While economic growth continues we’ll never kick our fossil fuels
habit
George Monbiot
There may be more bicycles but there will also be more
planes. We’re still in denial about the scale of the threat to the planet
@GeorgeMonbiot
Wed 26 Sep 2018 06.00 BST Last modified on Wed 26 Sep 2018
14.03 BST
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Illustration: Sébastien Thibault
We’re getting there, aren’t we? We’re making the transition
towards an all-electric future. We can now leave fossil fuels in the ground and
thwart climate breakdown. Or so you might imagine, if you follow the technology
news.
So how come oil production, for the first time in history,
is about to hit 100m barrels a day? How come the oil industry expects demand to
climb until the 2030s? How is it that in Germany, whose energy transition
(Energiewende) was supposed to be a model for the world, protesters are being
beaten up by police as they try to defend the 12,000-year-old Hambacher forest
from an opencast mine extracting lignite – the dirtiest form of coal? Why have
investments in Canadian tar sands – the dirtiest source of oil – doubled in a
year?
The answer is, growth. There may be more electric vehicles
on the world’s roads, but there are also more internal combustion engines.
There be more bicycles, but there are also more planes. It doesn’t matter how
many good things we do: preventing climate breakdown means ceasing to do bad
things. Given that economic growth, in nations that are already rich enough to meet
the needs of all, requires an increase in pointless consumption, it is hard to
see how it can ever be decoupled from the assault on the living planet.
When a low-carbon industry expands within a growing economy,
the money it generates stimulates high-carbon industry. Anyone who works in
this field knows environmental entrepreneurs, eco-consultants and green
business managers who use their earnings to pay for holidays in distant parts
of the world and the flights required to get there. Electric vehicles have
driven a new resource rush, particularly for lithium, that is already polluting
rivers and trashing precious wild places. Clean growth is as much of an oxymoron
as clean coal. But making this obvious statement in public life is treated as
political suicide.
The Labour party’s new environment policy, published this
week, rightly argues that “our current economic model is threatening the foundations
on which human wellbeing depends”. It recognises that ecological collapse
cannot be prevented through consumer choice or corporate social responsibility:
the response to our greatest predicament must be determined by scientific
research, and planned, coordinated and led by government. It pledges “to meet
the Paris agreement goal of limiting global temperature rises to no more than
1.5C”. But, like almost everyone else, it ignores the fundamental problem.
Beyond a certain point, economic growth – the force that lifted people out of
poverty, and cured deprivation, squalor and disease – tips us back into those
conditions. To judge by the devastation climate breakdown is wreaking, we
appear already to have reached this point.
The contradiction is most obvious when the policy document
discusses airports (an issue on which the party is divided). Labour guarantees
that any airport expansion must adhere to its tests on climate change. But
airport expansion is incompatible with its climate commitments. Even if
aircraft emissions are capped at 2005 levels, by 2050 they will account for
half the nation’s carbon budget if the UK is not to contribute to more than
1.5C of global warming. If airports grow, they will swallow even more of the
budget.
Airport expansion is highly regressive, offending the
principles of justice and equity that Labour exists to uphold. Regardless of
the availability and cost of flights, they are used disproportionately by the
rich, as these are the people with the business meetings in New York, the
second homes in Tuscany, and the money to pay for winter holidays in the sun.
Yet the impacts – noise, pollution and climate breakdown – are visited
disproportionately on the poor.
I recognise that challenging our least contested ideologies
– growth and consumerism – is a tough call. But in New Zealand, it is beginning
to happen. Jacinda Ardern, the Labour prime minister, says: “It will no longer
be good enough to say a policy is successful because it increases GDP if it
also degrades the physical environment.” How this translates into policy, and
whether her party will resolve its own contradictions, remains to be
determined.
No politician can act without support. If we want political
parties to address these issues, we too must start addressing them. We cannot
rely on the media to do it for us. A report by the research group Media Matters
found that total coverage of climate change across five US news networks (ABC,
CBS, NBC, Fox and PBS) amounted to 260 minutes in 2017 – a little over four
hours. Almost all of it was a facet of the Trump psychodrama (Will he pull out
of the Paris accord? What’s he gone and done this time?) rather than the
treatment of climate chaos in its own right. There was scarcely a mention of
the link between climate breakdown and the multiple unnatural disasters the US
suffered that year; of new findings in climate science; or of the impacts of
new pipelines or coalmines. I cannot find a comparable recent study in the UK.
I suspect it is a little better, but not a lot.
The worst denial is not the claim that this existential
crisis isn’t happening. It is the failure to talk about it at all. Not talking
about our greatest predicament, even as it starts to bite, requires a constant
and determined effort. Taken as a whole (of course there are exceptions), the
media are a threat to humanity. They claim to speak on our behalf, but they
either speak against us or do not speak at all.
So what do we do? We talk. As the climate writer Joe Romm
argued in ThinkProgress this year, a crucial factor in the remarkable shift in
attitudes towards LGBT people was the determination of activists to break the
silence. They overcame social embarrassment to broach issues that other people
found uncomfortable. We need, Romm argues, to do the same for climate
breakdown. A recent survey suggests that 65% of Americans rarely or never
discuss it with friends or family, while only one in five hear people they know
mention the subject at least once a month. Like the media, we subconsciously
invest great psychological effort into not discussing an issue that threatens almost
every aspect of our lives.
Let’s be embarrassing. Let’s break the silence, however
uncomfortable it makes us and others feel. Let’s talk about the great
unmentionables: not just climate breakdown, but also growth and consumerism.
Let’s create the political space in which well-intentioned parties can act. Let
us talk a better world into being.
• George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
A grande orgia global
Os líderes do mundo têm vindo a adiar as decisões urgentes e
o relógio do Apocalipse continua o seu percurso determinante.
ANTÓNIO SÉRGIO ROSA DE CARVALHO
9 de Agosto de 2018, 6:30
O dia 1 de Julho de 2018 foi uma data histórica para o
Planeta Terra. Neste dia contaram-se 200.000 aviões simultaneamente no ar. Um
número culminante, nunca antes alcançado. O dia 6 de Agosto de 2018 foi a data
da publicação de um artigo na revista científica PNAS, da autoria de, entre
outros, Johan Rockström, director executivo do Centro de Resiliência de
Estocolmo.
Este artigo avisa-nos de que a simples ideia propagada pelo
Acordo de Paris (2015) de que estabilizar a temperatura nos dois graus acima do
período pré-industrial será suficiente para estabilizar o efeito de estufa é
irrealista e insuficiente. A situação é mais complexa, pois trata-se de uma
teia de processos e de um encadeamento de fenómenos que mutuamente se
influenciam, e que a partir de um certo limite podem transformar-se num efeito
de dominó activo, acelerador e imparável, tornando o Planeta inabitável.
Eles são conhecidos: o degelo do Pólo Norte com o perigo do
descongelamento da permafrost e a libertação do metano. A alteração da corrente
do Golfo, que já está neste momento ao nível mais baixo dos últimos 1600 anos.
O degelo na Gronelândia, etc..
A data limite para descarbonizar situa-se entre 2040-2050. A
partir daí as reacções conjuntas e irreversíveis podem iniciar-se, num cenário
capaz de ultrapassar qualquer fantasia catastrófica.
Os líderes do mundo têm vindo a adiar as mega-urgentes
decisões e o relógio do Apocalipse continua o seu percurso determinante.
Neste momento em que escrevo, encontro-me em Amesterdão e a
temperatura é de 34 graus. Não chove desde Maio, e as conhecidas paisagens
verdes foram transformadas num amarelo expectável no Verão alentejano mas
simplesmente alarmantes na Holanda. O mesmo se verifica em toda a Europa do
Norte, tendo a Suécia sido confrontada com incêndios florestais.
Simultaneamente, as cidades europeias conheceram o conhecido
e sempre crescente fluxo imparável de turismo, sustentado pelo “low cost” que
permite e possibilita deslocações em massa, intuitivas, inconscientes e
predadoras, que já transformaram as cidades europeias, antigos locais
representantes de identidade cultural, em “sítios” a serem consumidos e
devorados em banquetes de hedonismo e orgias globalizadoras.
A redução de uma cidade a uma plataforma monofuncional
reduzindo e sacrificando tudo a uma só actividade, leia-se turismo, apresenta
sintomas destruidores para o ecossistema urbano, que estão na mesma linha,
embora em escalas diferentes, dos sintomas planetários.
Qual é a pegada e o preço ambiental deste modelo de
“desenvolvimento”? Qual é a pegada e o preço ambiental do “low cost flying”?
O país foi dominado pelo caso Robles e pela queda dos seus
pedestais das “santas” Catarina e Joana, o que levou a tsunamis de opinião e de
indignação. No entanto, com Robles & Companhia ou não, com aproveitamento
político ou não destes fenómenos, os verdadeiros problemas ligados à
especulação imobiliária, ao aumento apocalíptico do preço da habitação, à
catastrófica dependência e vassalagem do Alojamento Local “à rédea solta” e ao
flagelo dos despejos, mantêm-se na sua crescente omnipresença e omnipotência erosiva
e destruidora.
E a “festa” continua imparável, no seu carácter de “festa
titânica”, contribuindo na sua mobilidade incontrolada para mais C02. Em última
análise, em absoluto desespero, nem nos precisamos de preocupar.
Este modelo de viagens ilimitadas, e de mobilidade predadora
e consumidora da autenticidade cultural e da identidade local, é ambientalmente
completamente insustentável e incomportável e na sua inconsciência criminosa. O
momento de paragem desta grande orgia global aproxima-se inevitavelmente,
momento dramático para Portugal, que irá acordar do seu torpor e ser obrigado a
reconhecer a sua dependência e os limites da aposta exclusiva num modelo
auto-destruidor e alienante.
Historiador de Arquitectura
World 'nowhere near on track' to avoid warming beyond 1.5C
target
Key UN report says limiting temperature rise would require
enormous, immediate transformation in human activity
Oliver Milman
@olliemilman
Thu 27 Sep 2018 06.00 BST Last modified on Thu 27 Sep 2018
06.03 BST
Avoiding a temperature increase of more than 1.5C will be
‘extraordinarily challenging’, says the report’s author.
The world’s governments are “nowhere near on track” to meet
their commitment to avoid global warming of more than 1.5C above the
pre-industrial period, according to an author of a key UN report that will
outline the dangers of breaching this limit.
A massive, immediate transformation in the way the world’s
population generates energy, uses transportation and grows food will be
required to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5C and the forthcoming
analysis is set to lay bare how remote this possibility is.
“It’s extraordinarily
challenging to get to the 1.5C target and we are nowhere near on track to doing
that,” said Drew Shindell, a Duke University climate scientist and a co-author
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which will be unveiled
in South Korea next month.
“While it’s technically possible, it’s extremely improbable,
absent a real sea change in the way we evaluate risk. We are nowhere near
that.”
In the 2015 Paris climate pact, international leaders agreed
to curb the global temperature rise to 2C above the era prior to mass
industrialization, with an aspiration to limit this to 1.5C. The world has
already warmed by around 1C over the past century, fueling sea level rises,
heatwaves, storms and the decline of vulnerable ecosystems such as coral reefs.
Shindell wouldn’t share exact details of the IPCC report,
but he said that the more ambitious 1.5C goal would require a precipitous drop
in greenhouse emissions triggered by a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels,
particularly coal, mass deployment of solar and wind energy and the eradication
of emissions from cars, trucks and airplanes.
Even then, emerging technology will be required on a global
scale to capture emissions at the source and bury them in the ground or remove
carbon directly from the air.
“The penetration rate of new technology historically takes a
long time,” Shindell said. “It’s not simple to change these things. There aren’t
good examples in history of such rapid, far reaching transitions.”
The fading prospect of keeping the global temperature rise
to below 1.5C has provoked alarm among leaders of low-lying island nations that
risk being inundated should the world warm beyond this point.
“Every country must increase the ambition of their existing
targets,” said Hilde Heine, president of the Marshall Islands, which announced
a plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050 at the UN general assembly in New
York this week. “If we can do it, so can everyone else.”
The UN general assembly has again pitted the world’s
countries against Donald Trump when it comes to climate change, with the US
president using his keynote speech to praise “clean coal”. Trump has vowed to
exit the Paris accord, a stance that Emmanuel Macron, the French president,
told the UN should be met with consequences such as a refusal by countries to
enter into trade deals with the US.
“It’s a lot more difficult without the US as a leader in
climate change negotiations,” Ola Elvestuen, Norway’s environment minister,
told the Guardian. “We have to find solutions even though the US isn’t there.”
Elvestuen said countries, including Norway, which is one of
the world’s largest oil and gas producers, need to transition away from fossil
fuels, embrace electric cars and halt deforestation.
He admitted these changes hadn’t happened quickly enough
since the Paris deal. Last year, global greenhouse gas emissions rose slightly
again after a short period of stasis.
“We are moving way too slowly,” Elvestuen said. “We have to
do more of everything, faster. We need to deliver on policies at every level.
Governments normally move slowly but we don’t have the time.”
“The 1.5C target is difficult, but it’s possible. The next
four to 12 years are crucial ones, where we will set the path to how the world
will develop in the decades ahead. The responsibility in doing this is
impossible to overestimate. To reach the goals of the Paris agreement we need
large structural changes.”
A difference of 0.5C in temperature may appear small but the
IPCC report, which is a summary of leading climate science, is expected to warn
there will be major impacts if warming reaches 2C.
“Even 1.5C is no picnic, really,” said Dr Tabea Lissner,
head of adaption and vulnerability at Climate Analytics.
Lissner said a world beyond 1.5C warming meant the Arctic
would be ice-free in summer, around half of land-based creatures would be
severely affected and deadly heatwaves would become far more common. “0.5C
makes quite a big difference,” she said.
ARGUMENT
The Paris Accord Won’t Stop Global Warming on Its Own
The world needs a new alliance of green economic powers to
create a low-carbon economic zone.
BY RICHARD SAMANS | SEPTEMBER 26, 2018, 8:24 AM
The 2015 United Nations Paris climate agreement was an
important political accomplishment, but confronting climate change will
ultimately require an economic breakthrough.
The Paris agreement established a consensus goal for
humanity: a maximum temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius over the level
prevailing before the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1700s. It
also created a universally acceptable political framework in which states make
nonbinding, nationally determined contributions toward this goal, subject to
periodic peer review and voluntary adjustment.
As important as this diplomatic achievement was, it
represents only half the job that the international community must perform. To
stabilize the planet’s warming by midcentury at levels our children and
grandchildren will find manageable, the world needs a new economic framework to
accelerate the propagation of low-carbon energy innovationsTo stabilize the
planet’s warming by midcentury at levels our children and grandchildren will
find manageable, the world needs a new economic framework to accelerate the
propagation of low-carbon energy innovations that entrepreneurs are
increasingly bringing to market on competitive terms.
Even with the national commitments registered under the
Paris agreement, the world remains on course for a catastrophic 3 degree
temperature rise rather than the 2 degree goal set in Paris.
This new phase of international climate change cooperation
will require a different cast and architecture than the one that produced the
Kyoto and Paris accords. Foreign and environment ministries were the key
players in the creation of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change’s
Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and the Paris accord in 2015, with crucial input from
the scientific community through assessments organized through the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
This time around, the economic ministries (finance, trade,
energy, transport, infrastructure, development, and technology) will need to be
engaged as well, with active input from the business and financial communities.
While the climate diplomacy of the past two decades has
taken place at the multilateral level in the U.N., this new economic phase will
require a more purpose-built and variable configuration. Since the speed and
volume of greenhouse gas emissions reductions is what matters most, a
universal, multilateral approach will be unnecessary and even
counterproductive. Global emissions are concentrated in a limited number of
locations and industrial sectors, so there is no need to seek unanimous
agreement among the U.N.’s nearly 200 member states.
The best approach would be for a group of like-minded major
economies to use their combined market power to speed the diffusion of
carbon-efficient utility, industrial, and consumer goods and services by
aligning their policy incentives and standards in ways that create greater
economies of scale and lower transaction costs for producers.
A coalition of countries with big markets and ambitious
environmental goals as well as supportive business communities could together
accelerate a shift of production and consumption patternsA coalition of
countries with big markets and ambitious environmental goals as well as
supportive business communities could together accelerate a shift of production
and consumption patterns, directly at first within their own sizable collective
share of the world economy and then indirectly in other markets as these
increased economies of scale drive down production costs of low-carbon goods
and services and make them more affordable globally.
Examples of climate-related economic cooperation have begun
to emerge over the past several years. For example, the Major Economies Forum,
World Trade Organization environmental goods negotiations, Carbon Pricing
Leadership Coalition, RE100, the Financial Stability Board Task Force on
Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, and other initiatives have all taken
important steps forward. But relative to the challenge the world faces, these
are baby steps—fledgling and uncoordinated efforts that unfortunately are not
yet making a major difference in production and consumption patterns where they
would most affect global emissions.
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