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Paris Climate Conference ‘At the Limits of Suicide,’ Commitments Nowhere Near Enough to Miss 2 C
1
December, 2015
We
have a serious global problem. If we continue burning fossil fuels as
we are, and if the fossil fuel industry continues to grow along its
projected path, the world will see a catastrophic rate of warming
between 3 and 7 degrees Celsius above 1880s values by the end of this
Century. So much warming would likely mean a very bad end. A bad end
for much of global civilization as we know it. A bad end for many of
the innocent living creatures who inhabit our world. And a bad end
for many of our children — those now being born today who will face
the climate troubles we are locking in.
“I am not sure, but I can say to you ‘now or never.’ Every year the problems are getting worse. We are at the limits. If I may use a strong word I would say that we are at the limits of suicide.”
And
suicide may seem a rather mild word compared to the reality we would
face. So much warming would result in entire forests — tropical,
temperate and Arctic lands — burned in great conflagrations, in the
destruction of vast agricultural regions, in turning much of the
world ocean into a great dead zone, in drowned cities, and in extreme
weather related mass casualty events with the destructive ability to
take down entire megalopolises. To call such warming simply
catastrophic may well be a mild misnomer. Because the world on which
we live — planet Earth — has never seen so much warming happen so
rapidly. Not at any time. Not even during the great Permian
Extinction event of 250 million years ago.
Whether
we admit it or not, that’s what the world comes together to address
at Paris’s COP 21 Climate Conference. We’re literally meeting to
commit to saving the world or to ending it. And there is no sign, as
yet, that we’re going to be doing anywhere near enough.
The
Great Carbon Gap
The
problem, as it stands, is a great failure to communicate the current
severity of the global atmospheric heating crisis. Part of this
failure involves an inability or unwillingness to translate current
Earth System climate sensitivity findings into language relevant to
present global policy and then report on it broadly. If global
mainstream media were on the ball, they’d be reporting on the
findings of UNEP’s
annual Emissions Gap Report.
They’d also be paying more attention to
the recently related speeches and presentations by Dr. Kevin Anderson
addressing this critical issue.
(Kevin
Anderson’s excellent presentation showing why we’re not yet
anywhere near up to the challenge of missing the dreaded 2 C warming
mark before the end of this Century.)
If
we, as a global community, were taking this matter seriously, we’d
be pouring over this report, and taking in the very relevant related
statements by Dr. Anderson.
We
would also be taking a very serious look at climate sensitivity in
the context of past global greenhouse gas concentrations and overall
levels of warming. We’d be talking about it broadly and incessantly
in the global media. And we’d be comparing our best understandings
of past climate contexts with current model based climate sensitivity
estimates for warming during the 21st Century (Equilibrium Climate
Sensitivity or ECS).
If
we did this, we would find that model ECS levels of warming estimated
for this Century are about half the amount of warming that is locked
in long term. And since the world has already warmed by about 1 C
above 1880s levels — which puts us at halfway to hitting the UN’s
2 C level already — it appears that for purposes of considering
warming beyond this Century, we’ve already emitted enough
greenhouse gasses to easily break the 2 C limit (and possibly hit as
high as 4 C) over the course of about 500 years.
Global
greenhouse gasses are already in the range of 400 parts per million
CO2 and 485 parts per million CO2e. These thresholds, if maintained,
are enough (if our understanding of Pliocene
climate is
correct) to warm the world by 2-3 C long term in the case of CO2
alone and by 4 C, in the case of CO2e, over the same 500+ year
period. If the slow feedbacks (rate of ice sheet response, carbon
store response, ocean response etc) remain slow, then this level of
greenhouse gasses translates to roughly 1.4 to 1.7 C warming this
Century (Hansen climate sensitivity) if CO2 levels merely remain
stable and
about 2 C worth of warming this Century if all other atmospheric
greenhouse gasses (methane,
ozone, CFCs, nitrous oxides, etc) merely
remain stable and do not continue to increase.
If
this paleoclimate and ECS based hybrid context is correct, then
commitments now need to be for a very rapid drop to zero and then net
negative carbon emissions if we are to have any reasonable hope of
missing the 2 C threshold this Century. We should also recognize that
preventing a rise above the 2 C threshold long term is an even
greater challenge.
UNEP
provides a slightly more optimistic assessment of the situation. The
authors of this report note that peaking global greenhouse gas
emissions near current levels globally by 2020 and then reducing them
to less than half of current levels through 2050 has about a 66
percent chance of limiting warming this Century to below 2 C (hitting
around 1.8 C by 2100). But this assessment may be rather optimistic
considering that we will still hit in the range of 450 ppm CO2 and
550 ppm CO2e by mid Century which would be enough, according to our
understanding of paleoclimate sensitivities, to hit between 1.9 and
2.2 C from CO2 warming alone and between 2.5 and 3 C from the total
warming effect of all CO2 equivalent gasses.
(According
to UNEP’s most recent Emission’s Gap report, the world is
currently on track to warm by a catastrophic 3-7 degrees Celsius
above 1880s levels through 2100. The most aggressive current policy
commitments on the books, if implemented, would drop that warming to
a still catastrophic range of 3-4 C this Century. Clearly, we need to
be far more aggressive if we want to have any hope of avoiding 2 C
warming this Century. Image source:UNEP
— Emissions Gap.)
Unfortunately,
regardless of which climate sensitivity estimation ends up being
correct, current carbon emission reduction commitments by countries
around the globe (called INDCs
for Intended Nationally Determined Contribution)
will almost certainly result in overall increasing rates of carbon
burning through at least 2030. According to UNEP, even the present
most aggressive carbon burning reduction commitments will increase
global CO2e emissions from the present level of 52.7 billion tons per
year to between 54 and 59 billion tons per year by 2030. Such an
emissions rate would result in atmospheric CO2 levels at around 435
parts per million by 2030 and 530 parts per million CO2e by the same
time. This would, in the paleoclimate based sensitivity context we
use, lock in 1.8 to 2.1 C warming by the end of this Century under
CO2 forced warming alone. The CO2e levels by 2030 imply warming this
Century in the range of 2.25 C.
What
we read from this is that the currently most aggressive INDCs will
almost certainly lock in a catastrophic rate of 2 C warming by the
end of this Century as early as 2030. Through 2100, the
UN’s own report is not at all sanguine:
Full implementation of unconditional INDC results in emission level estimates in 2030 that are most consistent with scenarios that limit global average temperature increase to below 3.5 °C until 2100 with a greater than 66 per cent chance. INDC estimates do, however, come with uncertainty ranges. When taking this into account the 3.5 °C value could decrease to 3 °C or increase towards 4 °C for the low and high unconditional INDC estimates, respectively. When including the full implementation of conditional INDCs, the emissions level estimates become most consistent with long-term scenarios that limit global average temperature increase to 3-3.5 °C by the end of the century with a greater than 66 per cent chance.
In
other words, according to UNEP, we’re on a path to hitting around
600 to 750 ppm CO2e by 2100 even under the most aggressive current
policies and an extraordinarily catastrophic 6-7 C+ long term warming
of the global climate.
A
Base Refusal to Respond Rapidly Enough
Why
are global commitments falling so far short of what needs to be done?
It’s true that the challenge is extraordinary. But considering the
amazing danger involved it is absolutely amoral to fail to respond.
From
the policy standpoint it boils down to the fact that we are still
institutionally committed to burning fossil fuels and to using those
fuels as a mechanism to increase rates of economic growth. It’s a
failed assumption based on the fact that at some point fossil fuel
driven growth implodes the planetary life support and kinder, gentler
climate systems upon which all economies essentially rely. But since
this old way of growing economies has worked for centuries, and since
that old growth regime has generated a number of extraordinarily
wealthy and well entrenched power bases, many policy makers are
unable to look beyond what amounts a vastly amoral growth paradigm
based on carbon emissions.
Many
nations, including the most developed nations of the world still plan
to build new coal, gas and diesel electric power plants. Many nations
still favor fossil fuel based vehicular transportation over the more
easily electrified and converted to renewable mass transit. Many
nations have lackadaisical policies when it comes to transforming
vehicular transportation to electricity and other non fossil fuels.
And many nations are politically paralyzed due to a portion of their
leadership being controlled or strongly influenced by fossil fuel
based corporate interests.
It’s
a crisis of leadership and one that’s manifest in the weakness of
COP 21’s carbon emission reduction commitments. For though COP 21
will likely see some of the most aggressive greenhouse gas reduction
policy measures ever put in place, as we have noted above, those
policies will not be anywhere nearly aggressive enough to meet the
global community’s stated goal of keeping warming under 2 degrees
Celsius this Century.
As
case in point to the essential disconnect, a comment submitted by
dnem (a regular poster here) to the Diane Rehm show, which recently
hosted Joe
Romm of Climate Progress in
a discussion focusing on the Paris Climate talks, raised this key
question:
Call me cynical, but it appears that these talks have been ‘pre-engineered’ to achieve a very modest and in all likelihood inadequate accord. They will not collapse in failure like the previous meeting in Copenhagen, but they will not come close to achieving what needs to be done. As long as we remain addicted to economic growth as the world’s primary organizing principle, we will not be serious about addressing our essential problems.
According
to dnem, Joe Romm’s response — “absolutely correct” — as
well as the second sentence highlighted above fell to the cutting
room floor before the show aired. However, the question of how we
reconcile current understandings of economic growth with the absolute
necessity of responding to climate change is an essential one. The
question being, that we will need to all (especially the wealthiest
among us) make sacrifices in order to reduce the impact of a disaster
of global scale. One possibly never before seen on the face of the
Earth. We may need to think, not in terms of wealth accumulation and
traditional growth, but in terms of lives saved and quality of life
preserved. And many of those among us who see the world through the
context of only what goes up and down on the global stock markets
appear to be amazingly ill-prepared to make this all-too-necessary
cognitive leap.
The
sacrifices, instead, are now not just being measured in dollars and
cents, but in nations under threat of collapse, by an expanding
number of people displaced or at risk of falling into poverty, in
lives lost and species going extinct, in the future anguish and
struggles of the still unborn and of those children now being born
today. By those poor creatures who will be forced to attempt to
survive in a world we’re in the process of ruining. And by those of
us unfortunate enough to live beyond the next 1-2 decades and to
start to see some of the worst effects of the horrific climate change
we are now committing ourselves to.
Links:
Hat
tip to dnem
Hat
tip to Colorado Bob
Hat
tip to DT Lange
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