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Climate Insurgency After Paris

January 11, 2016

Climate Insurgency After Paris

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NASA.

In December of 2015 – the earth’s hottest year since recordkeeping began — 195 nations met in Paris to forge an agreement to combat global warming. The governments of the world acknowledged their individual and collective duty to protect the earth’s climate — and then willfully refused to perform that duty. What did they agree to, and how should the people they govern respond?

The 195 nations meeting in Paris unanimously agreed to the goal of keeping global warming “well below 2 degrees Celsius” and to pursue efforts “to limit the increase in temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius.” Despite that goal, the Paris agreement also permits the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that cause global warming to continue rising.

Under the Paris agreement, governments put forward any targets they want – known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – with “no legal requirement dictating how, or how much, countries should cut emissions.”[1] These voluntary commitments don’t come into effect until 2020 and generally end in 2025-2030.

Today there are 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon in the atmosphere, far above the 350 ppm climate scientists regard as the safe upper limit. Even in the unlikely event that all nations fulfill their INDC pledges, carbon in the atmosphere is predicted to increase to 670 ppm by the end of this century.[2] The global temperature will rise an estimated 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.[3] For comparison, a 1-degree Celsius increase has been enough to cause all the effects of climate change we have seen so far, from Arctic melting to desertification. In short, the agreement authorizes the continued and even increased destruction of the earth’s climate.

US negotiators were adamant that the agreement must not include any binding restrictions on emissions. Secretary of State John Kerry told fellow negotiators that he “wished that we could include specific dates and figures for emissions cuts and financial aid” to developing countries, but “this could trigger a review by the US brecherclimateSenate that could scuttle the entire agreement.”[4]

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Near Boiling Point on Global Warming

December 2, 2015

Near Boiling Point on Global Warming

Rising global temperatures – if they exceed 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – threaten to unleash havoc across the planet, including mass dislocations of desperate people that will make the current flood of Syrian refugees look like a tiny warm-up, writes Nat Parry.

With more than 40,000 negotiators from 196 governments descending on Paris this week to negotiate a comprehensive accord to tackle climate change, it is hard to imagine that they could possibly reach an agreement that will satisfy everybody.

The interests that each country brings to the table are so complex and diverse – especially when it comes to the touchy subjects of climate reparations and ensuring effective enforcement mechanisms for any sort of “binding” deal on how to actually reduce carbon emissions to safe levels – it is inconceivable that everyone (or anyone) will feel content at the end of these marathon negotiations in two weeks.

This is likely why the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, a Costa Rican diplomat named Christiana Figueres, has for months been lowering expectations for the outcome of the summit.

While the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) has long been deemed necessary to avoid the most serious effects of climate change – a future of drowned cities, desertifying croplands, and collapsing ecosystems – Figueres acknowledges that the negotiations, based on the declared “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs) of each country at the table, will probably not result in reaching that 2-degree goal.

“I’ve already warned people in the press,” she said this summer. “If anyone comes to Paris and has a Eureka moment — ‘Oh, my God, the INDCs do not take us to 2 degrees!’ — I will chop the head off whoever publishes that. Because I’ve been saying this for a year and a half.”

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From Good Intentions to Deep Decarbonization

December 2, 2015

From Good Intentions to Deep Decarbonization 

NEW YORK – In the run-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, more than 150 governments submitted plans to reduce carbon emissions by 2030. Many observers are asking whether these reductions are deep enough. But there is an even more important question: Will the chosen path to 2030 provide the basis for ending greenhouse-gas emissions later in the century?

According to the scientific consensus, climate stabilization requires full decarbonization of our energy systems and zero net greenhouse-gas emissions by around 2070. The G-7 has recognized that decarbonization – the only safe haven from disastrous climate change – is the ultimate goal this century. And many heads of state from the G-20 and other countries have publicly declared their intention to pursue this path.

Yet the countries at COP21 are not yet negotiating decarbonization. They are negotiating much more modest steps, to 2025 or 2030, called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). The United States’ INDC, for example, commits the US to reduce CO2 emissions by 26-28%, relative to a 2005 baseline, by 2025.

Though the fact that more than 150 INDCs have been submitted represents an important achievement of the international climate negotiations, most pundits are asking whether the sum of these commitments is enough to keep global warming below the agreed limit of 2º Celsius (3.6º Fahrenheit). They are debating, for example, whether the INDCs add up to a 25% or 30% reduction by 2030, and whether we need a 25%, 30%, or 40% reduction by then to be on track.

But the most important issue is whether countries will achieve their 2030 targets in a way that helps them to get to zero emissions by 2070 (full decarbonization). If they merely pursue measures aimed at reducing emissions in the short term, they risk locking their economies into high levels of emissions after 2030. The critical issue, in short, is not 2030, but what happens afterward.

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Is The Paris Climate Conference Doomed To Fail?

April 13, 2015

Is The Paris Climate Conference Doomed To Fail?

The United Nations Climate Change Conference – or Paris 2015 – is just around the corner, seven months to be exact. The goal is ambitious: to develop a viable, and comprehensive, successor to Kyoto, applicable to all countries, and with the aim of keeping global warming below 2 degrees centigrade. Expectations aretempered, but hopes remain high as the particulars begin to take shape and individual nations confer their climate goals. Conspicuously absent thus far however, is any meaningful carbon dialogue from the world’s second largest emitter, the United States.

The Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs are beginning to pour in and the public declarations will serve as fodder for any international agreement in Paris. To date, Gabon, the European Union, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, and the United States have published their INDCs. Together, this group accounts for approximately 34 percent of global CO2 emissions – the US alone is responsible for about half of that.

Related: How Much Longer Can OPEC Hold Out?

Individually, support for international market mechanisms a la the European Union’s Energy Trading System appears to be widespread – a pattern attributable to their growing success worldwide, and in the US, at the state level.

In the US Northeast, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is exceeding expectations. Since 2008, the cap and trade program has reduced emissions from the power sector by 30 percent. Over the first three years of the program, RGGI states turned $912 million in proceeds into $1.6 billion in economic value for state economies and created 16,000 new jobs.

 

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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