Green column
Green column
Less is more
An ambitious roadmap for emissions reduction is needed if the events industry is to become carbon neutral, so says Chris Johnson, chair of Powerful Thinking
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he UK will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow from November 1-12, 2021. It is an opportunity for us to show global leadership, and the live events industry should be centre stage, creating its own vision that contributes to a sustainable future for generations to come.
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It is right to focus effort on the immediate COVID-19 driven industry crisis – the survival of our businesses and their vital role in the cultural landscape–- but we must not lose sight of the urgent action needed to prevent climate and ecological breakdown alongside this. There is “No Music on a Dead Planet” as the Music Declares Emergency tagline states. We must actively plan to build back greener, and it must be based on science and clear, measurable targets. When it comes to carbon impact, less is definitely more. It’s important that we are all wellinformed about the national and international context to shape our actions. The next few years’ activities are widely considered critical to avoiding runaway “climate and ecological breakdown”, meeting the goal of the COP21 talks in Paris in 2015; “to limit
global warming to well below two, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels”. “Well below” was a last-minute change to the wording of the agreement, a result of an 11th hour realisation that a target of two degrees would mean whole Pacific Island nations being lost to rising sea levels. The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change, adopted by 196 countries at COP 21. By 2020, countries submitted their plans for achieving emissions reductions, called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Whilst COP21 has undoubtedly created impetus for taking action, with many countries, regions, cities and companies racing to declare carbon neutrality targets, the current NDCs do not cut the mustard. The annual United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) Report, published in December 2019, provides a “bleak” assessment of the ever-growing gap between actual emission reduction and commitments by countries, with a prediction that current commitments would lead to three degrees global warming. Let’s be clear, this would irreversibly damage Earth’s ecosystems and have a catastrophic impact on all life, including humans. Put simply by Greta Thunberg: “Our house is on fire.”
Crosshead
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming (2018) states that global CO2 emissions need to decline by about 45 per cent below 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero around 2050, to be on track to limit global warming to 1.5°C by
the end of the century. UNEP states that global greenhouse gas emissions need to fall by a minimum 7.6 per cent each year between 2020 and 2030 to achieve this. In December 2019, the UK Government published ambitious aims for “at least a 68 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030”, backed by the Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. It is the most ambitious strategy for a major industrialised nation and it is clear that all parts of the economy need to make huge efforts to reduce emissions. In the live events industry, there are many good examples of positive action and leadership, such as Massive Attack’s Good Business Festival collaboration with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, Universal Music’s commitments on balancing travel emissions with ecolibrium, and Live Nation’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent by 2030. There is an appetite for change, evidenced by the success of Music Declares Emergency’s launch in 2019, which gained more than 2,000
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