These past two weeks have been such a momentous time for climate change in the UK it is hard to take in. My takes:
On 21st April, Polly Higgins, the lawyer who has spent a decade working towards establishing ecocide as a crime under international law, sadly died. At a meeting at Hawkwood Centre, Stroud, I heard the inspiring Gail Bradbrook speak of how Polly had given her strength in the formation of Extinction Rebellion.
On 23rd April, Greta Thunberg spoke to British Parliamentarians with a clear message that “you did not act in time’, but with imagination and some ‘Cathedral thinking’ it is not too late to act (full text of speech here).
On 30th April, Extinction Rebellion met with the Environment Secretary Michael Gove, a small step but one that reflects the pressure that their actions (widely supported in the country) are having. Clare Farrell said the meeting “.. was less shit than I thought it would be, but only mildly”, but it’s a start.
On 1st May, the UK’s Parliament has declared a climate emergency
On 2nd May the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), setup under the 2008 Climate Change Act, has published its report “Net Zero – The UK’s contribution to stopping global warming” to the Government on how to reach net zero by 2050.
These are turbulent times. Emotions are stirring. Expectations are high. There is hope, but also fear.
The debate is now raging amongst advocates for climate action about whether the CCC’s report is adequate.
Let’s step back a moment.
The IPCC introduced the idea of a ‘carbon budget’ and this is typically expressed in the form such as (see Note):
“we have an X% chance of avoiding a global mean surface temperature rise of Y degrees centigrade if our emissions pathway keeps carbon emissions below Z billion tonnes”
The IPCC Special 1.5C Report, looked at how soon we might get to 1.5C and the impacts of this compared to 2C. As Carbon Brief summarised it:
At current rates, human-caused warming is adding around 0.2C to global average temperatures every decade. This is the result of both “past and ongoing emissions”, the report notes.
If this rate continues, the report projects that global average warming “is likely to reach 1.5C between 2030 and 2052”
Perhaps the most shocking and surprising aspect of this report was the difference in impacts between 1.5C and the hitherto international goal of 2C. The New York Times provided the most compelling, graphic summary of the change in impacts. Here are a few examples:
The percentage of the world’s population exposed to extreme heat jumps from 14% to 37%
Loss of insect species jumps from 6% to 18%
Coral reefs suffer “very frequent mass mortalities” in a 1.5C world, but “mostly disappear” in a 2C world.
So, in short, 1.5C is definitely worth fighting for.
In view of the potential to avoid losses, it is not unreasonable for Extinction Rebellion and others to frame this as a “we’ve got 12 years”. The IPCC says it could be as early as 12 years, but it might be as late as 34 years. What would the Precautionary Principle say?
Well, 12 years of course.
But the time needed to move from our current worldwide emissions to net zero is a steep cliff. You’ve all seen the graph.
It seems impossibly steep. It was a difficult but relatively gentle incline if we’d started 30 years ago. Even starting in 2000 was not so bad. Every year since the descent has become steeper. It is now a precipice.
It is not unreasonable to suggest it is impossibly steep.
It is not unreasonable to suggest we blew it; we messed up.
We have a near impossible task to prevent 1.5C.
I’m angry about this. You should be too.
I am not angry with some scientists or some committee for telling me so. That’s like being angry with a doctor who says you need to lose weight. Who is to blame: the messenger? Maybe I should have listened when they told me 10 years back.
So if the CCC has come to the view that the UK at least can get to net zero by 2050 that is an advance – the original goal in the Act was an 80% reduction by 2050 and they are saying we can do better, we can make it a 100% reduction.
Is it adequate?
Well, how can it ever be adequate in the fundamental sense of preventing human induced impacts from its carbon emissions? They are already with us. Some thresholds are already crossed. Some locked in additional warming is unavoidable.
Odds on, we will lose the Great Barrier Reef. Let’s not put that burden on a committe to do the immpossible. We are all to blame for creating the precipice.
That makes me sad, furious, mournful, terrified, angry.
There is a saying that the best time to have started serious efforts to decarbonise the economy was 30 years ago, but the next best time is today.
Unfortunately, the CCC does not have access to a time machine.
Everyone is angry.
Some are angry at the CCC for not guaranteeing we stay below 1.5C, or even making it the central goal.
Extinction Rebellion tweeted:
The advice of @theCCCuk to the UK government is a betrayal of current & future generations made all the more shocking coming just hours after UK MPs passed a motion to declare an environment & climate emergency.
It is I think the target of 2050 that has angered activists. It should be remembered that 2050 was baked into the Climate Change Act (2008). It should be no surprise it features in the CCC’s latest report. The CCC is a statutory body. If we don’t like their terms of reference then it’s easy: we vote in a Government that will revise the 2008 Act. We haven’t yet achieved that.
Professor Julia Steinberger is no delayist (quite the opposite, she’s as radical as they come), and she has tweeted back as follows:
Ok, everyone, enough. I do need to get some work done around here.
(1) stop pretending you’ve read & digested the whole CCC net-zero report. It’s 277 pretty dense pages long.
(2) there is a lot of good stuff & hard work making the numbers work there.
3) Figuring out what it means for various sectors, work, finance, education, training, our daily lives & cities & local authorities and so on is going to take some thinking through.
(4) If you want a faster target, fine! I do too! Can you do it without being horrid to the authors and researchers who’ve worked like maniacs to try to get this much figured out? THEY WANT TO BE ON YOUR SIDE!
(5) So read it, share it, reflect on it, and try to figure out what & how we can do a lot faster, and what & how we can accelerate the slower stuff.
Treat the CCC report as in reality an ambitious plan – it really is – in the face of the precipice, but also believe we can do better.
These two ideas are not mutually exclusive.
Maybe we do not believe that people can make the consumption changes that will make it possible to be more ambitious; goals that politicians might struggle to deliver.
Yet communities might decide – to hell with it – we can do this. Yes we can, do better.
Some are scornful at Extension Rebellion for asking the impossible, but they are right to press for better. However, can we stop the in-fighting, which has undermined many important fights against dark forces in the past. Let’s not make that mistake again.
Can we all be a little more forgiving of each other, faced with our terrible situation.
We are between a rock and a hard place.
We should study the CCC report. Take it to our climate meetings in our towns, and halls, and discuss it.
How can we help deliver this?
How can we do even better?
I for one will be taking the CCC report to the next meeting of the climate action group I help run.
I’m still mournful.
I’m still angry.
But I am also a problem solver who wants to make a difference.
Good work CCC.
Good work XR.
We are all in this together.
… and we don’t have a time machine, so we look forward.
Let not the best be the enemy of the good.
Let not the good be a reason for not striving for better, even while the best is a ship that has long sailed.
© Richard W. Erskine, 2019
Note:
You pick an X and Y, and the IPCC will tell how much we can emit (Z). The ‘X%’ is translated into precisely defined usages of terms such as ‘unlikely’, ‘likely’, ‘very likely’, etc. To say something is ‘likely‘ the IPCC means it has a greater than 66% chance of happening.
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