CLIMATE CLOCK: THE TIME WE STILL HAVE TO SAVE THE PLANET

The science is clear: a climate emergency is underway. Decades of rising emissions due to carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gasses are damaging the natural and social systems on which human survival depends. The good news is that there is still time to act. The bad news is that the time to act is almost gone.

The Climate Clock is an initiative that quantifies, based on findings presented by the 2018 and 2021 IPCC reports - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the time humans have left before exhausting their Carbon Budget. That is, when (following the current level of emissions) it will no longer be possible to stay within the 1.5 °C global average temperature increase that is critical to reducing the devastating consequences of climate change.

Data on the deadline come from the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, which assumes an average annual rate of 42.2 Gt of carbon emissions to calculate the time remaining on the clock. However, this deadline may change! If global emission rates continue to rise, our carbon budget will be depleted even faster, while if we are able to reduce the rate of global emissions, the time we have to fix the problem will extend.

Today, the symbolic Overshoot Day of 2022, at 09:09 we still have 6 years, 359 days and 08:50:15 days left. But what can we do individually and collectively? As companies, we have chosen to join CO2alition and commit to permanently integrate the purpose of climate neutrality into the corporate purpose of our Articles of Association. We have found a way to create an enabling condition to address the climate crisis and contribute, as a private sector, to achieving the European neutrality goals.