This chart is the essence of this site – first timers start here

By Steve Austin

We have 12 years to avoid climate catastrophe.  The chart above shows in stark relief exactly the world we must transition to if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. This chart shows how we must essentially cease the use of fossil fuels and other climate changing activities. That in turn means the end of the industrial age.

We cannot continue to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere if we are to keep the earth’s warming to tolerable levels. More than that too, we must begin to drawdown the excess carbon dioxide that we’ve already put into the atmosphere. This is the dawn of a new time in human history – the below zero era.

This below zero era will mean an end to the industrial age’s excesses and destruction of the only planet we will ever have. This damage is not just climate change, but includes the host of conditions known collectively as “overshoot.” For simplicity’s sake, here overshoot can be defined as the point in which humans have exceeded our planet’s carrying capacity through over-consumption of resources (sources) and excessive pollution (sinks). The below zero era, which will mitigate climate change, offers us hope that we can restore the balance of the use of earth’s sources and sinks.

This site is about exploring the meaning of this chart on our lives generally, and on the professions of landscape architecture and city planning particularly. So, if this is intriguing to you, keep going on through this site.