Why Mission 2030?
Humanity urgently needs to fundamentally change how it lives on Earth. The climate crisis is accelerating and looming ever larger. Tipping points have been crossed as evidenced by all the weird weather, historical droughts and floods, category 4 and 5 storms, an accelerating rate of sea level rise, accelerating extinct species and of course increasing GHG emissions. The average temperature of the Earth’s surface has increased by one degree Celsius over the pre-Industrial Age average, with much higher warming in the Arctic and Antarctica. We must slow this warming down, soon.
Most, if not all of this is occurring because of how humanity has and continues to occupy the planet. We are at cause. Anthropogenic global warming. We have created this crisis. This means that we can solve it as well. We must “Save Ourselves from Ourselves”
We at This Spaceship Earth believe that we must all come together to focus on making huge changes in the next few years. 2030 is a real deadline. An increasing number of climate scientists are calling for massive reductions in CO2 emissions by 2030. David Houle, one of the co-founders of This Spaceship Earth and Bob Leonard, the Director of Content for the non-profit, wrote a book that states this case and shows how it can be done. Humanity needs to move from 77% of all energy used coming from fossil fuels to 30% or less by 2030. This can be done. We have time but we have no time to waste.
Tim Rumage, co-author of “This Spaceship Earth” and co-founder of this non-profit is a planetary ethicist and in a recent post he framed the amount of time to 2030 with this blog post 3250 days.
It is imperative that as many young people as possible become crew members of Spaceship Earth. Students in the 7th to 12th grades are part of the new emerging generation around the world who will be living the rest of their lives facing the existential threat of climate change. During the 2020s decade, teenagers will be matriculating through high school, college and out into the workplace. It is absolutely critical that project-based environmental education be in the classroom globally and as soon as possible.
This is why we are producing Mission2030_youthsummit May 3, 2021. We hope to bring together students from around the world to share what they are doing to face the climate crisis where they live. If this first global youth summit is successful in 2021, we plan on an annual event through 2030.
If you are students, let us know what you have done and are doing. If you are teachers, we want to urge you to bring environmental project-based education into your classrooms as soon as possible. If you are school boards, step up and help your schools lead the way for this new generation to become ever more climate literate. If you are a company or a foundation and want to support this endeavor, sponsor the summit first and then help underwrite new curricula around the world to give this young generation the knowledge they need to lead in the effort to face the biggest threat we have collectively faced.
Join us! Thank you!
