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Now that the bad news has dropped, what is the world going to do?
A report issued Sunday by 91 scientists painted a stark portrait of how quickly the planet is heating up and how serious the consequences are. In response, the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, warned world leaders, “Do what science demands before it is too late.”
The latest figures from the International Energy Agency don’t suggest that many are listening: Carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector continued to grow through 2017, with a projected rise for 2018, according to the agency.
The next two months will be crucial. In December, experts and officials from around the world will gather in Katowice, Poland, for a new round of international climate negotiations.
What about the Paris Agreement?
Every country agreed, nearly three years ago, to set its own targets to bring down its greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the good news.
The deal specifically aspired to keep warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.7 degrees Fahrenheit) from preindustrial levels. And, it was worded in such a way that countries would, over time, have to get more ambitious in their emissions reductions.
That’s not going well. And it’s not just because the Trump administration announced its intention to pull out of that deal. The United States, history’s largest polluter, is nowhere close to meeting its emissions reductions targets.
Russia, one of the world’s largest emitters, has not yet ratified the Paris Agreement. Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions have grown recently, mainly because large swathes of forest were converted to farmland, and the leading contender in Brazil’s presidential election, Jair Bolsonaro, has suggested pulling his country out of Paris deal, too. Australia also appears unlikely to meet its targets under its new prime minister, Scott Morrison, a champion of the country’s coal mining industry.
With rich countries falling short, some developing countries are starting to balk. Where’s the fund you promised to help us cope, they want to know.
The United States, under President Trump, has backed out of contributing what had been its share to the Green Climate Fund, designed to help poor countries deal with the effects of climate change. The Australian prime minister this week dismissed the fund too, saying, “I’m not going to spend money on global climate conferences and all that nonsense.”
What’s the next step?
The report Sunday, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, looms over the December talks in Katowice, in the heart of Poland’s coal belt. Whether and how the report shapes the content of the negotiations is now being fought over.
Some countries would prefer to keep the discussions limited to technical issues, like what kinds of rules should be established to implement the Paris accord. Others, led by small island countries like the Marshall Islands, want to the meeting to go much further and consider tougher emissions targets.
The European Union on Tuesday signaled that it may put higher ambitions on the table, saying the report made it “a matter of extreme urgency to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change.”
Scientists have often been far ahead of diplomats on the subject of climate change, and so even activists who are pressing for more ambitious action are sounding cautious about how much impact this bombshell of a report will have.
“It should be a fire under the chairs of the leaders and their negotiators,” said David Waskow, who follows international negotiations for the World Resources Institute, a research organization. “The question right now is, in fact, are leaders going to hear this wake up alarm?”
What would it take to avoid the worst?
There is wide consensus among scientists that a few big things need to happen, and many policymakers know it, too. They include switching electricity supply systems from coal, weaning cars and trucks off gasoline, and saving forests, because they’re a big carbon sink. There’s also wide agreement that there should be a price on pollution, in the form of a carbon tax.
All of that has been on the table for quite some time. As President Emmanuel Macron of France pointed out on Twitter, “The I.P.C.C. brings scientific proof: We have everything we need to combat climate change. But everyone has to act now!”
Why is this hard? There are political headwinds of various kinds.
In the United States, Charles and David Koch, libertarian billionaire brothers with deep interests in the fossil fuel sector, have handsomely funded efforts to block a carbon tax. In Brazil, the powerful agribusiness lobby, buoyed by global demand for soybeans, has pushed to convert more forest land into farmland. In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax proposal faces intense pushback from the provinces. And China, as the factory of the world, keeps burning coal to feed its manufacturing sector.
The one difference with China is that, for sake of domestic political stability, China’s leaders are eager to clean up the air. China is expected to reach peak emissions in 2050.
The question is when does that political tipping point come for other countries? And does the science matter at all?
“There’s a big gap between what the science requires and what governments are delivering.” said Mohamed Adow, who follows climate change for Christian Aid, a London-based development charity. He called the I.P.C.C. report “a game changer.”
“There’s no excuse for governments anymore,” he said.
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