The Exponential Roadmap Initiative shows that we can limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, if we succeed in halving the global carbon emissions every decade. The good news is that we can achieve the first halving by 2030 simply by scaling existing solutions.
But in order to gain momentum in this exponential transformation, it is necessary that the entire socio-economic "trinity" interoperate:
- Legislators (politicians, authorities) - must correct where the market fails and set rules that stimulate climate friendly solutions and punish environmental degradation.
- Producers (companies and the public sector) - need to take responsibility for the carbon emissions caused by their products and services and switch to fossil free solutions. Furthermore, they need to influence their stakeholders (suppliers, customers, partners, etc.) to follow suit.
- Consumers (You and I) - need to reduce our carbon footprint through lifestyle changes and resolutely demand climate friendly solutions (from producers) and democratically influence (legislators) to act.
ClimateHero focus mainly on the third angle - how to empower people to reduce their carbon footprints through lifestyle changes. So far we have reached 150 000 people, who have calculated their personal climate impact and pledged to reduce more than 300 000 tonnes CO2 per year, which is equivalent to removing more than 200 000 diesel cars from our roads. But how many people do we need to reach to make an actual difference in solving the climate crises? We Believe that number is 100 million people.
The rationale for this is that consumption based carbon emissions are unevenly distributed. In fact, according to Oxfam, 50% of global carbon emissions origin from the consumption of just 10 % of the world's population. I the richest part, that the absolute majority of everyone living in Europe and North America (global North) belongs to. These approx. 800 million people are the key target group for ClimateHero. The next question then is, how many of these 800 million people do we need to influence to actually make a difference? To answer that question we can get guidance from research about social tipping points. It shows that when a dedicated minority of approx. 25% of a population change behavior, the norm tips over, and affect also the remaining population. So that gives us a target to influence 25%x 800 = 200 million people. Since the pledge our users make are logged on individual accounts, but actually effect the whole household (with average 2.1 people) it means that our target is to help 100 million people before 2030.
