Conclusion

Summary

In Australia, a team of researchers, architects, and designers are building a steel vault, the size of a school bus, which they are calling Earth’s Black Box (Figure C.1). Like the black box flight recorder in an airplane that records crucial data that allow investigators to reconstruct events in case of a crash, this vault will receive daily measurements of land and ocean temperatures, atmospheric CO₂ levels, and biodiversity loss, and collect data regarding leaders’ actions and inactions by scouring the internet for keywords related to climate change.¹ The intention behind its construction is that if catastrophically bad climate outcomes ensue, the box will provide the objective data that will be needed to piece together the story of how that happened and who should be held responsible. As chilling a possibility as such a possible outcome may be, this book argues that there is still time for us to take action to prevent the worst effects of global heating and stave off such a collapse.