The only way to stop the total concentration of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change from growing is for all of us to work together to shrink global emissions to less than half today’s levels in the next 10 years, and then get to zero emissions within the next 30 years.

If Canada and the rest of the world does its part to reach those goals, and we can, the Earth’s energy system will eventually come back into balance and we will avoid dangerous global heating.

According to the world’s leading climate scientists, even global average warming of another half a degree or so puts the world at grave risk of even more extreme changes to our weather. Unfortunately, if we don’t get a handle on our energy and land use, humans and natural system could face additional warming of 3 degrees or more.

Climate scientist Kathryn Hayhow breaks down the situation like this: