MIO is committed to the climate
The work of climate scientists (latest IPCC synthesis published at the end of 2018) regularly highlights the harmful impact of a global warming of 1.5°C on the Earth system and all its components (climate, biodiversity, human societies). This work has led all the countries on the planet to set themselves a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target, in order to limit global warming to 1.5°C (Paris Agreements, COP21) If this target already seems inaccessible in view of the acceleration of the current rate of emissions (+ 2.2% / year), everything must be done to avoid exceeding the fateful threshold of 2°C warming, beyond which the systems' resilience capacities would be exceeded, with an invaluable cost for life, including our human societies.
The scientists of the M.I.O., aware for several years of the impacts of the current disruptions (global warming, acidification, pollution...) on marine natural ecosystems, join the call of the world's youth for the week of the climate strike from 20 to 27 September 2019 at several levels:
M.I.O. staff are committed to the labos1point5 approach, which aims to quantify the carbon footprint of their research unit and implement a multi-year plan to reduce GHG emissions. They will also work to reduce their ecological footprint in the broadest sense, by considering waste generation and management.
-The staff of the M.I.O. support the mobilization of youth that will take place the week of September 20 to 27, support to demand real actions from politicians for the transformation of society.
-Staff will use this week to launch a first awareness campaign on the mobility of students and staff on the Luminy campus and within the MIO to encourage them to use alternative modes of transport (bus, bicycle, scooter, walk) more frequently to get to the Faculty of Science.
-The M.I.O. lecturers and researchers will use this week of general mobilization to continue to raise students' awareness of the notion of carbon footprint and the understanding of the phenomenon of global warming.
Understanding and knowing how to calculate your footprint C is the first step in understanding the reduction challenges recommended by the IPCC and acting individually on the most relevant levers for action:
The carbon footprint of a Frenchman is on average more than 11 tonnes of CO2 per year in 2019. This average includes direct and indirect emissions (imported products whose emissions are produced abroad, maintenance of all the country's infrastructure). By 2050, we will have to have reduced this individual footprint to less than 2 tonnes of CO2 per year, which implies a reduction of a factor of 6 in our total emissions. This effort is considerable and necessarily implies more sobriety in our lifestyles and professional activities. Many sites allow you to calculate your ecological footprint.
The graphic below gives access to the orders of magnitude of the emission savings according to the individual actions chosen. After the reduction in demographics, transport, energy and food are the main levers for action to significantly reduce its footprint. The M.I.O.'s teacher-researchers have been contributing for several years and will continue to contribute in a permanent and recurring way to the message of environmental emergency to students in the various fields. The help of researchers is essential here and, in the near future, it is also to civil society that we must turn to in order to transmit to citizens the urgent and unavoidable nature of the profound transformation of our lifestyles in order to guarantee a liveable future for the next generation.
