We’ll Always Have Paris, Won’t We?

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One of the major stumbling blocks to coping with climate change is that all the countries on the planet must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to zero.
june72020brazil-inthisphotoillustrationthe2021

One of the major stumbling blocks to coping with climate change is that all the countries on the planet must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to zero. Even so, temperatures will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. The best we can hope for is to limit the increase such that the impact on human life is manageable, which doesn’t mean we won’t feel it.

In 2015, the Paris Agreement—also known as the Paris Accords—signed by 197 countries at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in that city, committed signatories to “substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees Celsius, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 degrees.”

As of 2018, global temperatures had already risen 1.0° Celsius (1.8° Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. An IPCC report that year noted: “Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate (high confidence).” And yet, with 2030 less than a decade away, global greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing.

Carbon dioxide (CO2), from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.), accounts for about 76% of the emissions of greenhouse gases worldwide. Methane (from, yes, cow farts) accounts for 16% of the total, and nitrous oxide adds another 6%. The remaining 2% comes from fluorinated gases that, like the others, cause the Earth’s atmosphere to retain heat. Clearly, moving away from the burning of fossil fuels is key to reducing global climate change.

Most burning of fossil fuels is done to produce electricity, heat homes and power trains, planes, and automobiles. In fact, the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 triggered the largest annual drop in global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions since World War II, due largely to the reduced road and air traffic. But it picked right back up as restrictions eased.

As I write this in mid-November, COP26 just ended in Glasgow, Scotland. There were some bold statements from some of the participants regarding net-zero emissions for their countries, the protection of forests, which store CO2, releasing it when destroyed, and ending investments in oil/gas/coal extraction. But China and India failed to commit to the conference goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, choosing 2060 and 2070 respectively. In a statement, Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of such pledges: “It’s all very well for leaders to claim they have a net-zero target, but if they have no plans as to how to get there, and their 2030 targets are as low as so many of them are, then frankly, these net-zero targets are just lip service to real climate action.” Analysis of COP26 results led Climate Action Tracker (climateactiontracker.org) to say that, realistically, we won’t be able to limit the temperature increase to 2.0°C this century, which is the goal of the Paris Accords.

The COP has been meeting now for 26 years and has clearly failed. Whatever has been accomplished seems like too little and too late. Can technology save the day?

Consider this: to reduce the introduction of more CO2 into the atmosphere requires emission-free power generation, either renewable (such as wind, solar, geothermal, tidal) or nuclear (fission, fusion). We would need to convert to electric-powered vehicles and electric homes, which also has implications for the capacity of existing power grids. All of these technologies (except fusion) exist today, but so many things must change for the world to become a net-zero emitter of CO2, it’s simply mind-boggling. And if we want to stop emitting methane, we must have a lot fewer cows. Changes of the scale we’re talking about here don’t happen in a few years. Even just considering the U.S., it would take mobilization on the scale of World War II, and expenditures in the trillions.

What would it take to get this done in a nation that complains about getting vaccinated and wearing masks? Oh, please.

On top of that, we need “negative” emissions to hold temperatures in check, so-called carbon sequestration technologies, which pull carbon dioxide we’ve already emitted out of the air (to be stored somewhere). Another possibility is geo solar engineering, which would seed the upper atmosphere with a degradable aerosol that would reflect more of the Sun’s heat back into space to prevent warming. But the real question is how soon can some of these technologies have a meaningful impact? And there’s bound to be a lot of pushback on whatever methods are chosen since these technologies (and their potential side effects) are unproven at the scale needed to have a meaningful impact. And of course, the energy required to power these technologies must come from zero-emission sources as well, such as geothermal, wind, or solar.

Frankly, it looks pretty grim to me. I’ll be dead by 2050, most likely, but our kids and grandkids will feel the full impact of the oncoming catastrophe.

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