{"id":120083,"date":"2018-10-15T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=120083"},"modified":"2018-10-22T11:10:47","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T10:10:47","slug":"fossil-fuels-are-a-threat-to-civilization-new-u-n-report-concludes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/10\/fossil-fuels-are-a-threat-to-civilization-new-u-n-report-concludes\/","title":{"rendered":"Fossil Fuels Are a Threat to Civilization, New U.N. Report Concludes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Coal-fired Robert W Scherer Power Plant, one of the nation\u2019s top carbon dioxide emitters, in Juliette, Ga., on June 3, 2017. Photo: Branden Camp\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

9 Oct 2018 – <\/em>Around the middle of the last century, the chemical DDT was found to pose a risk to human and animal health. The ultimate response \u2014 after a prolonged fight between environmentalists and the chemical industry \u2014 was a federal ban<\/a> on all uses of the substance found to be unsafe.<\/p>\n

On Monday [8 Oct], the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a daunting report<\/a>, suggesting that we are currently on track for around 3 degrees Celsius of warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.\u00a0The IPCC authors promise that we will see coastal cities swallowed by the sea, global food shortages, and $54 trillion in climate-associated costs as soon as 2040<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That fast-approaching catastrophe is the motivation for the demands of Global South residents and their allies, for whom rising tides and superstorms are already a reality. They\u2019ve long chanted \u201c1.5 to survive<\/a>\u201d through the fluorescent-lit halls of U.N. climate talks, and this new report \u2014\u00a0which outlines pathways to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius \u2014 is a testament to that work. The figure is in line with the \u201cwell below 2 degrees\u201d target outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement and, according to the co-chair of one of the IPCC working groups that crafted the report, Jim Skea, hitting that target \u201cis possible within the laws of physics and chemistry.\u201d<\/p>\n

A social reaction on par to the approach to DDT, in other words, could yet salvage human civilization. It\u2019ll be enormously difficult \u2014 far more so than getting a single chemical banned. And we\u2019d eventually have to do it everywhere. Capitalism, moreover, wasn\u2019t built around DDT the way it was around fossil fuels. \u201cLimiting warming to 1.5 is not impossible,\u201d IPCC chair Hoesung Lee said in a press conference last night, \u201cbut will require unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as if moving to phase out fossil fuels more directly would be unprecedented. Costa Rica<\/a> is taking on the \u201ctitanic and beautiful task of abolishing the use of fossil fuels in our economy,\u201d according to the country\u2019s 38-year-old prime minister, Carlos Alvarado. In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern\u2019s Labour government has banned new oil exploration<\/a> on the road to a zero-carbon economy.<\/p>\n

Yet many of the policymaking conversations around curbing greenhouse gas emissions revolve around how to incentivize fossil fuel producers to gradually wean off their bread and butter through pricing mechanisms, rather than the kind of breakneck regulatory phase-out that would pre-empt economic and environmental ruin. Oil companies \u2014 eager to paint themselves as allies in the climate fight \u2014 welcome the approach. Several fossil fuel producers are now sponsoring<\/a> efforts like the Climate Leadership Council<\/a>, or CLC,\u00a0and its carbon tax plan, which would kneecap the government\u2019s ability to regulate carbon dioxide directly while levying a modest fee on emissions \u2014 high enough to continue disincentivizing coal, but too low to pose a threat to oil and gas. The plan would also pay out a yearly $2,000 dividend to individuals around the U.S., without using revenue to fund things like green infrastructure or research and development.<\/p>\n

Amid the doom and gloom that tends to accompany climate stories, it\u2019s easy to lose site of who\u2019s largely responsible for today\u2019s mess, and who should pay the highest price as we navigate through it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost 50% of global carbon emissions arise from the activities of around 10% of the global population, increasing to 70% of emissions from just 20% of citizens,\u201d climate scientist Kevin Anderson wrote<\/a> in response to the new report. \u201cImpose a limit on the per-capita carbon footprint of the top 10% of global emitters, equivalent to that of an average European citizen, and global emissions could be reduced by one third in a matter of a year or two.\u201d To wit, just 100 companies have been responsible for 71 percent of greenhouse gas emissions<\/a> since 1988.<\/p>\n

Anderson adds that \u201cto genuinely reduce emissions in line with 2\u00b0C of warming requires a transformation in the productive capacity of society, reminiscent of the Marshall Plan,\u201d and that there should be \u201c[no] more second or very large homes, SUVs, business and first-class flights, or very high levels of consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike the Paris Agreement \u2014 which never mentions fossil fuels \u2014 this new IPCC report makes it painfully obvious that avoiding that fate and meeting the Paris goals also relies largely on two things: scaling up zero-carbon energy sources and rapidly phasing coal, oil, and gas out of the world\u2019s economies. In a press conference<\/a> announcing the report Sunday, Skea spelled out the situation in response to a question from The Intercept: \u201cI think the messages are quite clear. We have four different illustrative ways in which governments could think about how to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees, and they all involve really quite significant changes in the pattern of fossil fuel use.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Summary for Policymakers<\/a> unveiled last night makes the case still more explicitly, via the pathways Skea referenced. Those forecasts count in various degrees of negative emissions that range from simple afforestation (planting trees) to the large-scale deployment of technologies like carbon dioxide removal, which remain untested at the scale necessary to make even a small dent in global emissions. Scenarios that build in more room for negative emissions have more gradual fossil fuel phase-out timelines, but also require leagues more faith that those technologies will be both workable and cost-effective in the coming decades. If there aren\u2019t massive technological breakthroughs that allow them to be rolled out at a to-date unheard of level, report authors recommend that by 2030, the world\u2019s economies phase out 78 percent of coal, 37 percent of oil, and 25 percent of gas relative to 2010 usage levels. By 2050, those figures are still more stark: Coal should decline by 97 percent, oil by 87 percent, and gas by 74 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cPathways limiting global warming to 1.5\u00b0C with no or limited overshoot,\u201d the report concludes, \u201cwould require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems. These systems transitions are unprecedented in terms of scale, but not necessarily in terms of speed, and imply deep emissions reductions in all sectors.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Protesters march during a demonstration against the Dakota Access Pipeline on March 10, 2017 in Washington, D.C. Photo: Justin Sullivan\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

At a bare<\/u> minimum, we have to ditch fossil fuels to have a halfway decent shot at averting planetary catastrophe \u2014 as quickly as possible. \u201cKeep It in the Ground\u201d has for years been a demand of climate and environmental organizers fighting fossil fuel infrastructure projects like the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. Any honest reading of the IPCC\u2019s new report suggests anyone committed to preserving a habitable Earth should agree.<\/p>\n

As Nick Schulz, director of stakeholder relations at Exxon Mobil, told me after a CLC-sponsored event last month, \u201cIf you\u2019re looking for a policy solution, you want the most efficient\u00a0and most effective policy solution. If you talk to leading economists, they will say a carbon tax is the best you can do.\u201d CLC founder Ted Halstead calls his plan a \u201cKiller App<\/a>\u201d for climate policy, dubbing it the \u201cmost effective climate solution.\u201d In a Fortune op-ed, he and former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen reiterated that \u201cthe plan\u2019s reliance on a market-based carbon tax also makes it \u2014 in the view of economists of all stripes \u2014 the most cost-effective solution,\u201d boasting about the support the CLC plan enjoys from the likes of BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell.<\/p>\n

Asked about that argument, Peter Erickson, senior scientist at the Stockholm Environmental Institute, wasn\u2019t so eager to take the sage wisdom of economists at face value. \u201cIf you\u2019re really agnostic as to who pays the cost and where the emission reductions come from, then [carbon pricing] is efficient. But the question of effectiveness is somewhat different. We have lives to save. We need to have a livable planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not necessarily the case that we are going to be able to get there in the most cost-efficient way designed by economists using the same tools that they\u2019ve laid out for decades. We\u2019ve had plenty of experience with those \u2014 and we should keep trying \u2014 but we shouldn\u2019t have blinders on to think that\u2019s the only way to get there,\u201d he added. \u201cI try to approach it from the perspective of what do we need to maintain a livable Earth and humanity, not what do we need to appease the business community. From a science- and equity-based perspective, you need direct policies to get off of fossil fuels. We need more of the same in terms of subsidies to electric vehicles, but also bans on sales of new combustion vehicles, like they said they\u2019re going to do in China<\/a>. We need bans on new fossil fuel expansion.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also reason to suspect more indirect approaches simply aren\u2019t taking the lead. A recent report<\/a> from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that carbon prices worldwide are dangerously below where they would need to be to make a serious dent in emissions. Announcing that report, OECD Secretary General Jos\u00e9 Angel Gurr\u00eda warned that \u201cthe gulf between today\u2019s carbon prices and the actual cost of emissions to our planet is unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Few would argue that carbon pricing isn\u2019t an essential piece of the climate policymaking puzzle and a common sense proposal. But it\u2019s not the silver bullet Yellen and Halstead claim. Asked by HuffPost\u2019s Alexander Kaufman whether carbon pricing alone could get the job done, several working group members laughed.<\/p>\n

The widespread ban on DDT that passed in the U.S. eventually came to the U.K. Reflecting on the fight there, Martin Harper, of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, told The Guardian recently, \u201cIt took 10 years to get DDT banned after its effects had been demonstrated. And similarly today, when warned about a chemical\u2019s danger, governments wait until research results are unequivocal. Then they suggest industry takes voluntary action. Only when that fails does it issue a ban, years too late.\u201d<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

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Kate Aronoff<\/a> – karonoff18@\u200bgmail.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday [8 Oct], the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a daunting report: we are on track for around 3 degrees Celsius of warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. We will see coastal cities swallowed by the sea, global food shortages, and $54 trillion in climate-associated costs as soon as 2040.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":120084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,147,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-energy","category-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}