Operation 2030
This statement was originally shared with ANI on 18 May, 2025
Questioner: And I was very curious about “Operation 2030” written behind you. So, I wanted to ask what it is and why it is important.
Acharya Prashant: So, there are many ways that I can talk about this thing. But it just struck me a minute ago that I should tell you a story. That’s probably one of the most interesting ways to communicate what one has to, right? Would you want to hear it in the form of a story or in the form of a lecture?
Questioner: Story.
Acharya Prashant: Story. All right. Please sit.
So, there is mankind — Homo sapiens, right? Homo sapiens. That's you and me. That's each one of us, right? And for the sake of brevity, we'll refer to this ‘mankind’ as ‘Man’, right? But ‘Man’ does not refer to a particular gender. ‘Man’ refers to homo sapiens or mankind, which is all of us. So, there's this Man and this Man is an immortal being because we are not talking of a particular man; we are talking of mankind itself. Individual people may come and go, but as a whole, people remain, right?
So, there is this fellow in 1750 - 1750-Man. And he's facing all kinds of material troubles that are possible. The planet is earth and he does not have enough to eat. He does not understand most of the diseases that plague him. There is not enough education. There is not enough material industrial production, right? There are all kinds of problems, and he feels like a failure — a loser. What have I done? I've been existing on this planet for 6-7 million years, says Man. And the year right now is 1750, right? The industrial revolution has not yet begun.
1750 and he says I've been here for 7 million years and I've been out of the jungle for 10,000 years. Long time. Really long time. And yet, look at me. I'm such a loser. I have nothing. I don't have good food to eat. My kids don't stay alive. Women die during childbirth. The average longevity is so poor in parts of the world. It is just 20 years, 25 years. People don't survive on an average beyond that. There is all kinds of discrimination. We do not understand physical phenomena. We don’t know what's going on in the universe. There's not much progress in science, arts, mathematics, or any other aspects of human activity. I do not know what's going on.
And then he says, I need to succeed. I can't continue like this. I can't continue as a failure, as a loser. So he says, I need success. What do I need? Success. And he says, what's defeating me is nature. I do not know where these microorganisms come from. The bacteria, the virus, they infect me. They bring me down. I know nothing about the functioning of our environment, our atmosphere. I do not know where to get energy from.
Even if I know that certain goods are to be produced, and those goods bring me happiness or comfort or convenience, still, I do not have enough means nor enough energy to extract those goods and send them into the production line. And all of that requires energy. I don't have that. So he says it has to be a war against nature because nature is what oppresses me. Man says, 'I'm embarking on a conquest of nature.'
The war starts — although the war had actually started long before 1750, but 1750 is when we can officially announce it because now comes what we now know as the Industrial Revolution. And what do we have? We have industries. And to run industries you require energy. Where did energy come from, first of all? We know of the steam engine. But water doesn't turn into steam on its own. What does it need? How did the early steam engines operate? They needed coal. So, you started digging out coal. Mining. Mining. Mining. And that was all fine.
The steam engine changed the way man lived — the entire trajectory of civilization. If you look at many historical trends, they take an inflection around 1750. For example, the population trend of the world; it suddenly starts increasing because now there is more to be consumed. More food can be produced and transported. Medicines can be produced. More research can be done. Industrial activity brought all kinds of apparent welfare. That's 1750, right?
And Man continued on that journey. Man said, "Now, after so many million years, I'm finally getting to succeed. I'm finally getting to succeed." And he continues on this mission for success. Initially it was coal, and then he found another source of energy. Because energy had been his constraint, his limit, his bottleneck. What were the traditional sources of energy before the Industrial Revolution? Muscular energy. Muscular energy to begin with — your own muscles. And when you applied some wit, then the muscular energy of animals, cattle, other domesticated animals; that was the only kind of energy that was available to you. And that kept you back. And now suddenly a treasure has been unlocked.
Hint, what we thought had been unlocked would turn out to be Pandora's box a little later, but for now, let's just call it treasure. So, starting with coal, we used coal to discover a more potent source of energy. What was it? And had we not used coal, we couldn't have come to that other source of energy. What was it? Oil and gas. The kind of exploration and deep digging and mining it requires for oil to be extracted would not have been possible without coal. So, coal led to oil and gas.
Now, Man feels, “I’m even more successful because now there is more energy and consequently more prosperity, more can be done, more goods can be manufactured.” And that's what we call ‘prosperity’, right? And when there is prosperity, we loosely translate that into happiness, right? So coal, and then oil and gas got translated into happiness. Man started feeling more puffed up: “I'm happy, I'm successful, I'm the conqueror of nature, I'm the ruler of the world.” Right? And after oil and gas, what came next? Very recently, electricity.
Then came nuclear energy, and now you have all kinds of green energy sources, right? So, that's the story and Man has been feeling more and more successful, and more and more emboldened to extract energy from the planet and use it to do any kind of stuff that he pleases and chooses to do. But what has been the other side of the story? And wonderfully enough this story is very parallel, very analogous to what you have here — “Decoding success” (referring to the name of a book authored by the speaker). And if you can understand the story of this Man, you'll get a fair idea of what kind of success you want in your life because you are standing at a very critical juncture of your studies, life and decisions.
In 1750, the level of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere was 270ppm. “P.P.M.” stands for ‘parts per million’. So, 270ppm, and from there, it started increasing initially at a very slow rate to the extent that even when we came to the 20th century, to the turn of the 20th century, the year 1900, the PPM levels were no more than 300ppm. So, that was not much of an increase between the year 1750 to 1900 - just around 30 ppm. In fact, till 1870 or 1880, it was barely 280ppm. And then it rose, rose, rose, rose, and then came the two World Wars. It kept rising gradually, and then, we come to the year 1950.
This is after the World War II destruction. The post World War II wreckage had to be cleared. It was massive destruction. You know of that, right? It had to be cleared and there was a wave of reconstruction. And also, we had decided not to fight with that kind of intensity and ruthlessness. The United Nations had been set up. So, there was relative peace compared to the first half of the last century. We are at the year 1950, and that's when the real explosion in both material prosperity and per capita income and PPM levels starts happening. We start claiming that we are getting more and more successful, and that is also the time when this PPM curve just explodes.
Instead of rising gradually and linearly, it takes an exponential turn so that every decade after 1950, the PPM levels kept increasing, till around the year 2000, by 10ppm every decade. And after the year 2000, which is when we enter this century, the rate of increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been more than 10ppm. If you look at the curves of the average temperature of earth and the curve of the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, you would feel like you are looking at the same curve. It's two worms lying on top of each other. There is not just a correlation; there is a direct causation.
However, this century opens and there are already voices, sane voices, warning against an impending catastrophe. A catastrophe that the younger generations, guys like you, are going to face the brunt of. Those who hold money, those who accumulate capital, and those who are at the helm of power, are usually the older folks. While those who will be left to bear the consequences will be people like you.
So, there was a huge clamor, right? Have you heard of the Earth Summit? When was it? 1992. All this is covered in the environmental sciences syllabus, right?
Listener: No, in geography.
Acharya Prashant: Okay, good. Wonderful. We didn't have that while we were studying. So, at least some progress is there.
So after that, there was some United Nations activity, and the United Nations framework Convention on Climate Change came about. And it is under this that you have this Conference Of Parties which is the highest decision making unit under the UNFCCC, which meets every year, right? It is meeting again this year. Where is it meeting? Where is the COP this year? Brazil. Wonderful. So, the COP in 2015 was a landmark one. Very remarkable. Why? The Paris agreement. The national deliverables.
And the Paris agreement came about for a very, very specific reason. The reason was that we were seeing a temperature rise. And there was enough scientific evidence that if the average global temperature exceeds 1.5 degrees centigrade, then there would be a massive problem. Why a massive problem? Because somewhere between 1.5 and 2 degrees centigrade, something called feedback loops get activated.
You understand feedback loops? These are self-sustaining, self-reinforcing climatic phenomena. And once they get activated, they cannot be stopped. They are irreversible.
This means that even if you go to a net zero state now i.e. you do not add any additional carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, carbon dioxide would still keep getting added to the atmosphere on its own, even without any human intervention. So, that's the reason there was so much significance attached to this figure of 1.5 degrees centigrade. It does not pop up randomly from somewhere. The figure 1.5 degrees centigrade has a solid scientific basis.
So, the COP21 in 2015 Paris said that we want to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees centigrade because it was not clear when exactly the feedback cycles get activated. So, it was said, “Fine, at maximum, we can tolerate 2 degrees centigrade because the loops get activated between 1.5 and 2 degrees.” So, we said maybe 2 degrees is tolerable, but 1.5 degrees is our target because even at 1.5 degrees it is not certain that you'll be able to totally prevent the feedback loops from getting activated or you could say from getting switched on like a chain reaction, like a radioactive fissile nuclear reaction. It's not certain, but there is a probability that 1.5 degrees is when it all begins, so, let's stop it before that. At maximum 2 degrees.
So, we said 2015 was a landmark. In 2015, we set targets as a planet. All the countries of the earth set a target. And we said that by 2030, if we want to contain the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees centigrade, then we'll have to bring down our carbon emissions, the global carbon emissions of the entire planet, by 43% compared to the 2019 levels.
If you want to keep the temperature rise to just 1.5 degrees centigrade above the pre-industrial levels, then you will have to limit the carbon emissions by decreasing it by 43% below 2019 levels. Why 2019 levels? Because after that you had the COVID pandemic. So, the carbon levels were kind of artificially down in 2020. So, we took 2019 as the benchmark. And we said, “Compared to 2019, we want to bring it down by 43%.” And even if we bring it down by 43%, the best that we can get is just a 1.5 degree rise.
So then, why do we need to have this ‘Operation 2030’? Because this is 2025. And that 1.5 degree barrier has already been breached. We said we do not want to exceed 1.5 degrees, ever. We said we do not want to exceed 1.5 degrees even one hundred years from now, otherwise something unstoppable will be set into motion. And that has already happened this particular year. We have exceeded 1.5 degrees global temperature rise.
In fact, there is some evidence that it has already gone up to the level of 1.7 degrees, and this is not 2030. This is 2025.
This statement was originally shared with ANI on 18 May, 2025
