Combating climate change
Just as the US is in the process of pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, US government data revealed that the need for action to stem global warming is as urgent as ever.
US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) both published separate reports last month that indicate that 2017 was among the three warmest years since 1880, when record-keeping began, thedailystar.net wrote.
NASA calculations show that globally averaged temperatures in 2017 were 0.90°C above the arithmetic mean of the 1951-1980 years. According to the NOAA analysis, average temperature was 0.84°C above the 20th century average. In light of these alarming trends, what can be done, and how are various stakeholders responding to these renewed challenges?
Unfortunately, there is not much encouraging news on combating climate change. While signatories to the Paris Agreement met twice since December 2015, progress on its implementation and ¿nance has been slow, and emissions of carbon show no signs of levelling off.
Between 2014-16, for three years, emissions remained steady at over 32.1 metric gigatons of CO2 each year, but now appear to be rising again.
“Three years without emissions growth is notable, but it needs to be turned into a decline,” said Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Researchoslo in Norway.
It is too early to judge whether the cause of combating climate change has advanced or experienced a setback since the Paris Accord was signed over two years ago. At the global level, there is no doubt that public awareness has increased, and scienti¿c progress in the realm of clean energy and emissions control has been phenomenal.
Price of solar panels, electric cars, and renewable energy has come down steadily. However, at the same time, the pace of economic growth and demand for energy is again drawing on low-cost sources including coal-powered power plants.
Urgewald, a German non-pro¿t association, estimates that currently there are 1,600 coal plants planned or under construction in 62 countries which would increase the capacity of coal-powered plants by 43 percent, and make it harder to meet the goals set in the Paris Accord to keep global temperatures from rising below 2°C.
While global awareness of the perils of climate change is high and environmental activism is growing in every nook and corner, these two forces of dynamism have hit the hard wall of reality, represented by renewed global economic uptick. I call this the tug of war between activism vs reality.
GDP growth during 2018–20 is predicted to be robust, and increased energy demands will be met mainly by non-renewable energy sources, including coal, gas, and oil. UN Environmental Program (UNEP) released its Emissions Gap, 2017 report in November and it shows a “disparity between the world’s stated ambitions on climate and the actions it is currently taking”.
In a similar vein, Fatih Birol, executive director of International Energy Agency, asserted, “The era of fossil fuels is far from being over, even if the Paris pledges are fully implemented.”
Today, he said, the share of fossil fuels in the global energy mix is about 81 percent; if Paris goals are met, the share will drop only to 74 percent by 2040.
The bodies entrusted with the implementation of the Paris Accord, particularly the Conference of the Parties (COP) met twice since the Paris summit. The ¿rst, COP22 met in Marrakech, Morocco in November 2016 and COP23 Fiji, so named because Fiji was at the presidency, was held in Bonn, Germany in November 2017. COP24 is expected to meet in December 2018 in Katowice, Poland. The group is entrusted with formulating the rules and principles of implementation of the Paris Accord, known as the Rulebook, and ¿nalizing the format of ‘Talanoa dialogue’, a Fijian name for the collective ‘stocktake’ or progress report due in 2018. Even at COP23 it was clear that with US participation in doubt, future negotiations on some sticking points, particularly ‘loss and damage’ and ¿nancing, will probably drag on beyond 2018. On the positive side, China, the world’s largest consumer of energy, is likely to step into a more activist role, ¿lling in the vacuum created by the US departure.
China’s role while crucial is not fully transparent, and is compounded by its mixed record on the ground. Its energy demand is increasing in double digits, and while it is looking for carbon-free energy sources and electric vehicles, Chinese companies are building coal plants everywhere.
*Dr. Abdullah Shibli is an economist, and senior research fellow at International Sustainable Development Institute (ISDI), a think-tank based in Boston, USA.