The United Nations Environment Programme’s recent climate report, Limiting overshoot: Navigating exceedance of 1.5°C and pathways toward return, is the stuff of nightmares. At least mine, a person who spends most of my waking hours working to mitigate climate change.

As if getting to net-zero CO₂ emissions isn’t hard enough, UNEP’s report sets a new goal post: sustained net-negative CO₂ emissions throughout the second half of this century. Having waited too long to make meaningful progress stopping greenhouse gas emissions, merely stopping them is no longer enough for safeguarding life on this planet.

Scientists have long considered 1.5°C the threshold above which the most catastrophic and irreversible impacts of climate change ensue, and it remains the benchmark for international climate policy. With global emissions still at record highs, however, there is no longer a pathway for staying under this threshold. Exceeding 1.5°C is inevitable. This decade.

This reads like defeat, and certainly, lower-risk futures have been lost. But UNEP’s report is not a call to give up; quite the opposite.

The stakes are now even higher to rapidly cut emissions and thus minimize peak temperature rise, guard against feedback cycles that cause irreversible impacts, and keep a return to 1.5°C within reach. At our current 1.4°C increase, the planet is already experiencing mass coral bleaching, climate-change-induced biodiversity loss, unprecedented sea ice and glacier loss, and intensification of extreme weather. The Lancet reports that heat-related deaths have risen 23% since the 1990s, totaling over half a million premature deaths per year.

Not only must we race to mitigate emissions, but regional and multilateral policy and planning frameworks also require immediate recalibration to accommodate the adaptation required to live — hopefully temporarily — in a world that has overshot 1.5°C, while also developing the capacity and governance for carbon emissions removal at the pace and scale required to quickly and measurably reduce temperature. Our dismal track record doing any one of these things quickly or thoroughly is what gives way to those 3 a.m. nightmares.

But as we continue to fight for systemic policy changes and aggressive government and industrial commitments, we must not lose sight of the fact that we all have a part to play in solving climate change. We each have the agency and responsibility to future generations to make climate-friendly decisions for our homes, businesses, and lifestyles. Each contribution matters and every incremental decrease in emissions mitigates risk, helps preserve available futures, and reduces the burden, costs, and uncertainty of adaptation and emissions removal.

At CET, we are showing up for this moment by making climate action easier, more practical, and more possible for the people and communities we serve. We think of radical ease as a design principle: our work is to help people move further, faster, by removing friction, translating complexity into clear choices, and connecting households and businesses to resources, all to ease adoption of clean energy and climate-friendly solutions and behaviors.

There are meaningful steps each of us can take now:

  • Flex your civic voice. Vote in all elections — local, state, and federal — to ensure that seats from school committee, to governor, to Congress, to the president are filled with people ready to act quickly and aggressively on the climate crisis. Mark your calendar and make time to vote on November 3rd!
  • Talk about climate on your social media platforms. Share climate science, practical actions, and information about programs and incentives in your community. According to the Yale Program on Climate Communications, 94% of Americans access social media each week, with YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram as the top places to reach audiences ranging from dismissive to alarmed, and to counter misinformation.
  • Reduce the climate impact of your home or work. CET created decarbonization roadmaps in partnership with the Hitchcock Center for the Environment. You can access them at cetonline.org/reduce-your-carbon-footprint. Some of the highest-impact actions include:
    • Reduce food waste. When food scraps go to a landfill, they release methane, which has 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide. Cut unwanted methane by buying only what you’ll use, diverting food scraps for composting or anaerobic digestion, and supporting food recovery efforts. Businesses and institutions in Massachusetts can access no-cost waste reduction support through RecyclingWorks in MA (recyclingworksma.com).
    • Adopt clean energy at home and work. Massachusetts has a vast array of programs, such as Mass Save, NextZero, the Energy Saver Home Loan, PACE, and winter heat pump rates (reduced electric rates in effect November 1-April 30) to help residents and business owners weatherize their buildings, transition to clean heating and cooling, and install renewables. Plan ahead for equipment replacements, so you’re ready to make the switch to clean energy when the time is right.
    • Choose lower-carbon transportation. Walk, bike, use public transit, carpool, and make your next vehicle an EV. With gas prices at record highs, there has never been a better time to switch.

With bold, practical, collective action we still have time to return from our 1.5°C overshoot and to render climate nightmares the stuff of an overactive imagination.

Ashley Muspratt is president and CEO of CET where she focuses on turning climate ambition into action. Her work centers on how systems, programs, and partnerships can make climate solutions easier to adopt at scale.