Thousands Of Ways To Kill The World: Global Warming Is The Worst-Case Scenario

New Daily -  John Elder

In a prolonged warming scenario, the organisms that are most relied upon to sustain food networks will die out first. Photo: istock

It may feel sad but not the end of the word to lose a few species of plants or animals from global warming. It’s a crowded world, right? Plenty of species are dying out and life goes on is a common fatalist mantra.
But a new study from Australia and Italy has proved that idea horribly wrong.
Researchers from Australia and Italy created 2000 virtual Earths (variations of the planet we live on) and then subjected them to different stresses such as runaway global warming, nuclear winter following the detonation of multiple atomic bombs, and a large asteroid impact.

The domino effect
Each scenario came to the same disturbing conclusion: plant or animal species killed off by extreme environmental change dramatically increases the risk of an extinction domino effect that could annihilate all life on Earth.



Once certain species fell to oblivion, others followed – and the whole system eventually collapsed.
Even when some species were blessed with artificial adaptations to climate change, the mass of life was lost.
“Even the most resilient species will inevitably fall victim to the synergies among extinction drivers as extreme stresses drive ecosystems to collapse,” said lead author Dr Giovanni Strona of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre based in Ispra, northern Italy.

The co-extinction syndrome
As a statement from Finders University in Adelaide put it: “This is the worst-case scenario of what scientists call ‘co-extinctions’, where an organism dies out because it depends on another doomed species.”
The findings were published this week in the journal Scientific Reports.
Professor Corey Bradshaw is the Matthew Flinders Fellow in Global Ecology at Flinders University. He and his team develop models to predict ecosystem function, resilience, and change in the past, present, and future.
Dr Bradshaw told The New Daily that working with a virtual Earth allowed the team to do any “crazy God-like experiment” they wanted.
“And so we’d take out species at random and see what happened,” he said. “We’d do that progressively until we got a full extinction curve for all life.”

The speediest end
The quickest way to kill the planet, he said, was taking out the most ecologically important species first.
“They’re the ones with the most connections in a network. Losing them is the worst-case scenario. When something that is only connected to one or two species dies off, it isn’t going to be missed so much,” Dr Bradshaw said.
When the team warmed up the planet, they found that warming “effectively mimicked the experiment where we knocked out the ecologically most important species. This is what surprised us: warming turns out to be the worst case scenario”.
The beginning of the end comes with the loss of plant life. “Plants have a low tolerance to temperatures at the top end. When you knock out certain plant communities, the herbivores have nothing to eat. Then the predators that eat the herbivores have nothing to eat.”
As the world warms up, it’s the trees that will begin to die out in greater numbers. “A tree can only stand a couple of days above 45 degrees. If that heatwave lasts a couple of weeks, they’re wiped out. Then all the things that live in the trees, the bird and insects, they all go as well. Warming is the worst because it affects the plants the most.”
Dr Bradshaw said that failing to take into account these co-extinctions means we are underestimating the rate and magnitude of the loss of entire species from events like climate change “by up to 10 times.”
He said that humans had evolved to not think about the worst-case scenario “because it’s psychologically stressful” and easier to say that things will never get so bad.
“But not taking into account this domino effect gives an unrealistic and exceedingly optimistic perspective about the impact of future climate change.”
In a statement, Dr Strona said: “In the case of global warming in particular, the combination of intolerance to heat combined with co-extinctions mean that five to six degrees of average warming globally is enough to wipe out most life on the planet.”

Links

• Co-extinctions annihilate planetary life during extreme environmental change
• Extinction Rebellion: I’m An Academic Embracing Direct Action To Stop Climate Change
• This Civilisation Is Finished: So What Is To Be Done?
• Extinction Rebellion
• Climate change: 'Hothouse Earth' risks even if CO2 emissions slashed
• Climate change is a white swan
• We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN
• Apollo-Earth: A Wake Up Call In Our Race against Time
• After the IPCC report, #climatereality by Rupert Read
• New Paper on Deep Adaptation to Climate Chaos
• Why Heathrow 13 verdict could lead to more radical climate activism, not less
• The ‘necessity defence'– should climate activists be allowed to break the law?
• Even climate change experts and activists might be in denial
• Is misinformation about the climate criminally negligent?

Australia’s Drought, Climate Change And The Future Of Food

Resilience - Kurt Cobb

---

Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights.

---

There’s a reason that few people are thinking about world grain supplies. Last year saw record worldwide production of grains and record stocks of grains left over.
But this year worldwide production slipped about 2 percent, owing in large part to the plunge in Australia’s production caused by an ongoing severe drought. Production is expected to fall 23 percent. Fortunately, in our globalized grain markets, this hasn’t affected overall supplies or prices very much as grain stocks are high and supplies are mobile and shipped all over the world as needed.
But Australia is the world’s fifth largest wheat exporter, accounting for nearly 9 percent of the total in 2016 according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In fact, the top five wheat exporting countries account for 56 percent of world wheat exports. The rest of the world is highly dependent on these exporters to make up the difference between what they grow and what they eat.
But it’s not just wheat. For rice the numbers are even more striking. The top five rice exporting countries supplied nearly 80 percent of total world exports. For corn (called maize in most countries) the number is a bit higher. The top five corn exporting countries supplied almost 81 percent of all exports.
Why is this important? First, about 80 percent of all calories consumed come from grains, either through direct consumption (46 percent) or indirectly through livestock in the form of meat, milk, eggs and other animal products (33 percent). Second, as climate change begins to scorch the major grain growing areas of the world, the large exporters may find themselves with much less to export or even begin competing for imports.
One major study forecasts that wheat, soybean and corn production in the United States—the world’s largest exporter of soybeans and corn and the second largest exporter of wheat—could drop between 22 and 49 percent by the end of the century. By 2030 combined rice, corn and wheat harvests in China could drop by 8 percent. China is, of course, a major consumer of grains and the world’s 13th largest rice exporter. Perhaps most worrying of all is the possibility that there will be a rising likelihood of simultaneous crop failures in several major growing areas.
This all comes in the face of world population projections of 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100 compared to 7.7 billion today. These projections, however, are based on smooth sailing from today forward, something that climate change and all its attendant effects call into question. If food supplies are declining in the coming decades, these population projections hardly seem credible.
The vulnerability we face comes not only from perilous conditions stemming from climate change, but also, of course, from the concentration of the growing areas for our main sources of food calories. It is true that every country grows some of its own food. But the emerging picture of climate change suggests that in the future those who do not grow enough of their own food may not be able to count on those who currently grow more than they need to make up the difference.
This would imply a necessity for a move toward self-sufficiency, that is, eating what can be grown in one’s own soil; an end to the destruction of farmland for so-called “development;” a move away from grain-intensive livestock-based foods; and the enlisting of many more people into the production of food.
Today, for the globe as a whole, all these trends are moving in the wrong direction.

Links

• Dry weather in Australia significantly impacting crops
• Australia facing smallest winter crop in 10 years
• Grain
• U.S. Crop Harvests Could Suffer with Climate Change
• Climate change to adversely impact grain production in China by 2030 
• World population projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100
• Connected and vulnerable: Climate change, trade wars and the networked world

Cheap Power Matters More To Australians Than Climate Change, Poll Shows

Bloomberg - James Thornhill

‣ Voters prioritize lower electricity bills over emission cuts
‣ Ruling coalition narrows poll gap with Labor as election nears

Photographer: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg

A new poll shows Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s focus on getting power bills down may be starting to pay dividends. But it also suggests his failure to establish a coherent narrative on tackling climate change could hurt his government at the ballot box.

Scott Morrison

Photographer: Mark Graham/Bloomberg

Morrison’s predecessor Malcolm Turnbull was ousted as prime minister in August after an internal rift in the ruling Liberal Party over energy policy -- specifically his plan to include carbon emission reduction targets in the now-abandoned National Energy Guarantee.

When Morrison appointed Angus Taylor to the energy portfolio, he gave him the snappy informal title of “minister for reducing electricity prices.” Morrison and Taylor both say the nation can’t depend on renewable energy, instead touting coal as power you can rely on “when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.”
Monday’s poll will offer Morrison encouragement that he’s closing down the main opposition Labor party’s lead ahead of a national election expected in May next year. The poll showed Labor’s lead over the ruling coalition narrowing to a 52-48 split on a two-party preferred basis, from 55-45 in October.

Cheap Power Trumps Climate Concerns
Poll asks what should be the top priority for Australia's energy policy

Fairfax-Ipsos poll

Labor leader Bill Shorten wants more ambitious climate targets than the government, but has yet to fully flesh out his energy plans. He’s set to do that this week, when he gives a major speech on energy at a BloombergNEF event in Sydney on Thursday.

Bill Shorten

Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg

Labor voters are far more likely to see climate change as the most pressing priority for energy policy -- 53 percent in the poll said it should be the main focus -- so in that sense Shorten is playing to his base. The challenge for him now is to simultaneously keep up the pressure on energy suppliers to keep prices contained.
Morrison and Taylor may have earned some credit with voters for exerting pressure on the big energy retailers, but they are also dealing with a backlash over their lukewarm attitude toward renewables. Morrison says he is confident Australia will meet its Paris climate targets -- reducing emissions by at least 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 -- but is yet to articulate a clear policy for achieving that.

Links

• Fairfax-Ipsos poll: Voters want cuts to power prices and carbon emissions
• Fairfax-Ipsos poll has a simple message to MPs: cut carbon emissions as well as power bills
• 47% say prioritise cutting power bills: Ipsos
• Labor poised to sign off on long-awaited energy plan

Extinction Rebellion: I’m An Academic Embracing Direct Action To Stop Climate Change

The Conversation - Rupert Read

Kay Michael/Flickr., Author provided

---

Dr Rupert Read teaches philosophy at the University of East Anglia specialising in philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and environmental philosophy, and chairs the Green House thinktank. He studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford, before undertaking postgraduate studies in the United States at Princeton University and Rutgers University where he gained his doctorate.

---

Not heard of the “Extinction Rebellion” before? Then you heard it here first. Because soon, everyone is going to have heard of it. The Extinction Rebellion is a non-violent direct action movement challenging inaction over dangerous climate change and the mass extinction of species which, ultimately, threatens our own species.
Saturday November 17 2018 is “Rebellion Day” – when people opposed to what they see as a government of “climate criminals” aim to gather together enough protesters to close down parts of the capital – by shutting down fossil-powered road traffic at key pinch-points in London.
I’m a Reader in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and I have thrown myself headfirst into this movement. Our long-term aim is to create a situation where the government can no longer ignore the determination of an increasingly large number of people to shift the world from what appears to be a direct course towards climate calamity. Who knows, the government could even end up having to negotiate with the rebels.
As someone who is both a veteran of non-violent direct actions over the years and an academic seeking to make sense of these campaigns, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about what’s old and what’s new about the Extinction Rebellion. Here are my conclusions so far.

From world peace to climate justice
The Extinction Rebellion is rooted in longstanding traditions exemplified by the radical nuclear disarmament movement. The founders of the Extinction Rebellion have thought carefully about past precedents, and about what works and what doesn’t.
They’ve noted for instance that you don’t necessarily need active involvement from more than a tiny percentage of the population to win radical change, provided that you have a righteous cause that can elicit tacit backing from a much larger percentage.
The Extinction Rebellion is also quite different from its predecessors. True, the disarmament movement was about our very existence, but nuclear devastation was – and still is – only a risk. Extinction Rebellion’s aim is to prevent a devastation of our world that will come – and quite soon, unless we manage to do something unprecedented that will radically change our direction.
Climate activists often compare their struggle to victories from the past. But in my view comparisons which are often made – to Indian independence, the civil rights movement or the campaign for universal suffrage, for example – are over-optimistic, even fatuous. These historical movements were most often about oppressed classes of people rising up and empowering themselves, gaining access to what the privileged already had.
The Extinction Rebellion challenges oligarchy and neoliberal capitalism for their rank excess and the political class for its deep lack of seriousness. But the changes that will be needed to arrest the collapse of our climate and biodiversity are now so huge that this movement is concerned with changing our whole way of life. Changing our diet significantly. Changing our transport systems drastically. Changing the way our economies work to radically relocalise them. The list goes on.
This runs up against powerful vested interests – but also places considerable demands upon ordinary citizens, especially in “developed” countries such as the UK. It is therefore a much harder ask. This means that the chances of the Extinction Rebellion succeeding are relatively slim. But this doesn’t prove it’s a mistaken enterprise – on the contrary, it looks like our last chance.

Risking arrest is a small sacrifice when life itself is on the line. Andy Rain/EPA

From the lecture hall to the streets
This all leads into why I sat in the road blocking the entrance to Parliament Square on October 31, when the Extinction Rebellion was launched – and why I will be “manning the barricades” again on November 17. As a Quaker, I cherish the opening words of the famous Shaker hymn: Tis the gift to be simple. What does it mean to live simply at this moment in history? It means to do everything necessary so that others – most importantly our children (and their children) – can simply live. It isn’t enough to live a life of voluntary simplicity.
One needs also to take peaceful direct action to seek to stop the mega-machine of growth-obsessed corporate capitalism that is destroying our common future. That’s why it seems plain to me that we need peaceful rebellion now, so that we and countless other species don’t face devastation or indeed extinction.
The next line of that Shaker hymn goes: “Tis the gift to be free.” In our times, to be free means to not be bound by laws that are consigning our children to purgatory or worse. If one cares properly for one’s children, that must entail caring for their children, too. You don’t really care for your children if you damn their children. And that logic multiplies into the future indefinitely – we aren’t caring adequately for any generation if the generation to follow it is doomed.
As mammals whose primary calling is to care for our kids, it is therefore logical that an outright existential threat to their future, and to that of their children, must be resisted and rebelled against, no matter what the pitifully inadequate laws of our land say.
I’ve felt called upon to engage in conscientious civil disobedience before, at Faslane and Aldermaston against nuclear weapons and with EarthFirst in defence of the redwood forests threatened with destruction in the Pacific Northwest of the USA.
But the Extinction Rebellion seems to me the most compelling cause of them all. Unless we manage to do the near impossible, then after a period of a few decades at most there won’t be any other causes to engage with. It really now is as stark and as dark as that.
If you too feel the call, then I think you now know what to do.



Links

• This Civilisation Is Finished: So What Is To Be Done?
• Extinction Rebellion
• Climate change: 'Hothouse Earth' risks even if CO2 emissions slashed
• Climate change is a white swan
• We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN
• Apollo-Earth: A Wake Up Call In Our Race against Time
• After the IPCC report, #climatereality by Rupert Read
• New Paper on Deep Adaptation to Climate Chaos
• Why Heathrow 13 verdict could lead to more radical climate activism, not less
• The ‘necessity defence'– should climate activists be allowed to break the law?
• Even climate change experts and activists might be in denial
• Is misinformation about the climate criminally negligent?

Giant Postcard On Swiss Alps Glacier Sends Kids' Climate Change Messages

Weather Channel - Ron Brackett

• The huge postcard was rolled out on the Switzerland's Aletsch Glacier, which is melting.
• It had more than 125,000 individual drawings and messages.
• Organizers hoped to set a world record. 

An aerial view shows a massive collage of 125,000 drawings and messages from children from around the world about climate change seen rolled out on the Aletsch Glacier at an altitude of 11,155 feet near the Jungfraujoch in the Swiss Alps on Friday, November 16, 2018. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)

More than 125,000 drawings and notes from children around the world were put together on a glacier in the Swiss Alps on Friday to send a big message.
The message: Fight climate change and help the environment.
"They are asking us and their leaders to take action to preserve the planet Earth for them to have a future on it," said Oceane Dayer, founder of Swiss Youth for Climate.

Kids Leave Climate Change Message in Swiss Alps

125,000 drawings come together to send a large message about climate change in the Swiss Alps.

The mosaic laid out on Switzerland's Aletsch Glacier measured 26,910 square feet, about half the size of a U.S. football field. It was organized by a non-profit conservation group called the WAVE Foundation and the Swiss government's Agency for Development and Cooperation.
The Aletsch Glacier is the largest glacier in the Alps, and it is melting at an alarming rate. Losing nearly 40 feet of ice a year, the glacier could be gone by the end of the century, experts warn.

The postcards bore messages of efforts to fight climate change and help the environment: limiting water use, promises to use public transportation, or recycling old goods before buying new ones among them. They covered an area the size of half a U.S. football field. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)

The children's postcards were pinned down with clamps and nets, and laminated in long glued-together strips to protect them from the ice and snow. Organizers said they hoped to set a Guinness World Record for the "postcard with the most contributions." (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)

The project's aim was to "boost a global youth climate movement ahead of the next global climate conference (COP24) in Poland," next month, according to the WAVE Foundation.
Organizers said the 125,000 individual postcards set a Guinness World Record for the "postcard with the most contributions."
However, according to the Associated Press, Guinness said the attempt has not been registered. The current record is only 16,000.

The giant postcard was rolled out on the Aletsch Glacier near the Jungfraujoch in the Swiss Alps. Organizers want to launch a "global climate change youth movement" to play into the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Katowice, Poland, known as COP24, next month. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)

From overhead, messages spelled out on the card were "Stop global warming" and "#1.5C," a nod to the goal of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

Links

• The Forsaken Children Strike Back: 21 Young People Sue To Save Planet
• Landmark Children’s Climate Lawsuit Hits New Roadblock
• Australian Students Plan School Strikes To Protest Against Climate Inaction
• Why We're Striking From School Over Climate Change Inaction
• Vietnam's Children And The Fear Of Climate Change
• Bangladesh Kids Turn The Tide On Climate Change Aboard Floating Schools
• Kids Around The World Are Suing Governments Over Climate Change—And It’s Working
• Dear Leaders: You've Failed Your Children On Climate Change
• No Children Because Of Climate Change? Some People Are Considering It
• This Picture Book About Climate Change Won’t Freak Your Kids Out

Dozens Arrested After Climate Protest Blocks Five London Bridges

The Guardian - Matthew Taylor | Damien Gayle

Thousands of protesters occupied bridges across the Thames over extinction crisis in huge act of peaceful civil disobedience

Thousands block five London bridges to protest over climate crisis.

Eighty-five people have been arrested as thousands of demonstrators occupied five bridges in central London to voice their concern over the looming climate crisis.Protesters, including families and pensioners, began massing on five of London’s main bridges from 10am on Saturday. An hour later, all the crossings had been blocked in one of the biggest acts of peaceful civil disobedience in the UK in decades. Some people locked themselves together, while others linked arms and sang songs.
By 2pm the blockade of Southwark Bridge had been abandoned and protesters moved from there to Blackfriars Bridge, where organisers said they were soon to move west towards Westminster Bridge.
Demonstrators occupied Southwark, Blackfriars, Waterloo, Westminster and Lambeth bridges.
The Metropolitan police said all the bridges had since reopened and that most of the arrests had been for obstruction under the Highways Act.
Afterwards, demonstrators gathered in Parliament Square to hear speeches. Roger Hallam, one of the strategists behind the actions, told the Guardian he felt the protest had been fantastic.“This is total prediction stuff, mass participation civil disobedience,” he said. “They can’t do anything about it unless they start shooting people, and presumably they won’t do that.”
The day was due to end with an interfaith ceremony outside Westminster Abbey.
The move is part of a campaign of mass civil disobedience organised by a new group, Extinction Rebellion, which wants to force governments to treat the threats of climate breakdown and extinction as a crisis.
“The ‘social contract’ has been broken … [and] it is therefore not only our right but our moral duty to bypass the government’s inaction and flagrant dereliction of duty and to rebel to defend life itself,” said Gail Bradbrook, one of the organisers.
Alice, 19, from Bristol was one of those blocking Westminster Bridge.
“I took the coach at 3am to make sure I didn’t miss it,” she said, “and I’m so glad that I did. It’s a tiny personal inconvenience and, having made it, I get to be part of a rebellion.
“This moment will be remembered in the history books, when we finally stopped allowing our leaders to take us over the cliff.”
Jenny Jones, the Green party peer, joined the protest on Westminster Bridge. She backed the nonviolent direct action taken by demonstrators.
“We are at the point where if we don’t start acting and acting fast we are just going to wipe out our life support system,” she said.
“It’s fine to think we are a rich country, the sixth biggest economy in the world, but actually we won’t do any better than anywhere else because climate change will massively affect us too.
“Basically, conventional politics has failed us – it’s even failed me and I’m part of the system – so people have no other choice.”


Jenny Jones: "If we don't act fast, we're going to wipe out our life support system."

Father Martin Newell said on Blackfriars Bridge: “What brought me here is the climate emergency, the extinction emergency and my faith in God who created all this and whose creation we’re destroying and crucifying … I’m called as a Christian to protect our neighbour who’s being abused.”
In the past two weeks more than 60 people have been arrested for taking part in acts of civil disobedience organised by Extinction Rebellion ranging from gluing themselves to government buildings to blocking major roads in the capital.
However, those disruptions were eclipsed on Saturday, when organisers say 6,000 people took part in protests.
“It is not a step we take lightly,” said Tiana Jacout, one of those involved. “If things continue as is, we face an extinction greater than the one that killed the dinosaurs. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be a worthy ancestor.”
Extinction Rebellion, which cites the civil rights movement, suffragettes and Mahatma Gandhi as inspirations, said smaller events took place in other UK cities as well as overseas on Saturday.
Organisers say they are planning to escalate the campaigns from Wednesday, when small teams of activists will “swarm” around central London blocking roads and bridges, bringing widespread disruption to the capital.
“Given the scale of the ecological crisis we are facing this is the appropriate scale of expansion,” said Bradbrook. “Occupying the streets to bring about change as our ancestors have done before us. Only this kind of large-scale economic disruption can rapidly bring the government to the table to discuss our demands. We are prepared to risk it all for our futures.”

Extinction Rebellion demonstrators on Westminster Bridge in London. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA

The group is calling on the government to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025 and establish a “citizens assembly” to devise an emergency plan of action similar to that seen during the second world war.
On top of the specific demands, organisers say they hope the campaign of “respectful disruption” will change the debate around climate breakdown and signal to those in power that the present course of action will lead to disaster.
The group, which was established only a couple of months ago, has raised around £50k in small-scale donations in the past weeks.
It now has offices in central London and over the past few months has been holding meetings across the country, outlining the scale of the climate crisis and urging people to get involved in direct action this weekend.
“Local groups are setting up across the country and even new groups are seeing around 100 people come to meetings, and we have coaches coming, from Newcastle to Plymouth,” said Rupert Read, a philosophy academic at the University of East Anglia.
The campaign hit the headlines a couple of weeks ago when the former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was one of almost 100 academics to come out in favour of it.
In a letter published in the Guardian they said: “While our academic perspectives and expertise may differ, we are united on this one point: we will not tolerate the failure of this or any other government to take robust and emergency action in respect of the worsening ecological crisis. The science is clear, the facts are incontrovertible, and it is unconscionable to us that our children and grandchildren should have to bear the terrifying brunt of an unprecedented disaster of our own making.”
The civil disobedience comes amid growing evidence of looming climate breakdown and follows warnings from the UN that there are only 12 years left to prevent global ecological disaster.
The group is also making international contacts, with 11 events planned in seven countries so far, including the US, Canada, Germany, Australia and France.
“To properly challenge the system that is sending us to an early grave we have to be bold and ambitious,” said Read. “Forging new connections across the world and learning from each other.”

Links

• Climate protesters glue hands to UK government building
• 'We have a duty to act': hundreds ready to go to jail over climate crisis
• Australian Students Plan School Strikes To Protest Against Climate Inaction
• Why We're Striking From School Over Climate Change Inaction
• The Fifteen-Year-Old Climate Activist Who Is Demanding A New Kind Of Politics
• The Swedish 15-Year-Old Who's Cutting Class To Fight The Climate Crisis
• The Article That Changed My View … Of How Civil Disobedience Helps The Planet
• Climate Change Protestors Stage Sit-In At Parliament House
• Policies of China, Russia and Canada threaten 5C climate change, study finds
• John Kerry: Europe must tackle climate change or face migration chaos
• Brazil's new foreign minister believes climate change is a Marxist plot
• Big Oil v the planet is the fight of our lives. Democrats must choose a side
• Social media influencer urges young people to protest over environment
• Overwhelmed by climate change? Here's what you can do
• Huge reduction in meat-eating ‘essential’ to avoid climate breakdown

Who’s Running Late For The Paris Agreement?

University of Melbourne - Dr Daryl Holland

In order to limit global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, should countries lower their emissions’ target to meet their climate change commitments?

You’re having a party on Saturday night.
You’ve timed everything perfectly, starting with canapés and cocktails at 7:30pm. Except there’s one problem – your friends are always ‘fashionably late’. So, on the invitation, you put the starting time as 7pm.
That way you know most guests will have arrived by the time the party really kicks off.

More than 150 world leaders pose for a family photo during the COP21, United Nations Climate Change Conference. Picture: Getty Images

Now, what if your friends are the nations of the world, the party is the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation, and everyone is running late to lower their emissions fast enough to stop catastrophic climate change? Can we change the time on the invitation?
Attempts to tackle the growing threat of climate change seem to be continually hampered by the self-interest of people, corporations, and countries - who say they want to do their fair share but in reality do the minimum they can justify.
Because of this, the world is on track to overshoot its goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
Researchers from the University of Melbourne and University of Potsdam have quantified the self-interest of countries that have signed up to the Paris Agreement on climate change, proposing a radical solution that allows countries to act with self-interest, but still achieve the goals of the Agreement.

Not so ‘fair and ambitious’
The goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit global temperature rise to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5°C”.
Dr Yann Robiou du Pont from the University of Melbourne’s Australian-German Climate and Energy College says the agreement is considered a landmark framework for countries to work together to avoid the dangerous impact of climate change, but there is problem with how each country’s contribution is calculated.

President Trump announcing he will pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017. Picture: Getty Images

“Each country proposes its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), that has to be of the highest possible ambition, according to the Paris Agreement,” he says.
“Each NDC has a section describing how it is fair and ambitious, but our research, and other international reports, say these are collectively insufficient to achieve 2°C.”
Why is this? When each country has pledged to set its contribution in a way that is ‘fair and ambitious’?
“Each country justifies how it is fair and ambitious, and according to that definition of fair and ambitious,” says Dr Robiou du Pont.
This bottom-up approach can lead to self-interest, where countries pick the vision of equity that means they can make the least possible contribution.
In fact, the team built a simulation to see what global warming would be if the world followed the ambition of a single country. For example, if countries around the world made the same commitment to a Nationally Determined Contribution as Australia - the global temperature would increase by 4.5°C.

The consequences of self-interest
To test this idea, Dr Robiou du Pont and Professor Malte Meinshausen, who has a shared appointment with the Universities of Melbourne and Potsdam, created a hypothetical situation where each country acts to maximise its self-interest.
“We modelled the situation where each country can individually pick the least stringent of the categories of equity,” says Dr Robiou du Pont.
“So, in their narrative, they can say they are doing something fair, but collectively, because of that self-interested vision of equity it would be insufficient.”
The research team used five categories of equity, broadly defined as: capability, equality, responsibility-capability-need, equal cumulative per capita and staged approaches.

The Pledged Warming Map provides an assessment of global warming when all countries follow the ambition of a given one. The scale goes from 1 degree (green) to 5 degrees (dark red). Picture: Supplied

The result of this modelling, unsurprisingly, is that the world will overshoot its global warming target.
“If we aim for 2°C, we get to 2.5°C,” says Dr Robiou du Pont.
The catch is, this isn’t just hypothetical, it’s happening. When the researchers calculated each country’s NDC, they got the same result as their self-interest model, a likely increase of up to 2.5°C of warming by 2100.
“Collectively, it is as if the world is self-interested – keeping in mind that some countries are doing better than just being self-interested, and there are also some countries doing less than could be considered equitable, even in a self-interested manner,” says Dr Robiou du Pont.
So, in other words, some of your friends arrive early, but most are late, and a few RSVP but don’t even show up to the party.
The team published their research in Nature Communications, and in the paper they suggest a radical solution – rather than forcing nations to be more fair, why not ‘change the time on the invitation’.
In other words, set a lower goal.
“If we disagree on what is equitable and let each country pick the least stringent approach, then we have to be more stringent on the collective goal,” says Dr Robiou du Pont.
They calculated new aspirational goals that would allow for collective self-interest while still reaching the goals agreed in the Paris Agreement.
In fact, these results can be used in climate litigation cases against countries. Dr Robiou du Pont’s previous work has been used in a case against the EU’s institutions for failing to adequately protect them against climate change.

The goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit global temperature rise to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels”. Picture: Arnaud BOUISSOU/Flickr

To keep warming below 2°C, they calculated that the world needs to agree on a 1.4°C target. To hit the more stringent 1.5°C target would require a revised 1.1°C target.
“Overall, it is very unlikely that this sharing will be adopted. Fairness is often more used as a justification for action (or inaction) than a driver,” says Dr Robiou du Pont.
“The novelty of this metric is that it can still tell which country is making a sufficiently ambitious contribution in the absence of a universal agreement of what is fair and ambitious.”
And then maybe everyone can enjoy the party.

Links

• The Paris Agreement
• Follow the leader - the roadmap out of climate gridlock
• Trump’s political climate
• Key greenhouse gases higher than any time over last 800,000 years
• Keeping under 1.5°C: are we doing enough to avoid dangerous climate change?
• The Paris Agreement and Nationally Determined Contributions
• Paris Equity Check