It is perhaps ironic that on the day US President Donald Trump came out denying the results of a recent study on the cost of climate change in his country, a study that his government funded, a rover landed on Mars to explore that planet’s internal structure.
Mars is seen in some circles as Planet B – the place we can colonize if things really go pear shaped here on Earth. Elon Musk and other financially well-endowed entrepreneurs point to Mars as our next great adventure, a place the human race absolutely must colonize. Kind of like the movie The Martian, but without the nasty growing environment for potatoes.
In reality there is no Planet B. We only have Planet A – Earth.
All of the evidence produced by decades of research and, more important, actual observation and experience, tells us that we need to act. In Katowice, Poland, next week 187 countries will meet at the 24th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
This meeting, held in Poland’s coal capital, will begin a two-year effort to increase ambitions under the 2015 Paris climate change agreement. A recent study published in the journal Nature Communications assessed the pledges made under that agreement and concluded that the climate policies of a number of countries, including China, Russia and Canada, would push the planet towards more than 5 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of this century. That is way above the targets outlined in the agreement which are supposed to keep warming under 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably 1.5 degrees Celsius, to keep climate change effects under “safe” levels. It also flies in the face of the most recent IPCC report that says more needs to be done to ensure the planet does not pass this 1.5 degrees Celsius “guardrail.”
The goal of the paper is to provide climate negotiators with a useful perspective before they arrive in Poland. Without increased commitments, the paper concludes, there is no way to meet the 1.5-to-2 degrees Celsius goal set in France three years ago.
One aspect of belief is important when it comes to climate change, and that’s belief that we are capable of dealing with it before it becomes a real, global disaster. For this belief to become reality requires action.
At the first COP in Berlin in 1995, negotiators looked at the just-released second report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which stated that there was a “balance of evidence” that the carbon dioxide we were emitting into the atmosphere was altering the climate. By 2013, the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report had increased that probability to 95%. Last month, the IPCC Special Report on the implications of a 1.5 degrees Celsius report pounded the message home: we have about 12 years to get our climate act together.
The facts are in. They have been in for a long time. What is missing is the connection between facts and action. If human beings are capable of sending a robot to drill into the Martian surface to explore the geology of that planet, it should be possible to figure out how to stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere.
The Nature Communications study looked at the relationship between what each nation says it will do to cut emissions (called “ambition”) and what would happen if every country followed that nation’s example. For example, the policies of China, Russia and Canada would lead to more than 5 degrees Celsius warming. These countries are doing “almost nothing” to limit carbon dioxide emissions, The Guardian newspaper reported.
China’s rapidly expanding economy consumes a massive amount of energy while the economies of Russia and Canada are tied to the export of fossil fuels. “Fossil fuel lobbies in these countries are so powerful that government climate pledges are very weak, setting the world on course for more than 5 degrees Celsius of heating by the end of the century.”
The study says that among major economies, India “is leading the way with a target that is only slightly off course for 2 degrees Celsius. Less developed countries are generally more ambitious, in part because they have fewer factories, power plants and cars, which means they have lower emissions to rein in.” Indeed, the policies of many African countries like Kenya and Senegal, if universally adopted, would lead to 1.2 degrees Celsius in warming.
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