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2 days above 2 degrees
The Earth flicked briefly into the terrible twos this month. After crossing the symbolic threshold of 1.5 C through September, the global thermometer spiked above the totemic 2 C for two days in November.
There’s nothing magic about round numbers but that one’s a doozy. For more than a decade, world leaders have solemnly pledged to keep temperatures below 2 C — a number that’s been recognized since the 1970s as the outer limit of “dangerous” interference with the climate system. Many countries, notably those most vulnerable, argue 2 C is much too high, and so in Paris, the world agreed to keep the heat “well below 2 C” and to try to stay below 1.5 C.
We should be clear that a couple of days doesn’t mean the global goal is dead. That would require a global temperature averaged over decades. Conveniently for the solemn signatories, we would be long beyond their terms in office, and solidly into the terrible twos before an official determination.
Long before the refs can make an official call, we’d expect to flirt with two degrees, breach the “well below” target occasionally, and then, with ever more regularity.
As Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service puts it, the two-day spike “does not mean the Paris Agreement has been breached but highlights how we are approaching those internationally agreed limits. We can expect to see increasing frequency of 1.5-degree and 2-degree days over the coming months and years.”
So, this first breach should be a real wake-up call, especially in a year tracking so wildly beyond previous records.
A couple of qualifications for those with a nerdy turn of mind. First, 2 degrees compared to what? It’s defined against the baseline of pre-industrial temperatures, before fossil fuel burning began in earnest. Scientists have a pretty good grasp on pre-industrial temperatures, but they can’t be absolutely precise about periods before modern instruments — not to several decimal points of precision. So, it’s quite possible the 2.06 C on Nov. 17 wasn’t the first day in the terrible twos (it could have passed without notice or still be on the way).
And many scientists emphasize two degrees is not some kind of threshold in the real world. That round number is arbitrary, really an artifact of politics and measuring systems (3.6 Fahrenheit isn’t nearly as catchy). There’s no defined cliff we tumble over after 1.49 C or 1.99 C. But breaching those levels is to accept a scale of human suffering and take risks we vowed to avoid.
Having never been down this road before, we can only hope there aren’t some shocking state shifts ahead. There’s good evidence that six of nine crucial “planetary boundaries” have already been transgressed. We’re gambling these flickers above 1.5 and two degrees aren’t “flickerings” — early warning signals, or “wobbles” before a critical transition to a new state.
“Flickering” is one indicator scientists look for as harbingers of critical transitions. We will only know in retrospect, but there is evidence we are nearing several possible tipping points. In a recent article about “flickering,” George Monbiot lists off worrying indicators about the Amazon rainforest and tropical wetlands, as well as peatlands and sea ice in the Arctic, the weakening of the jet stream and ocean circulation, and, of course, this year’s drastic drop in Antarctic sea ice.
Breaking records like a broken record
The UN’s latest update was remarkable for its twist on broken records. Usually such a staid group of scientists, they delivered their new Emissions Gap Report with some serious snark. Broken Record, arrived with a cover image of a disfigured LP record and turntable stylus. The caustic subtitle: “Temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions (again).”
You wonder whether the authors are hopelessly antiquated or hip to the revival of vinyl? And, given what made the cut, you really have to wonder what titles got left behind in the brainstorming session?
“WTF is wrong with you people?” or maybe “Screw it, we quit.”
With exasperation virtually oozing from the page, the scientists write that the world must “change track” or “we will be saying the same thing next year — and the year after, and the year after, like a broken record.”
The world is still “breaking all the wrong records,” finds this latest instalment of the Emissions Gap Report which charts the gap between the current trajectory of emissions and what’s needed to meet the Paris Agreement goals.
The bottom line is “global greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1.2 per cent from 2021 to 2022 to reach a new record of 57.4 Gigatonnes of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (GtCO2e).”
And the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report finds governments are currently planning to produce over twice as much fossil fuels than if they were serious about limiting warming well below 2 C.
But the authors do underline that “progress since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 has shown that the world is capable of change.”
Back then, greenhouse gas emissions were projected to increase 16 per cent by the end of this decade. Future greenhouse gas emissions are now projected to increase much less: 3 per cent by 2030. And the aggregate numbers obscure the fact that quite a few big countries are now shrinking the spew instead of increasing it.
What far too few leaders seem to grasp (prefer not to grasp?) is that every delay means an ever-steepening challenge. Canada has the widest emissions gap among the countries UNEP surveyed — a 27 per cent gap between policies in place and international commitments. The U.S. logs the next widest at 19 per cent.
Because of foot-dragging by the provinces and delays in implementing federal policies, the task is much tougher than just a few years ago. “Imagine what we could do as a country if we worked together,” Steven Guilbeault said, responding to the UNEP report.
All the court battles, obstruction of clean energy, delays in implementing policies and widespread lack of serious provincial climate plans mean the math is getting more and more brutal. And the path is steepening rapidly.
Sitting in the Canadian cold, it may sound odd the world is flirting with extraordinary heat. Things are much more obvious in the Southern Hemisphere. Brazil just recorded its hottest temperature ever (44.8 C), while suffering under an extended drought that shrivelled tributaries to the Amazon. It’s still spring in Brazil but Taylor Swift cancelled a concert in Rio after one fan died and thousands were treated for dehydration.
Rio has been dubbed “Hell de Janeiro” by locals, reports The Guardian. “Feels-like temperatures (heat index) reached a staggering 59.7C on Saturday.”
And while the fires may have subsided in Canada, already more than 610,000 sq km have burned across northern Australia with fire season just getting underway. That’s an area larger than all of Spain. In Western Australia, two million people in Perth were on tenterhooks as fire ravaged the city’s northern suburbs.
In Perth, Australia, intense heat is smashing November records - and Perth was issued the 1st "extremely severe" heatwave in its history
— Assaad Razzouk (@AssaadRazzouk) November 23, 2023
Undoubtedly the first of many
How long before Perth becomes uninhabitable? Very few Australian politicians or Media seem to care#climate pic.twitter.com/cGxJC04FYF
The feds’ fiscal update
Climate action was not central to the feds’ fiscal update, report Natasha Bulowski and John Woodside. But a few measures are worth highlighting. The Finance Minister committed to require mandatory climate impact reporting by companies and develop a “taxonomy” for sustainable investment.
The federal promise of tax credits for carbon capture (CCUS) now has details and the devil has emerged. The original pledge was tax credits would not incentivize “enhanced oil recovery” (EOR) — using captured carbon to push more oil from the ground. But, as the CBC’s Benjamin Shingler reports, the most recent draft of the legislation shows “projects using up to 90 per cent of their captured carbon for EOR will still qualify for the tax credit for the portion devoted to dedicated geological storage without extracting oil.”
Big Oil’s carbon capture ‘illusion’
The International Energy Agency (IEA) issued clear warnings about Big Oil’s carbon capture promises. Governments and companies need to start “letting go of the illusion” that CCUS can make a dent in fossil fuel emissions.
The scale is “implausibly large,” says the agency — an "inconceivable" 32 billion tonnes of emissions would have to be sequestered by 2050. "The amount of electricity needed to power these technologies would be greater than the entire world's electricity demand today."
The IEA says carbon capture is important in sectors outside oil and gas, such as concrete production. But “the oil and gas industry is facing a moment of truth,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol. “The industry needs to commit to genuinely helping the world meet its energy needs and climate goals — which means letting go of the illusion that implausibly large amounts of carbon capture are the solution.”
Danielle to Dubai
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she will be going to the upcoming UN climate negotiations in Dubai. She’ll be one of the only political leaders to arrive without a climate plan that cuts carbon (although the government of Saskatchewan will have its own pavilion at COP28 and Premier Scott Moe is scheduled to attend). She will almost certainly be the only leader with a blanket freeze on renewable energy. Smith’s one bragging point is about plugging methane leaks. And while the industry has made progress toward meeting the federal requirements, the bigger picture keeps getting bigger.
Alberta is underestimating methane emissions by 50 per cent, according to a team at Carleton University that studied 3,500 different oil and gas facilities and 5,600 wells. Not only is there much more leakage, The Canadian Press reports “methane is coming from significantly different sources than government and industry think it is. Venting from tanks accounts for about a quarter of such emissions, instead of the three per cent that official sources say.”
More rebates for heat pumps, please
“Perhaps one silver lining coming out of the recent carbon pricing debacle is that, right now, heat pumps are having a moment,” writes Clean Energy Canada’s Trevor Melanson.
“If the federal government makes its heat pump program as simple and widely accessible to Canadians as its EV rebate, it may have one more winning policy on its hands that Canadians will actually hear about.”
Giant batteries beating out gas power plants
“Giant batteries that ensure stable power supply by offsetting intermittent renewable supplies are becoming cheap enough to make developers abandon scores of projects for gas-fired generation world-wide,” reports Reuters using data from Global Energy Monitor.
“In the first half of the year, 68 gas power plant projects were put on hold or cancelled globally,”
100% renewable
For nearly a week, Portugal met all its electricity needs with wind, hydro and solar. Canary Media calls it “a test run for operating the grid without fossil fuels.”
“To hit Paris Agreement climate goals by 2050, nations need to run their grids without carbon emissions, not just for three or six days, but year-round. A handful of countries already do this, thanks to generous endowments of hydropower, largely developed well before the climate crisis drove investment decisions for power plants. Others score highly on carbon-free power thanks to big fleets of nuclear plants.”
“Portugal falls into a different, more relatable bucket: It started its decarbonization journey with some legacy hydropower, but no nuclear capacity nor plans to build any. That meant it had to figure out how to cut fossil fuel use by maximizing new renewables.”
Solar in China
The scale of solar power in China is hard to wrap your head around. China deployed a record 142GW in the first 10 months this year.
If gigawatts don’t help you with the head-wrapping, consider this: the runner-up is the U.S. and it has installed 141GW in total, since Americans bought their first panels in the 1970s. As of October, China has 540 GW on the grid.
The other EVs
Last week, we looked at electric cars as the one category of climate action where the world is on track. Big thanks to several of you for sending along this piece from The Conversation: The world’s 280 million electric bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars.
“They are actually displacing four times as much demand for oil as all the world’s electric cars at present, due to their staggering uptake in China and other nations…”
“On the world’s roads last year, there were over 20 million electric vehicles and 1.3 million commercial EVs such as buses, delivery vans and trucks.”
“But these numbers of four or more wheel vehicles are wholly eclipsed by two- and three-wheelers. There were over 280 million electric mopeds, scooters, motorcycles and three-wheelers on the road last year. Their sheer popularity is already cutting demand for oil by a million barrels of oil a day.”
Maersk and methanol
It’s been a while since we checked in on Maersk, the maritime shipping giant. Unlike many companies with vague net-zero promises, Maersk has outlined a plausible pathway to net-zero across its business and says it aims to get there by 2040. No big surprise, it’s a Danish company, headquartered in Copenhagen.
In the near term, the main plank is a switch to green methanol to power a new generation of cargo ships. Unlike hydrogen, methanol is a liquid and relatively easy to handle and transport. Like hydrogen, it can be derived from fossil fuels or made with clean energy. It comes in the same categories of grey, blue or green.
Maersk has begun ordering new vessels and unveiled the first one earlier this year. But it’s been a big question whether it could source enough methanol and how green it would really be. This week, Maersk made a deal for half a million tonnes annually — a mix of green bio-methanol and e-methanol, produced using wind energy at a new production facility in China.
Some more equal than others
“The richest one per cent produced the same greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 as the world’s five billion poorest people, or 66 percent of the global population.” That’s the big takeaway from Oxfam’s newest analysis, Climate Equality: A planet for the 99 per cent.
“In Canada, the richest 10 per cent produced twice as much climate pollution as the poorest 50 per cent. And, the richest one per cent were responsible for a mind-boggling 150 tonnes per person, compared to just 5.2 tonnes for the poorest 50 per cent.”
Piketty against private jets
This week’s recommendation is about carbon inequality. The Guardian’s intrepid environment editor, Fiona Harvey, interviews Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century and one of the world’s leading thinkers on inequality: Ban private jets to address climate crisis, says Thomas Piketty.
“Lots of people, and the more socio-economic disadvantaged groups, feel that it’s all against them, and they will be paying for everybody, especially people in rural areas. That’s a big part of the political difficulty we have today,” Piketty says.
“We have to try to do everything we can to convince these groups that the people at the top are paying their fair share. You have to start right at the very top, (with) people who would take a private jet.”