The challenge of our time
Averting catastrophic climate change will require the transformation of energy, agriculture, transportation and land use on a scale never seen before
Our view:
bio-energy and carbon capture technology (more on that last part shortly). The bio-energy part of the equation means growing plants for use in generating electricity, whether by burning or some form of chemical energy generation. The plus side is that the plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while it grows. The down side is that it would displace vast amounts of land that would otherwise be used to grow crops for food needed by an ever-growing population. Likewise, reforestation is an important component of the plans for its ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere and store it long-term, and that, too, squeezes agriculture. Aclear consequence of all this is that meat would have to become a much smaller part of the global diet — it is carbon-inefficient to produce, creates potent greenhouse gases of its own (such as methane) and takes up a lot of land.
• Technologies that exist now but which are not deployed on any kind of commercial scale would need to expand massively. Carbon capture is a big one — whatever emissions we produce from generating electricity would need to be captured and stored, likely in geological formations underground or depleted oil and gas fields. It’s technically possible but has not been done in any kind of cost-effective way. The UN panel makes carbon capture, biofuels and other exotic (but existing) technologies a significant part of its plan as a way to apply the brakes to emissions (and even get to net-negative emissions) in the later decades of its forecast, but not everyone is buying that idea. Others have come up with ways to hold climate change to1.5 degrees Celsius without them (or at least without much of them), but it requires much bigger advances on all other fronts.
• The economic incentives for de-carbonization would need to change. The most obvious way to achieve that is through carbon pricing, whether through a direct tax, or a cap and trade scheme, but the UN panel says the price would need to be far higher than anyone has attempted — $135-$5,500 per ton of carbon dioxide pollution by 2030. To put that in context, Australia had perhaps the most ambitious carbon tax, $23 per ton, enacted in 2013. It worked but was massively unpopular and was repealed a short time later.
All of this sounds daunting, but it’s way harder than that. The problem isn’t that achieving all that would be necessary would necessarily lead us to a poorer future than the present in which we live — the efficiencies and new industries this effort would require are generally expected to be a net positive for the global economy, and the U.N. found real synergies between its goals for sustainable development in poorer countries and the strategies necessary to combat climate change. But it would require an understanding that grappling with climate will have to be the singular occupation of humanity for decades to come. It may be a lost cause to hope that the current occupant of the White House, he who made no comment on the U.N. report but has pledged to revive the coal industry, will even begin to recognize the importance of the challenge before us, and that means, at best, two more wasted years.
But we can show our willingness to recognize the urgency of climate change. California has done it with its own carbon pricing plan. Voters in Washington State will get the chance to enact their own. Here in Maryland, we can elect people this fall who will put Maryland onapath toward100 percent clean energy. There maybe no substitute for action by the United States government, but we are not helpless. We know what needs to be done, and we all must start demanding it.