At the Democracy Conference, Apostol Penkov of Ecocluster Bulgaria raised the critical question, “Why should we limit emissions and what will be the consequences if we don’t?”
Using NASA data, he showed a disturbing trend – carbon dioxide levels have never exceeded 300 ppm for the last 800,000 years… until the Industrial Revolution. Today, that figure has risen sharply, leading to global warming, extreme weather events and increasing natural disasters.
Projections are not optimistic – if we don’t take action now, by 2100 cities like New York, London and Shanghai could be submerged. The 2015 Paris Agreement set a target of limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C, but that target is now almost lost. Penkow demonstrated an interactive tool developed by MIT that simulates the effects of various emissions-reduction policies, from curbing coal to managing waste more efficiently.
This is not just a global problem – it affects us all. It’s time to act!