In this week’s blog, NERI economist Paul Goldrick-Kelly points out the dangerous path we are on globally ahead of COP26, and the need for a new approach which looks at things like luxury emissions.
This Halloween marks the opening of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP26 in Glasgow. This conference is marked in several ways.
This COP was set as the first round of the “ratchet mechanism” in the Paris agreement. The reductions pledges or nationally determined contributions (NDCs) attached to the 2015 deal were themselves not enough to meet needed targets. Signatories are meant to bring plans for bigger emissions cuts to the table with each round, and bring us close to the agreement’s stated goal of well less than 2 – ideally 1.5 – degrees warming.
The reality we face has changed. The science has never been clearer on the urgency of our situation. The now infamous 1.5 degrees special report from the IPCC in 2018 gave us deadlines on strikingly short and tangible timescales. According to their latest report, we can only avoid the worst of climate breakdown with unprecedented and immediate cuts to global emissions.
Recent climate disruptions in wealthy states, alongside mass campaigns, have changed the political landscape. What was once considered the niche concern of environmentalists in the Global North is now the focus of mass movements who have vaulted the issue up the political agenda.
We face into a conference with increasingly high stakes but a dispiriting initial atmosphere. Many Paris signatories have not submitted updated plans for emissions cuts ahead of the conference and many leaders will not attend.
Current submitted plans, according to a recent UN analysis, would imply an increase in emissions of 16% over 2010 levels by 2030. This trajectory would likely take us on a path to 2.7 degrees of warming, with calamitous consequences for us and the planet.
Barring “dramatic emissions reductions”, a report from Chatham house concludes that serious heatwaves will afflict 12 times more people than the historical average by the 2040s. More than 10 million annually are likely to experience heat stress beyond survivability thresholds by the 2030s.
Temperature increases would threaten global food systems, stability, and even lead to new outbreaks of disease. The World Health Organisation warns us that the climate crisis is the single biggest threat to global health, and threatens the past 50 years of progress in public health and development.
The EU – a signatory on Ireland’s behalf - has recently increased its commitments to 55% emissions reductions over 1990 levels this decade. Still, the Climate Action Tracker finds EU plans insufficient, particularly in terms of funding for poorer states and ceasing finance for new fossil fuel projects abroad. EU targets have not been reflected in plans from member states. Implemented plans imply reductions of less than 36%, only modestly below 2020 levels.
This conference will mark the first time Ireland has arrived at a COP with binding targets for emissions cuts. The soon to be released carbon budgets should offer a plan to more than halve emissions by the end of the decade.
However, despite Covid restrictions, EPA data suggest emissions fell by just 3.6% in 2020, which UCC lecturer Hannah Daly points out is half the average needed this decade to meet our now legal goal. More is clearly necessary.
Our situation demands an end to national and international strategies to play for time, or engage in national accounting tricks to defer blame.
Plans should recognise that much of the emissions growth in the Global South is related to outsourcing polluting production from its former sites in the wealthy world. This artificially boosts reductions data for many states. This presses home the need to address a still thorny issue in these talks, the adequacy of aid to developing states to decarbonise. Ireland’s emissions equal those of the world’s 400 million poorest people. We must increase aid efforts for decarbonisation.
As a player within the EU, Ireland can help prevent efforts to maintain coal power for years to come. A 2018 analysis concluded that allowing then planned coal plants to open globally would blow through the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 2 degrees, let alone 1.5.
Domestically, we should be extremely cautious before we develop expensive infrastructures which could lock us into further fossil fuel use. Touted solutions like natural gas may be cleaner than other fuels and be technically consistent with 2030 targets. However, these new systems could obstruct net zero efforts by 2050, as significant infrastructural investments demand returns.
Realism also urges us to appreciate uneven contributions to climate problems within countries. According to Oxfam, the richest 1% in Ireland have nearly 13 times the average footprint of the bottom half of the population. This being the case, we must treat luxury emissions differently to those associated with necessities. Emissions from unnecessary SUVs – the second biggest contributor to recent global emissions growth – are not the same as those from needed home heating, or transport.
Climate policy at home and abroad must deal with the structural drivers of emissions rather than mere individual solutions. This includes addressing dilemmas generated by our economic model, such as proposals for Agriculture, our biggest sectoral emitter. It also includes demands for the energy sector to generate large emissions cuts in the face of huge increases in demand from planned data centres or a new fleet of electric cars.
As the IPCC have noted, limiting climate chaos will require “rapid and far-reaching transitions” in the way we do things. This COP must represent the end of words which aren’t backed by action.
This article was written for the Irish Examiner by Paul Goldrick-Kelly, NERI economist on Sunday 24 October, 2021.