Several of my friends have commented about how terrifying they found the report Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. My eldest son read some articles about it and concluded that we’re definitely headed towards hell on earth. I rather flippantly assured him that the climate armagedon is not a foregone conclusion. My friends have ask “Aren’t you terrified by the overwhelming evidence that humans are heating up the earth?” And my initial reaction was “No, I’m rather elated by this latest report.” I’m delighted that the cautious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, finally felt they could make unequivocal statements that humanity is driving climate change. Well, duh, but to longterm climate activists and researchers it’s a huge relief, the burden of proof has been lifted from our shoulders. I can still elicit a palpable relaxation of my shoulders when I think about it. Furthermore, it is now clear that not acting to reduce our emissions, demonstrates an utter lack of compassion for other people. It can no longer be politically expedient to continue subsidizing fossil fuel industries. There is no where left to hide - the climate crises must be met face on.
The evidence that our emissions are driving climate change are so overwhelming that the IPCC felt it was necessary to add a new category to how they communicate their confidence in given results. Previously the panel reported their confidence in results on a likelihood scale that only went up to “virtually certain” or having “very high confidence”. But since the last IPCC report there have been more years of observations of global warming (which were scientifically helpful in that they’ve been the hottest 5 years since 1850 thus making trends more outstanding), more complete historic and prehistoric records, and a better analytical understanding of the climate system. This gain in our understanding has meant “virtually certain” wasn’t a strong enough phrase and so the authors introduced the “Established fact” category. To qualify as established fact, conclusions have to be underpinned by overwhelming evidence and understanding. Here are two cases of the use of the new category in the new IPCC report:
“Human influence on the climate system is now an established fact: …. human influence is the principal driver of many changes observed across the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere.”
And
“…. it is now an established fact that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions have led to an increased frequency and/or intensity of some weather and climate extremes since 1850, in particular for temperature extremes. Evidence of observed changes and attribution to human influence has strengthened for several types of extremes since AR5, in particular for extreme precipitation, droughts, tropical cyclones and compound extremes (including fire weather).”
That humanity is driving more weather extremes is no surprise either. If you haven’t noticed the extreme weather of this past summer, you haven’t been paying attention. The wildfires and heatwaves in the western US, flooding across Europe and China and rain induced landslides in India come to mind.
The new IPCC reports also shows that the global average temperature has risen by 1.09 degrees Celsius (2.0 degrees Fahrenheit) relative to pre-industrial times. And that our confidence in future projections has improved so much that the uncertainty in future projections has been reduced by 50% relative to the last IPCC report. That’s quite a scientific achievement. One of the things these future projections have confirmed is that we are pretty much committed to a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2030. This assumes, of course, that we can’t suck vast quantities of carbon out of the atmosphere. What happens beyond 2030 is dependent on what we emit now and in the intervening years. If we do not reduce our emissions DRAMATICALLY by 2030, global warming will exceed 1.5 degrees. We are also more confident that if we exceed this threshold, there will be dire agricultural and ecological consequences. In other words, famines and ecosystem collapses are likely. There will be more intense and more frequent floods, droughts, and wildfires, and possible runaway climate feedbacks - like the melting of the permafrost which will release gobs of methane. Coast lines will be redefined as sea level rises. These are some of the reasons why 191 governments agreed in the Paris Accord that we should aim to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees.
As I’ve said, none of this was a surprise to me and I’ve been relieved and delighted that this getting-everyone-to-pay-attention-burden has finally been lifted. A survey done in April this year, found that 74% of the people in G20 nations want the climate crisis and protecting nature to be prioritized over jobs and profit. This is largely underpinned by the belief, held by 69% of the populace, that the benefits of protecting nature outweigh the costs. And while this has all come a bit late, part of me thought that we’d need to be at a crisis point before serious carbon reductions were considered. I would normally have stopped my inquires here. I’d have trusted the implementation side of reducing carbon emissions to policy makers and other concerned citizens. But wanting to give my gentle readers a more complete story, I dug into how close our carbon reduction commitments are to what they need to be in order to restrict global warming.
The long and short of it is that our commitments to reduce greenhouse gases are woefully short of what we need to keep warming below 1.5 degrees (or even 2 degrees) and we’re not even making these commitments. I have to acknowledge that the details of these shorting comings, referred to as the emissions gap, and some of the barriers between reaching these targets, sent me into a tail spin for much of this week.
Here’s the low down on this emissions gap. 191 signatories of the Paris Accord, representing most of global carbon emissions, have agreed to strive to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. But the accord itself has no binding targets. Instead each country submits a Nationally Determined Contribution, or an NDC, stating their plans to reduce emissions. According to the NDCs submitted at the time of the 2020 Emissions Gap Report, if all countries meet their NDCs, global temperature rise would probably peak around 3 degrees Celsius. That is not safe. But even more worrisome is that only 9 of the G20 nations (the G20 nations are responsible for 78% of greenhouse gas emissions) are on track to meet their NDC commitments. Those on track at the time the report was written include the EU27+UK, China, India and Japan but exclude the US, Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the Republic of Korea. Government policies (at the time the report was written) were expected to yield emissions of 59 GtCO2 (gigatons of carbon dioxide, or 59 billion tons) in 2030. The NDCs only reduce this emission rate by 3 GtCO2, or 56 GtCO2. This is much bigger than the 41 GtCO2 we’d need to reduce our emissions by 2030 in order to keep the temperature peak below 2 degrees Celsius. And the current commitments will result in emissions more than twice the 25 GtCO2 rate needed to keep the global temperature rise to just 1.5 degrees. That’s a rather shocking, and lets admit it - disturbing, disparity.
Thankfully, there has been some progress on emission pledges since the 2020 Emissions Gap Report. A number of countries have pledged to be carbon neutral by 2050. But as we learned above, what is critical for the coming decades is how quickly we reduce emissions, i.e. the 2030 targets. Under the Biden administration, the US rejoined the Paris Accord and announced that the US will reduce emissions in 2030 by 50-52%, relative to 2005. If implemented this would reduce the global emission gap by 5-10% . Since the US emits about 10% of global GHGs, this emission reduction plan could be seen as proportionate. But that’s not the whole story.
The richest 1% of us emit as much carbon as the poorest 50%. Asking everyone to reduce their emissions by the same fraction, wouldn’t change this inequity. Instead it is more equitable to allow every person the same carbon emissions. To keep the global temperature rise at 1.5 degrees, our global emissions must be at or below 25 GtCO2 by 2030. If we divide 25 GtCO2 by the number of people on the planet, 8 billion (or 8 gigapeople, if that’s a unit) we arrive at just over 3 tons of CO2 / year per person. A more detailed calculation yields 2.0 to 2.5 tons of CO2 as the cap on personal emissions, but we won’t unpick that here. The average emissions of Americans is 16 tons a year - way over the equitable 2 - 2.5 tons. To equitably cap global warming to 1.5 degrees, the average American needs to reduce their emissions by a factor of 6 - 8. Perhaps they could buy carbon emission shares from the many people who emit less than their fair share? Another calculation shows that the richest 1% need to reduce their carbon footprints by a factor of 30. That’s massive. You might be surprised to learn that to be in the top 1% of income in the world, you only need to $34,000 a year. Incidently, that’s less than the mean income in the US.
These reductions are far more than the cuts promised by the Biden administration. Don’t get me wrong, I delighted we have the Biden goals as a nation, but they don’t go nearly far enough.
Where do I think the solution lies? In personal action, of course, targeted at three focal points. First, encourage our governments to have stronger emission reduction targets by voting and contacting our representatives at various levels of government. We can do this individually or via one of many online advocacy groups which prepare letters for us to sign when important policies arise. Second, we can all assess whether or not our investments, and retirement and mortgage funds are with carbon neutral companies and banks. Third, we can work to get our own houses in order. Private households account for 2/3 of carbon emissions which are in turn dominated by food, mobility and the running of our homes. Loyal readers will know the drill by now with these categories. To reduce our food’s carbon footprint we can reduce food waste and meat and dairy intake, eat locally, organic and in season. We can strive to live locally and commute by foot or bike, or use public transport. I certainly need to reduce my flying (COVID helped with that!), one roundtrip flight from London to DC has a warming equivalent of about 1.8 tons of carbon - almost an entire fair share of emissions. And when we buy products we need to obsessively support green products and technology. If all our efforts, our carbon footprint still exceeds a fair share, we can consider offsetting our emissions via something like the UN’s Carbon Offset Program.
Emissions will only be dramatically reduced when technology, government and society are all intent on marching towards this goal. In turn, business, policies and social norms are all driven by what we as individuals do. Through our personal choices we can bring about a new awareness and demonstrate sustainable living practices. By living eco-consciously, never doubt that we make vital contributions to reducing global warming. And our reaction to COVID has been encouraging. Even if everyone is not convinced of the importance of masks and vaccines, the majority of us were and are and we rapidly changed our behavior patterns. Many of us even found positives in the social slowdown. I urge us all to be in the vanguard of a new ecologically aware era. For if we don’t pull society forward, there will literally be nowhere to hide from the ravages of hell on earth.