A work published this September in the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences thus defines three levels of current risk arising from global warming: “>1,5º C dangerous; >3º C catastrophic; and >5º C unknown, that is, beyond catastrophic, including existential threats” [1]. According to the authors, to keep the planet's average temperatures below dangerous levels of warming it would be necessary to “reverse the emissions curve by 2020” (bending the emissions curve by 2020). It would also require removing a trillion tons of CO from the atmosphere.2 by 2100, in order to take the warming curve towards a cooling trend [2].
Although this assessment of our chances of escaping catastrophic warming already presupposes the use of geoengineering, with all the unknowns and risks involved, it does not differ substantially from another assessment already discussed in this column [3], which must however be remembered, given the exceptional political weight and scientific credibility of its authors. Titled Three years to safeguard our climate, it is signed by Christiana Figueres, a key figure in the Paris Agreement, and by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Gail Whiteman, Johan Rockström, Anthony Hobley and Stefan Rahmstorf, five of today's most influential scientists in the various areas of research on change climate [4]. The estimated amount of CO2 that our thermo-fossil civilization can release into the atmosphere, still maintaining a good chance of avoiding an average warming above 2º C, varies between 150 and 1.050 billion tons (Gigatonnes, Gt). This track defines our carbon budget. The authors in question state that, “at the current rate of [anthropogenic] emissions of 41 Gt of CO2, the lower limit of this range [150 GtCO2] will be crossed in four years, and its midpoint of 600 Gt will be surpassed in 15 years.” Taking into account only atmospheric emissions of CO2, these experts show that, if the emissions reduction curve CO2 Had it started in 2016, we would have until 2050 to bring it to zero. If it starts in 2020, it should fall to zero in 2040; and if it only starts in 2025, it should reach zero shortly before 2035, as shown in Figure 1.
Source: Christiana Figueres, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Gail Whiteman, Johan Rockström, Anthony Hobley & Stefan Rahmstorf, “Three years to safeguard our climate”, Nature, 28/VI/2017, based on data from The Global Carbon Project.
Faced with such desperately short deadlines, it is no surprise that am work published last week in Nature Geoscience by Richard J. Millar and nine co-authors had enormous and immediate repercussions in the press [5]. Its authors suggest that the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement, that is, limiting the warming of the combined global average land and sea temperature to 1,5º C above the pre-industrial period (1850-1900), “is not yet an impossibility geophysics" [6]. This, they emphasize, is a gigantic challenge, as it is essential, to achieve this, that emissions “fall below current levels in 2030 and then continue to decline at a much greater speed and with no historical precedents”. Richard Millar and colleagues argue, in short, that limiting carbon emissions CO2 after 2015 at around 200 GtC [200 billion tonnes of carbon = 734 Gt CO2[7]] would offer a 66% probability of keeping post-2015 warming to less than 0,6°C above current average temperatures.
According to Jeff Tollefson [8], the work of Millar and colleagues “is receiving a controversial reception (mixed reviews). Some argue that the analysis is fundamentally flawed because it focuses on a period of slower warming that began around the beginning of the millennium, a period that lasted until 2014 and is called a “hiatus” in global warming. [9]. The debate opened by the work of Millar and colleagues has just begun and it is not yet possible to say whether their results will form a new consensus. But, for all intents and purposes, it would be appropriate, at least provisionally, to admit its central conclusion: “it is not yet a geophysical impossibility” for an increase of just 1,5º C in the planet's combined average land and sea surface temperature in relation to the pre- industrial. As Millar himself stated, “the Paris target of 1,5º C is not impossible. It's just very, very difficult. (...) For many people, it would probably be easier if this goal were actually impossible. We are showing that it is still possible. But the real question is whether we can create the political action actually required to realize these scenarios.” [10].
Climate forcing action vs political inaction
In this warning from Millar lies, in fact, the “real issue”, the punctus dolens the whole problem of climate change. Since limiting warming no longer to 1,5º C, but to 2º C appears to be an impossibility resulting from the combination between action climate forcing [11] and inaction imposed by the world economic and political order. To demonstrate this impossibility, which is certainly more political than geophysical, it is essential to take into account not only the measurements and projections put forward by the models, but the social, economic and political forces at play.
The growing risk to humanity and biodiversity posed by climate change and ongoing “biological annihilation” [12] has provoked a very heterogeneous arc of political, economic and intellectual reactions. In the extreme zone of this arc are those who assume aggressively denialist attitudes in relation to these phenomena and their preponderantly anthropogenic character. In the US, its iconic representatives are the Koch brothers, Donald Trump and his team, members of Congress, Fox, several think tanks and a portion of the North American electorate. The arguments at stake here are so null that sectors of the establishment directly concerned with climate security – the Pentagon and the Insurance industry – are not deniers. On the contrary, they discreetly accept the scientific consensus and prepare (or try to prepare) for the catastrophic future it projects. In Brazil, although three or four pseudoscientists seeking notoriety are courted by the mainstream press, climate denialism is, for obvious reasons, more linked to the interests of agribusiness and, in particular, deforestation and the meat industry. Not by chance, its founding document among us is the “Carta de São Paulo”, from 2010, signed by the Confederation of Agriculture and Livestockthat of Brazil (CNA), then under the presidency of Kátia Abreu, which reads: “More sectarian environmentalist movements and some politicians around the world have (sic) appropriated scientific information that is still partial or inconclusive to convey a false idea certainty on climate issues, in order to rush governments to decide on measures, mainly aimed at mitigating carbon emissions” [13]. They Crude denialism has the advantage of clearly expressing the interests of corporate sectors whose profits are inseparable from GHG emissions, whether from the burning of fossil fuels, biogenic methane emissions or even deforestation. As John Gibbons summarizes, “climate deniers want to protect the status quo that made them rich” [14]. In short, the Big Oil North American and the Farmageddon Brazilians can and should be accused of everything except inconsistency.
On the contrary, governments that signed the Paris Agreement can be accused of incoherence. Taking scientific consensus as a starting point, the objective of the Agreement was to avoid exceeding 2º C above the pre-industrial period (1850-1900) in the planet's combined average land and sea surface temperatures. The paradox of this Agreement lies in the fact that those who hail it as a exploit diplomats admit, at the same time, that he is incapable of achieving his objective, which is to contain warming below this threshold of extreme danger. This paradox is similar to that of the surgeon who proudly communicates to the patient's family the success of the operation, regretting only the detail that the patient died. It is true that subsequent, more ambitious targets for reducing GHG emissions, foreseen in successive revisions of the Agreement itself from 2020 onwards, would progressively bring it closer to the objective pursued. It turns out that for successive steps to be taken, it is necessary to take the first one.
Unfortunately, an article titled “Prove that Paris was more than a paper promise,” published last month in Nature, shows that, with regard to fulfilling the promises announced by the USA, the European Union and Japan in 2015 (INDCs): (1) this first step has not even been rehearsed; (2) the implementations reported to achieve the INDCs' goals do not lead to them, and (3) the policies actually adopted project results well below the reported implementations. “So far,” its authors state, “no large industrially advanced country is on track to fulfill its promises to control the GHG emissions that cause climate change. wishful thinking and bravado is eclipsing reality. (...) National governments are incapable of honoring their promises” [15]. Figure 2 measures the increasing distance between words and action.
In 2015, the US committed to reducing its GHG emissions by 26% to 28% in 2025 relative to the 2005 level. “However,” the authors continue, “the country was on track to cut probably only 15% per 19%. (...) With Trump, the gap between promise and fulfillment has widened, as the federal government seeks to revoke the EPA's (Environmental Protection Agency) Clean Power Plan, increase limits on methane emissions and reverse greater efficiency policies energy. Many U.S. companies, cities and states have declared that they will continue to lower emissions, but so far many of these statements are just words.” In fact, as the graph above shows, between 1990 and 2015 (historical emissions, gray line) US emissions (in Gigatons of CO2-eq) went from 6,4 to 6,6 GtCO2-eq. Without any emission control policy (business as usual, white line), the country would reach 2025 emitting almost 7 GtCO2-eq, that is, around 5% more than the amount issued in 2015. According to INDC implementation policies reported in 2015 (pledged policies reported, dotted pink line), emissions would return to the same level as in 1990 (6,4 GtCO2-eq), and not less than 26% or 28% compared to the 2005 level (~5,3 GtCO2-eq), as promised in the Paris Agreement (blue dotted line). But the policies actually adopted since Obama (enacted policies, solid pink line) bring these emissions to almost touch the worst case scenario in this graph (business as usual, White line).
Figure 3, published on December 8, 2016, one month after Donald Trump's election, helps to better visualize: (1) the gap between the North American INDC and the policies promised by Obama and (2) the setback represented due to Trump's annulment of Obama's already insufficient policies, especially the Clean Power Plan (already suspended by the US Supreme Court), greater control of methane leaks in hydrofraction drilling, as well as greater energy efficiency policies.
Increasing gaps between goals, reported policies and effective actions occur equally in Europe and Japan, as shown by David G. Victor and the five co-authors of the Nature, mentioned above. As far as Japan is concerned, the products of its economy require 40% less energy per equivalent dollar compared to those of the US economy, so that it is much more difficult to fulfill, through additional efficiency gains, the promise of reducing by 26% Japanese emissions of CO2-eq in 2030. Always according to the authors of this article from Nature, “programs designed to quickly introduce the most efficient equipment in the steel industry, for example, will force the abandonment of capital stock much faster than makes sense for the markets.”
Here, in short, is the hard core of the incoherence that the governments that signed the Paris Agreement suffer from. On the one hand, this affirms the imperative need to contain the increase in the planet's average temperatures below the threshold of extreme danger for humanity and other species. On the other hand, however, its signatories subordinate the achievement of this crucial objective to the limits of what makes sense for the markets. But it is known that the nature of markets finds meaning only in initiatives that favor their profitability.
“Basic political facts”
David G. Victor and colleagues understand well how commitments made by government officials crumble when they come into contact with corporate interests: “It is easy for politicians to make promises in the face of impatient voters and opposition parties. But it is difficult to impose high costs on powerful, well-organized groups. No system of global governance can eliminate these basic political facts.” The promises made in Paris by the governments of Australia, Mexico and South Korea, the authors exemplify, equally shatter these same basic political facts. These ultimately boil down to a only basic political fact, which it is worth reaffirming for the umpteenth time, even though it is abundantly obvious: governments do not wish and/or do not have the strength to impose reductions in GHG emissions, on the required scale and speed, on “powerful and well-organized groups”, that is to say, to corporations, which penetrate the state's technobureaucracy to the core and control the strategic decisions of the global economy.
It has nothing to do with pessimism or fatalism to understand the basic political fact that this State-Corporation conjunction does not want to, cannot and will not divert us from the current trajectory of socio-environmental collapse. Understanding this fact is, on the contrary, a condition of possibility for political action in line with the extreme gravity of the current situation. And believing that we can still act politically (despite the failure of past emancipatory projects and the dark portrait of the near future that science presents to us) is, perhaps more than it seems sensible, to persevere in optimism.
[1] See Yangyang Xu & Veerabhadran Ramanathan, “Well below 2 °C: Mitigation strategies for avoiding dangerous to catastrophic climate changes”. PNAS, 14/IX/2017: “>1.5 °C as dangerous; >3 °C as catastrophe; and >5 °C as unknown, implying beyond catastrophe, including existential threats. With unchecked emissions, the central warming can reach the dangerous level within three decades, with the LPHI [low probability (5%) of high impact] warming becoming catastrophic by 2050".
[2] Cf. Idem, “[…] the carbon extraction and sequestration (CES) lever must be pulled as well to extract as much as 1 trillion tons of CO2 before 2100 to both limit the preindustrial to 2100 cumulative net CO2 emissions to 2.2 trillion tons and bend the warming curve to a cooling trend”.
[3] L. Marques, “For a University engaged in the agenda of our time”, Journal of Unicamp, 14/VIII/2017.
[5] See, for example, “Chance of 1,5ºC is greater than imagined (but still very small)”. Observatório do Clima (Climate Observatory), sd, but 18 or 19/IX/2017; Damian Carrington, “Ambitious 1.5C Paris climate target is still possible, new analysis shows”. The Guardian, 18/IX/2017; “Limit the climatic réchauffement at +1,5o C is encore possible, if…”. The Express, 19/IX/2017.
[6] Cf. Richard J. Millar et al., "Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C”. Nature Geoscience, 18/IX/2017.
[7] Relationship between Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Carbon (C) = 44/12 (atomic weight). Thus, 1 t. of C = 3.67 t. of CO2.
[8] See Jeff Tollefson, “Limiting global warming to 1.5o C may still be possible”. Nature, 18/IX/2017: “some researchers are already questioning the conclusions”.
[9] Cf. Jeff Tollefson, “Global warming 'hiatus' debate flares up again”. Nature, 24/II/2016.
[10] Statements collected by J. Tollefson, Nature, 18/IX/2017 (Cit.).
[11] Climate forcings are all factors, natural or anthropogenic, that affect the planet's energy balance.
[12] See Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich, Rodolfi Dirzo, “Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 25/VII/2017.
[13] Cf. The “Letter of São Paulo”, dated 30/III/2010, signed by the CNA, was born in International Forum for Strategic Studies for Agricultural Development and Respect for the Climate (FEED 2010), which was attended by Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book “The Skeptical Environmentalist”, and Patrick Michaels, senior fellow at the Cato Institute. See João Peres, “With an eye on the election, ruralists criticize policies against global warming”. Current Brazil Network, 31/III/2010. A “Letter from São Paulo” is posted on the beefpoint portal.
[14] John Gibbons, “Climate deniers want to protect the status quo that made them rich.” The Guardian, 22/IX/2017.
[15] See David G. Victo, Keigo Akimoto, Yoichi Kaya, Mitsutsune Yamaguchi, Danny Cullenward & Cameron Hepburn, “Prove Paris was more than paper promises”, Nature, 548, 1/VIII/2017: “No major advanced industrialized country is on track to meet its pledges to control the greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change. Wishful thoughts and bravado are eclipsing reality.”
