The 2050 Zero-Carbon World Oration

This chapter employs a thought experiment, the 2050 Zero-Carbon World Oration to take stock of the reality that even the most rapid and decisive climate change action is still likely to lead us to a world far more challenging than the planet on which human civilisations have developed and flourished. Looking back from 2050, this story is told through a fictional Oration delivered by Professor Teuila Apatu, Director of the Global Institute for Climate and Energy Transitions, reviewing the key events, decisions and actions which drove the great twenty-first-century energy transition at remarkable speed and scale. While celebrating and honouring the impressive progress made by 2050 towards achieving the global goal of zero net emissions, Professor Apatu also notes the severe ecological damage and human suffering caused by the failure to reduce emissions at sufficient speed in the first quarter of the twenty-first century.