We don't remember the winter of the century in 1979 (we were two or three years old at the time), but we do remember school being canceled in 1987 due to temperatures reaching -30°C. We also remember that for a few months of the year, we could almost always go sledding with our friends in a nearby park or have snowball fights. We waited for spring because we were simply bored with winter and snow. For our children's generation, snow is a rare and short-lived attraction. That is why our winter break on the Biebrza River was so successful, where there was plenty of snow throughout the week:
There will be fewer and fewer winters like this in the future. The climate crisis is a fact and is progressing much faster than anyone expected. Last week, Berkeley Earth, one of the organizations that publishes information on average temperatures on Earth, presented a poignant report. report. 2023 was the warmest year on Earth since 1850, with the previous record holder (2016) falling to second place. What's more, average temperatures throughout 2023 were 1.54°C higher than in the pre-industrial era.
In the Paris Agreement, we agreed to do everything we can to keep temperatures from rising more than 2°C, and preferably no more than 1.5°C. When companies set their climate goals and submit them for approval under the Science Based Targets initiative, they declare, among other things, whether they are aiming to keep temperatures at 1.5°C.
We were supposed to reach 1.5°C by 2100, but we exceeded that level eight years after the Paris Agreement.
So what now? Do we review our companies' climate policies? Do we focus solely on adapting to climate change? Do we wait for the law to be revised?
In our opinion, this means only one thing: companies should intensify all possible decarbonization efforts. They should speed up emissions accounting (if they haven't already done so), raise their emission reduction targets, and shorten their time horizons. At the same time, they should not engage in anything that distracts the attention of both company management boards and sustainable development management teams. Let's forget about competitions and rankings, let's not waste time embellishing ESG reports with photos, and let's focus on transforming business models. And let's mark all emails with carbon offset proposals as what they deserve to be—spam.
After all, what we do every day in our companies is not only about ensuring that our children and grandchildren know what a real winter is like, but also about providing them with a world in which they can live.
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