MIT-educated physicist and engineer, a serial entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and a social innovator Peter Fiekowsky, whose latest book Climate Restoration provides an insight into the steps we need to take in order to save the planet from climate change, had a conversation with Earth.Org on July 2. During the interview, Fiekowsky talked about the imminent risks that our planet is facing, and where humanity stands in terms of mitigating the climate crisis.
—
Peter shared his thoughts with us on several topics, including:
- The importance of looking beyond the Paris Agreement Goals in our fight against climate change.
- The greatest risks that humanity faces today.
- Future prospects on humanity’s race towards reaching pre-industrial emissions.
- The environmental impacts of overpopulation.
- How to restore a sustainable population and bring the earth’s atmosphere to something close to pre-industrial levels.
- What it takes for humans to develop the wise policies needed to untangle themselves from this crisis fast enough to save most human lives, let alone livelihoods.
“We collectively settled on the Paris Goals because we were told to – primarily because of economic reasons.” In the interview’s opening statement, Fiekowsky immediately summarised the central issue presented in his latest book ‘Climate Restoration’, written with Carole Douglis and published in April 2022.
The real goal of humanity, he argues, should be restoring the earth’s atmosphere to something close to pre-industrial levels. Fiekowsky firmly believes that we can achieve this with existing methods, technologies, and finance. The only thing that is missing, he argues, is “collective will.”
The author recognises three main risks that humans are facing nowadays: climate change, the methane burst from the Arctic – which is likely to happen within the next decade and have catastrophic consequences – as well as overpopulation. The latter is one of the central topics of his book. “The Earth” – he said – “is already home to 10 times the population it can support”, a clear sign that population growth is one of the main roots of today’s climate and ecosystem catastrophe. The only way out of this is to change the population growth curve so that the number of humans on the planet can be gradually restored to a sustainable level – which he estimates is two billion.
You can check out the full-length video of Earth.Org ‘s conversation with Peter Fiekowsky below:
Featured image: peterfiekowsky.com
You might also like: In Conversation with David Pogue, Author of How to Prepare for Climate Change
