You Are Chuck Norris for the Planet

Want to save the planet?

Imagine for a moment that you are Chuck Norris, battling against the forces of evil and ignorance to save the world.

That’s what it is going to take at this point for us to survive as a species: We need Chuck Norris-type action.

The National Geographic recently reported on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC’s) most recent report. Hint: It’s bad. Really bad:

The impacts and costs of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) of global warming will be far greater than expected, according to a comprehensive assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released Sunday in Incheon, South Korea.

The past decade has seen an astonishing run of record-breaking storms, forest fires, droughts, coral bleaching, heat waves, and floods around the world with just 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1.0 degrees Celsius) of global warming. [See: Hidden Costs of Climate Change Running Hundreds of Billions a Year] But much of this will get substantially worse with 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit of warming, and far worse at 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), according to the IPCC’s “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C”, released Sunday [October 7, 2018] and examining more than 6,000 studies.

The IPCC also reported that 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit could be reached in as little as 11 years—and almost certainly within 20 years without major cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

The report identified: “various pathways to stabilize global warming at 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius). These solutions all require unprecedented efforts to cut fossil-fuel use in half in less than 15 years and eliminate their use almost entirely in 30 years.”

Please note: “unprecedented efforts” are required of us all. Also note: Twenty years is not that far away.

But don’t despair. We can make this happen. We just need some unprecedented efforts. One of the very best of those unprecedented efforts is to not drive a car, for example by riding a bike instead. If you have two cars, git rid of one; If you have one car, kill it. It is up to our generation to lead the way, since our parents and our leadership have failed us and our children and maybe everything else.

Killing your car reduces gas usage, emissions from infernal combustion engines, traffic, parking, manufacturing, transport, stress–not to mention that it will save you tons of money and make you healthier and happier.

But there is more. We bikers also have to be advocates. We don’t have time as a planet and a species for slow growth of biking. We need a “high shift plan.”

To really engage people in biking for their lives and the survival of our species, we need to organize and advocate for our cities, regions, and nations to step up to the plate and take some responsibility. The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy calls this the “Global High Shift Cycling Scenario.”

A Global High Shift Cycling Scenario

When bike advocates, cities, other governments, and Chuck Norris all work together, we can make these unprecedented efforts. This can lead to all sorts of other forces, such as: developing better city infrastructures for non-motorized transport, public transport, and getting people to take the vital step towards improving their lives and their communities: biking more and driving less!

This is an “11” on the Chuck Norris scale of reducing carbon emissions, with a roundhouse kick to the face of all polluters, especially cars, and the governments that support and coddle them.

With global climate change at an inflection point, we need a Chuck Norris-type scenario. This is where our hero opens up a huge can of whoop ass and, against all odds, triumphs over about 25 dudes in a circle around him, who look really mean.