfest, E., et al., ‘Climate benefits of changing diet’, Climate Change, 95 (1–2), 2009: 83–102, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-008-9534-6.

    an area the size of north and South America combined, https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets.

  6. could feed ourselves using 76 per cent less land Poore, J., and Nemecek, T., ‘Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers’, Science, 360 (6392), 2018: 987–92, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0216.

    we currently kill more than 70 billion animals every year https://faunalytics.org/global-animal-slaughter-statistics-and-charts/.

    are estimated to be around 6 per cent https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/11/worlds-militaries-avoiding-scrutiny-over-emissions.

    about 4 percent of our total climate impact https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24091-y.

    emissions for the entire tourist industry https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24091-y.