MIT Technology Review
- James Temple
We must transform the economy, not halt it, to prevent runaway warming.
And we're doing it far, far too slowly today.
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The Silverado Fire, which started in late October, burns toward a
home in Irvine, California.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
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Author James Temple is the senior editor for energy at MIT Technology Review.
His focus is on renewable energy and the use of technology to combat climate change. |
There’s a case to be made that 2020, for all the sacrifices it
demanded and tragedies it inflicted, could at least mark a
turning point on climate change.
It's now possible that
global oil demand
and
greenhouse-gas emissions
may have already peaked in 2019, since the pandemic could slow
economic growth for years, accelerate the demise of coal, and
bring about long-lasting declines in energy demand through
things like continued remote working.
On top of that, a growing number of major companies and
nations, including China, have committed to zero out their
emissions by around midcentury. The election of Joe Biden will
put a president in the White House who has committed to take
bold action on climate change.
Clean technologies
like solar, wind, batteries, and electric vehicles are getting
cheaper and gaining ground in the marketplace.
And in the final days of the year, the US Congress
managed to authorize
(though not yet appropriate) tens of billions of dollars for
clean power projects within a sweeping coronavirus relief
bill. The package also enacted tightening limits on
hydrofluorocarbons—highly potent greenhouse gases used in
refrigerators and air conditioners. (After criticizing the
bill as a "disgrace," President Trump nonetheless signed it
into law on Dec. 27.)
But finally reaching a turning point, decades after scientists
began warning us of the dangers, matters less than how rapidly
and consistently we cut emissions on the other side of it. And
that’s where some of the darker signs in 2020 have me worried.
Far too slowly
Even if we have achieved peak emissions, that only means we’re
no longer making the problem worse at an increasing rate year
after year. But we’re still making it worse. Carbon dioxide
lasts hundreds of years in the atmosphere, so every additional
ton we emit further exacerbates climate change, promising more
or worse heat waves, droughts, wildfires, famines, and
flooding.
We don’t need to flatten emissions—we need to eliminate them
as rapidly as possible. Even then, we’ll be left to deal with
the effectively permanent damage we’ve caused.
Some argue that the radical changes in behavior and practices
that went into effect as the coronavirus spread around the
planet are a promising sign for our collective ability to
address climate change. This is, frankly, nonsense.
Huge portions of the population stopped driving to work; going
to bars, restaurants, and theaters; and flying around the
globe. Economic growth plummeted. Hundreds of millions of
people lost their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of businesses
have closed for good. People are going hungry. And the world
is becoming much poorer.
None of this is a viable or acceptable way of slowing climate
change. Moreover, all this devastation only shaved about 6%
off US greenhouse-gas emissions this year, according to
BloombergNEF estimates.
Global estimates
are about the same.
The pollution reductions came at a massive
economic cost, at somewhere between $3,200 to $5,400 per ton
of carbon, according to
earlier estimates
by the Rhodium Group.
We would need sustained cuts on that level, year after year
for decades, to prevent far more dangerous levels of warming
than we’re already seeing. Instead, emissions are likely to
bounce back close to 2019 levels as soon as the economy
recovers.
It’s hard to point to a clearer example of how deeply embedded
climate pollution is into an even basic level functioning of
our society—and how drastically we need to overhaul every part
of our economy to begin substantially and sustainably cutting
emissions.
We need to transform the economy, not shut it down. And that
transformation is happening far too slowly.
Polarized politics
It is fantastic news that clean technologies are getting
cheaper and more competitive. The problem is they still
represent a fraction of the market today: Electric vehicles
account for about 3% of new car sales worldwide, while
renewables generated a little more than
10% of global electricity last year.
Meanwhile, we’ve barely begun to transition industries that
are far harder to clean up, like cement, steel, shipping,
agriculture, and aviation. And the “net” part of national and
corporate zero-emissions plans rely on huge levels of carbon
removal and offsets efforts that
we haven’t remotely shown
we can do
reliably, affordably, permanently, and at scale.
We can’t wait for free markets to nudge along nonpolluting
products. And the lofty midcentury emissions targets that
nations have set mean little on their own. We need aggressive
government policies and trade pacts to push or pull clean
technologies into the marketplace and support the development
of the tools we don’t yet have or are far too expensive today.
Getting just the US on track to zero out emissions across its
economy will require massive investments, and they need to
start now,
according to a study
by Princeton researchers released last month. In the next
decade alone, the US will need to invest $2.5 trillion, put 50
million electric vehicles on the road, quadruple solar and
wind resources, and increase the capacity of high voltage
transmission lines by 60%, among much else.
The analysis found the nation also needs to dedicate far more
money to research and development right away if we hope to
begin scaling up an array of emerging technologies beyond
2030, like carbon capture and removal, carbon-neutral fuels,
and cleaner industrial processes.
Certainly, the election of Biden is good news for climate
change, following the Trump administration's four-year blitz
to unravel every climate and environmental regulation it
could. Biden's White House can make some progress through
executive orders, bipartisan infrastructure bills, and
additional economic stimulus measures that free up funding for
the areas above.
But it’s
hard to imagine, given the mixed results of Congressional elections and our
highly polarized political climate, how he’ll be able to push
through the sorts of strict climate policies necessary to get
things moving at anywhere close to the necessary speed, like a
hefty price on carbon or rules that mandate swift emissions
reductions.
The good news is that, unlike what happened in the downturn
that began in 2008, people’s concerns about climate change
have persisted into the pandemic and downturn,
according to
polling.
But coming out of a year of angst and loss and
isolation, I have to wonder how readily voters around the
world will embrace any measures that ask more of them in the
next few years, whether it’s
a tax on gas, higher airline fees, or being told to upgrade to cleaner
electric appliances in their homes.
Remember, the world—and many of its citizens—will emerge from
the pandemic far poorer.
Sowing division
But here is what frightens me the most about what happened in
2020.
Researchers and advocates have long assumed, or hoped, that
people would start taking climate change seriously as it began
to inflict real harms. After all, how could they continue to
deny it and refuse to take action once the dangers were upon
them and their families?
But what we’ve seen in the pandemic doesn’t bear that out.
Even after more than 300,000 Americans have died of covid-19,
huge portions of the population continue to deny the threat
and refuse to abide by basic public health measures, like
wearing masks and canceling holiday travel. Despite waves of
infections tied to Thanksgiving gatherings,
millions packed the airports
the weekend before Christmas.
That’s terrifying in itself, but it’s particularly ominous for
climate change.
In an
essay in August, when global covid-19 deaths stood at around 600,000, Bill
Gates pointed out that climate change fatalities could reach
that level by 2060—but as an annual occurrence. By the end of
the century, the death toll could be five times that figure.
If the pandemic offers any clear lessons, it’s that even all that loss may
not persuade many of the reality of climate change or the necessity to
act—particularly since those deaths
will tick up gradually. Politicians can still find ways to downplay the dangers and exploit the
issue to sow division, rather than seeking common cause.
And
we may simply learn to live with the elevated risks, particularly since
they’ll disproportionately harm those in the poorest, hottest parts of the
world who had the least to do with causing climate change.
I have every confidence that we have the technical and economic capacity
to address most of the risks of climate change. I’m pretty sure we will
begin to move faster than we have in the past. I think we’ll make a lot of
progress on cutting emissions. I bet we’re going to rebuild big parts of
our infrastructure to address some of the increased dangers. I’m certain
that some areas, particularly in the global North, will continue to
thrive, and
some will even grow richer.
But I fear we still don’t fully recognize that we’re on the cusp of
failing in very tragic ways. Given where our emissions are and where they
need to be, it’s nearly impossible to see how we’re going to move fast
enough at this point to prevent 2 ˚C of warming. And that will mean
staggering levels of otherwise preventable
death, suffering, and ecological destruction.
It should be a call to arms. But it’s hard to look at 2020 and come away
feeling optimistic about our collective ability to grapple with complex
problems in rational or humane ways—even, or perhaps especially, in the
midst of multiple unfolding calamities.
Instead, overlapping climate disasters could poison our politics even
further, making all of us more selfish, more focused on our own comfort
and safety, and less willing to sacrifice for or invest in a better common
future.
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