It seems our emissions will not fall quickly  enough to avoid runaway warming and we may  

soon hit tipping points that will lead to the  collapse of ecosystems and our civilization.

While scientists, activists and much  of the younger generation urge action,  

it appears most politicians are not  committed to do anything meaningful  

while the fossil fuel industry still works  actively against change. It seems humanity  

can’t overcome its greed and obsession with short  term profit and personal gain to save itself.

And so for many the future looks grim and  hopeless. Young people feel particularly  

anxious and depressed. Instead of looking  ahead to a lifetime of opportunity they  

wonder if they will even have a future or  if they should bring kids into this world.  

It’s an age of doom and hopelessness and  giving up seems the only sensible thing to do.

But that’s not true. You are not  doomed. Humanity is not doomed.  

Despite the seriousness of the situation, for  years positive trends have accumulated and there  

is finally some good news and a clear path towards  our collective climate goals. Welcome to our Ted  

talk, please watch this video to the end – check  out our detailed sources afterwards to learn more.

Ok! Let’s start with the scariest things.

Canceling the Apocalypse

Some of the most widely shared stories about  Climate Change are that it is an existential  

threat – the end of human civilization and  maybe even our own extinction event. And  

that it is basically unavoidable now.  But what does science actually say?

As of 2022 the global average temperature  

has risen 1.2 degrees celsius  compared to preindustrial times.  

Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees was the  most ambitious goal of the Paris agreement  

but we are not likely to meet it. Already with the  warming we have today, hot places will get hotter,  

wet places wetter and the risk and strength of  extreme weather events increase significantly.

Warming beyond 2 degrees makes all of these  extremes more extreme, extreme weather events  

more common with more ecosystems under  major pressure. Some will not survive.

At 3 degrees significant parts of earth,  especially in developing countries,  

might become unable to feed their populations.  Heat waves will become a major global issue.  

Large scale natural systems will break  down. The scale and frequency of hurricanes,  

fires and droughts will further increase and cause  trillions in damage. Poor regions and subsistence  

farmers will be hit the hardest. Hundreds of  millions of people will need to leave their homes.

In the 4-8 degree range the apocalypse begins  – the hothouse earth, where things change  

so quickly, that it may become unable  to support our large human population  

and billions may perish, leaving  the rest on a hostile alien planet.  

A decade ago, for lack of action and perspective,  many scientists assumed a 4+ degree world was our  

future and a lot of public communication  focused on exactly this future path.  

Luckily, it's much less likely that this  version of the apocalypse will come to pass.

If current climate policies stagnate, we’re  likely to end up with warming 3 °C by 2100.  

Which is scary and tragic and far from acceptable.  But this is actually good news – how? In the last  

decade, we have seen enough progress that most  scientists now think that we have likely avoided  

apocalyptic climate change. Although substantial  risk still remains, we can pretty confidently say  

that humanity isn’t going anywhere. Civilization  might have to change, but it will endure.

Which begs the question: What has changed over  the last ten years and is this really good news?

## The Invisible Shift

You probably know this story: The  last decade has been an immense  

failure for climate policies around the world.  

Instead of passing comprehensive, binding  bills that would meaningfully reduce emissions  

we mostly did: nothing. A lost decade with one  negative record after another. And this story  

is true and it is one reason why so many people  are giving up. But it is not the whole picture.

Despite the lack of climate policies and ongoing  

lobbying and misinformation campaigns  from the fossil fuel industries,  

there was a lot of progress. Let us go back  20 years to see why today is so different:

Between 2000 and 2010, greenhouse  gas emissions had grown by 24%,  

three times as much as the increase in the  previous decade. Subsidies for fossil fuels  

aimed at promoting economic growth, caused  a colossal increase in their consumption.  

For emerging countries like China and  India coal was the cheapest fuel for growth  

while rich countries showed little  interest in changing their ways.

In 2010, many people expected these trends  to continue. Instead of decreasing fossil  

fuel use its consumption would rise. The next  decade turned out to be very different though.

First of all, coal burning in emerging countries  like India has been slowed down or leveled off,  

like in China. And it has plummeted  in rich countries like the UK and US.  

Since 2015 three-quarters of planned coal  plants have been canceled and 44 countries  

have committed to stop building them. Ten years  ago that would have seemed like wishful thinking,  

but today we can say with confidence: Coal  is dying. It is just not competitive anymore.  

Because technologies we thought would remain  expensive matured rapidly instead. Renewable  

electricity has shown explosive progress. In a  mere decade wind energy got three times cheaper.  

Solar electricity is now ten times cheaper!  Cheaper than coal or any other fossil-fuel burning  

power plant, despite the massive subsidies and  global infrastructure propping up fossil fuels.

25 times more solar and nearly 5 times more wind  electricity is produced today compared with ten  

years ago, which is of course not nearly enough.  One of the biggest obstacles is the variability  

of their power output. Renewables need a lot of  energy storage to be a reliable power source,  

like expensive batteries. Amazingly battery  prices have decreased by 97% in the past 30 years,  

60% in the last decade alone – which will serve  all kinds of green technology like electric cars.

You might say, well that’s great but  didn’t Kurzgesagt’s last climate video  

say that while wind and solar are nice, we need  nothing less than a fundamental transition of  

our global industrial system? Yes but luckily  the shift goes beyond just the energy sector.  

Throughout the economy people are working on  improving current technology to lower emissions.

We’re rapidly replacing old incandescent light  bulbs with LEDs that are ten times more efficient.  

In 2020 about 7 out of 10 new  cars in Norway were electric  

or hybrid – In 2021 it was already  8 out of 10. And the list goes on,  

from electric heating and better insulation  to ships traveling at half speed to save fuel.

Wherever you look you find scientists,  

engineers and entrepreneurs trying to  solve some aspect of climate change.  

Enormous amounts of human ingenuity are  being brought to bear on this problem  

with more and more people deciding to prioritize  preventing rapid climate change. Solutions for  

low-carbon production of cement, electronics and  steel, and innovations like artificial meat and  

carbon capture are in the works. The more of  these technologies we deploy; the cheaper new  

and better technology gets. The cheaper they  get, the more people use them. And so on.

We can see the impact already:  

The domestic CO2 output of rich countries  is falling without a major recession.  

Since the year 2000, the EU as a whole shows a  21% decrease, Italy 28%, the UK 35%, Denmark 43%.

But the best news may be that emissions are no  longer necessarily coupled with economic growth.  

In the past this was an inconvenient truth  – to get richer, you had to emit more. Which  

led to fierce arguments between developing  and developed countries about the fairness  

of reducing emissions while their populations  were still poor. But in the last decade we have  

seen that it IS possible to increase prosperity  without increasing emissions. Emissions in the  

Czech Republic dropped 13% while their GDP grew  by 27%! France reduced their CO2 emissions by 14%  

while increasing GDP by 15%! Romania saw  an 8% decrease and 35% growth! And even the  

largest economy on earth - the USA - decreased  emissions by 4% while growing their GDP by 26%!

Some of you may call this a numbers trick. That  rich countries are just exporting emissions to  

poorer nations by moving the dirty parts of  their economies like manufacturing. But even  

when we account for all of our imported goods,  the numbers still look positive! It’s no longer  

a matter of having to choose between prosperity  and the climate as it seemed to be a decade ago.

Developing countries will profit from  that because as rich countries pay for  

the expensive development of green technologies,  they can adopt them more cheaply. They can skip  

most of the high emission phase that  today's rich countries went through.  

We are at the point where not  decarbonizing is a bad business decision.

And we haven’t even really talked  about solutions like carbon capture.  

In 2000 it didn't really exist. In 2022 that  technology does exist and costs around $600 to  

remove one ton of CO2 from the atmosphere. As  investment pours in and the technology matures  

and begins to scale, it is likely that these  costs will plummet over the next few decades.

So everything's fine then? Well let us not get  carried away here - all of these processes are  

great but not nearly fast enough. We are still  doing way too little and technology will not  

magically solve everything. We need to use  fewer resources and use them longer, design  

consumer goods that are repairable and durable  and decrease our energy requirements. We need  

much better infrastructure, agriculture  and cities. It will still be hard work,  

especially to get the right  policies passed and enacted.

But for the first time ever,  

there are a few trendlines pointing  solidly in the right direction.

And now imagine – If all of this was achieved  without proper financial and political support  

and despite fossil fuel lobbying  – just think what humanity can do  

when climate change finally gets the  political attention and funding it needs.

So is it ok to feel hopeful again? The  situation is still dire and serious,  

so what is the point of focusing  on this side of the story?

The Trap of Hopelessness

Climate change can feel overwhelming and  make your future seem bleak. The sadness  

and hopelessness that many people feel is real  and very destructive because it causes apathy.

Apathy that is only serving the fossil  fuel industry that is still delaying  

change however it can. In a sense  they have weaponized hopelessness.  

We are now in phase 4 in the public  debate about rapid climate change action:

Phase 1 was: Climate Change is not real.

Phase 2 was: Climate Change is  real but not caused by humans.

Phase 3 was: Climate Change may be  caused by humans but it’s not that bad.

Phase 4 is: Climate Change is no longer avoidable.  We are doomed and it doesn’t matter what we do.

If we want the world to change, we first need  to believe that change is possible. And we have  

an abundance of evidence that it is. Changes  to our industrial system are gaining momentum,  

technology gets better and cheaper, climate change  has become a key issue in most free elections.  

As more and more younger people  move into influential positions,  

they prioritize climate change and work on  new solutions. In 2022 most governments not  

only acknowledge it but set their own net zero  goals – in democratic and autocratic countries.  

The results of years of fighting a steep  uphill battle are now clearly visible. The  

pressure needs to keep increasing, to make sure  that the promises made today are actually kept!

Climate doomerism is the equivalent of giving up  even though you can still prevent not just the  

worst case but also mitigate most of the bad  things, make changes in time to adapt better  

and prevent the poorest from suffering. That is  why hopelessness and apathy are so dangerous.

If the last, in many ways wasted  decade, has shown anything,  

then it’s that progress is being made and that  dire scenarios are just predictions – not our  

sealed fate. As of 2022, based on current global  policies, we will end up in a 3 degrees world.  

Now it is our job to yet again prove the  predictions wrong – despite how serious and  

urgent things are. To turn that 3 degrees into a  2 degrees and then see where we can go from there.

For that we need hope. And we hope we gave you  that today, at least a little. That you feel  

that things are serious but also that you have  a future. That you can have kids without dooming  

them or the world. That taking action today is  worth it. And that despite powerful industries  

doing everything to delay it, society is changing.  If you need a more concrete roadmap of what you  

can do personally – we are working on a follow  up video to talk about that in greater detail.

Doomerism, inactivity and weaponized hopelessness  

are the only trump cards left for the powers  that don’t want change. Don’t let them win.

We are still excited about the future.  And we think one of the best things  

you can do to keep your optimism and  curiosity up is to learn new things.  

If you don’t know where to start, our friends  from Brilliant.org have got you covered.

Brilliant makes math and science accessible  and fun with a hands-on approach.  

More than 60 interactive courses  like „The joy of problem solving“ or  

„Scientific thinking“ give you the tools to crack  problems in math, science and computer science  

that are all designed to get your intuition  going and give you plenty of aha-experience.

Lessons will surprise you with  storytelling, code-writing tasks and  

interactive challenges – basically using whatever  keeps you interested and entertained. All the  

content is interactive: instead of just reading  and listening to explanations, you drag and drop,  

manipulate shapes and diagrams, make  selections and answer questions.  

This way you learn something almost without  you noticing it. And tiny step by step you’ll  

build up your long-term understanding of  science and get closer to your STEM goals.

To start looking at the world of science from  a different perspective, go to Brilliant.org  

SlashNutshell and sign up for free. And  there’s an extra perk for kurzgesagt viewers:  

the first 200 people to use the link  get 20% off their annual membership,  

which unlocks all of Brilliant’s courses  in math, science, and computer science.

At kurzgesagt we love to create  things that seem impossible at  

first – Brilliant can help you  acquire the skills to do that.