The Climate Correction Parade, and Raining On The Parade
In the war between Reality and Fantasy, choose the Rain of Reality over the Yoga, Faith, Fox News, and Other Drugs of Fantasy
It’s heartening to read up on the many emerging, inventive responses to global warming. We Homo sapiens enjoy making tools, and solving problems. It’s a joy to behold, the enthusiastic problem-solving we deploy when the fit is on us. A short and non-inclusive list:
In April, Bloomberg Green reported that recycling electric vehicle batteries is already profitable and capable of recovering more than 95% of the key minerals. A new analysis by Stanford University researchers, which is still under peer review, found that Redwood Materials’ recycling process produces up to 80% fewer emissions than the traditional supply chain using CO2 belching refineries. That’s enough to shorten an average EV’s environmental breakeven time with an internal combustion vehicle to less than 15,000 miles. Every mile thereafter is a carbon win against the internal combustion engine.
In April, the Biden administration raised the royalty rates that fossil fuel companies pay the government in order to drill and mine on public lands. It also blocked oil, gas and mining operations across millions of acres of Alaskan wilderness.
In March, the Environmental Protection Agency issued new tailpipe pollution limits intended to ensure that at least 56 percent of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032. The rule on passenger cars will eliminate more greenhouse gas emissions than any other climate rule in the nation’s history.
In January, the Biden administration announced that oil and gas companies will be required to pay a fee for emitting methane. It also paused the permitting process for new liquefied natural gas export facilities, to study their impact on climate change, the economy and national security.
Direct Air Capture (DAC) — Heirloom Carbon Technologies has built the first commercial plant in the United States to use direct air capture, a technology that pulls greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Heirloom will take the carbon dioxide it pulls from the air and have the gas sealed permanently in concrete. The company is selling carbon removal credits to companies paying a premium to offset their own emissions. Microsoft has already signed a deal with Heirloom to remove 315,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The company’s first plant can absorb a maximum of 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, equal to the exhaust from about 200 cars. But Heirloom hopes to expand quickly.
So, all good news, and now here’s the rain, and you gets no umbrella with one meatball.
The Washington Post reports that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) report released in March of 2023 points out that “Unless nations adopt new environmental policies — and follow through on the ones already in place — global average temperatures could warm by 3.2 degrees Celsius (5.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. In that scenario, a child born today would live to see several feet of sea level rise, the extinction of hundreds of species and the migration of millions of people from places where they can no longer survive.
At our current global pace of carbon emissions, the world will burn through its remaining “carbon budget” by 2030. Doing so would put the long-term goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) irrevocably out of reach.
The National Intelligence Council report on Global Trends 2040 presents “five plausible, distinctive, and illustrative stories of the future. Each reflects the key themes of shared global challenges, fragmentation, disequilibrium, adaptation, and greater contestation.
Three of the scenarios portray futures in which international challenges become incrementally more severe, and interactions are largely defined by the US-China rivalry. In Renaissance of Democracies, the United States leads a resurgence of democracies. In A World Adrift, China is the leading but not globally dominant state, and in Competitive Coexistence, the United States and China prosper and compete for leadership in a bifurcated world.
Two other scenarios depict more radical change. Both arise from particularly severe global discontinuities, and both defy assumptions about the global system. The US-China rivalry is less central in these scenarios because both states are forced to contend with larger, more severe global challenges and find that current structures are not matched to these challenges. Separate Silos portrays a world in which globalization has broken down, and economic and security blocs emerge to protect states from mounting threats. Tragedy and Mobilization is a story of bottom-up, revolutionary change on the heels of devastating global environmental crises.
CNN reports that the Group of Seven nations announced Tuesday its member nations would end the use of “unabated” coal by 2035, but science shows that some of the planet’s ecosystems will reach tipping points or struggle to adapt beyond that point.
Thee think tank Climate Analytics said that, while the announcement would put pressure on Japan, the only G7 member that hasn’t set an end date for coal, the 2035 deadline is too late to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
A Climate Analytics analysis shows all coal use in G7 nations needs to end by 2030 at the latest — and natural gas use should end by 2035 — to prevent global warming exceeding the 1.5-degree threshold.
According to the think tank, none of the G7 members is on track to meet their existing emission reduction targets for 2030, which are not yet collectively aligned with 1.5°C. Under current policies, the G7 are set to reduce emissions by 19–33% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels. This is at best around half of what is needed, which we estimate to be reductions of at least 58% over the same time period.
To keep the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit in sight, G7 governments need to commit to collectively lower the G7’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 58% by 2030 compared with 2019 levels, and at least 75% by 2035.
Climate Analytics also inform us that “stringent mitigation in line with the Paris Agreement would require global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025, and roughly halve by 2030, before reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the second half of this century. Recent research confirms that this is still technically possible and that there is a good chance of 2023 having been the year when global greenhouse gas emissions peaked.
“1.5°C-aligned action would halve the speed of global warming in the 2030s, and halt it by the middle of the century. This warming slow-down is critically important to buy time for adaptation and avoid irreversible loss and damage.
“Even if long-term temperature rise exceeds 1.5°C, ambitious mitigation can bring it back down after a temporary temperature “overshoot”, limiting loss and damage in the long-term. However, even a temporary temperature overshoot will result in some irreversible and adverse impacts, for example on some mountain and coastal ecosystems. We will not be able to return to where we were before.”
The European Strategy and Polcy Analysis System report “Global Trends to 2040 — Choosing Europe’s Future” Executive Summary includes the climate assessment, sans umbrella:
Climate change is accelerating, along with a larger megatrend of environmental degradation, which includes e.g. biodiversity loss. The world is likely to overshoot the 1.5°C — 2°C target set by the Paris Agreement, thereby increasing the risk of climate tipping points. The EU will be severely affected by climate change, but it cannot tackle this emergency on its own: its climate strategy needs to take into account the international context and how it can best use its agency.
Global energy consumption is rising, and so is the use of fossil fuel — despite the increasing share of energy generated by renewables and their falling costs. The pace of the green energy transition could be hindered by critical obstacles, such as continued investments in fossil fuel infrastructure, the price and availability of critical minerals, and electric grid capacity.
Between now and 2040, the planet will continue to suffer geopolitical, economic, technological and social change. The generation now growing up, the children some people were forced to bear, and the children some people chose to bear, will live in a world that their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents failed to tend. They may rightfully curse us.
But the more understanding we have of the challenges ahead, the better we can prepare the next generations for the changes to come.
There are some grounds for optimism. The world’s humans have made stunning progress when our challenges seem overwhelming. When stripped of our fantasy parasols, we have found our deep reserves of ingenuity, invention, creativity, unity, and courage.
The next world leaders, governmental, corporate, NGO, and citizenry, will need to draw deeply on these sapient qualities in the years ahead.
