Five years after Paris
This year was supposed to be the year the world doubled-down on its climate commitments. The pandemic is teaching us we can do much more than we thought.
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Today’s original art for The Phoenix is by Laila Arêde.
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Emissions are down in 2020, big time
This week marks five years since the Paris climate accord was agreed upon, the world’s first global mandate to tackle climate change.
A new report out today finds that carbon emissions are indeed down since 2015, but only after a hell-year of pandemic-related lockdowns, mass death, and governments around the world placing harsh curbs on immigration and freedom of movement.
Even though this was expected, it’s still huge, huge news.
The majority of this year’s global dip in emissions were transportation related, particularly in the US and Europe as people worked from home and abandoned air travel.
Globally, emissions in 2020 were roughly the same as they were in 2011. More specifically, 2020-level emissions were last seen in:
2018 in China
2015 in India
1988 in the US
1964 in Europe
Amid all of this year’s pain and suffering, we gave ourselves a once-in-a-planet chance to reshape our economies and our societies in a way that works with the Earth.
Let’s be clear about one thing: A virus is not a climate plan. The Covid pandemic turned back the clock on emissions worldwide. But it’s changed nothing – yet – about the problem that got us here: Extractive capitalism working in partnership with white supremacy, patriarchy, and imperialism. To change everything, we need everyone healthy, valued, and loved.
That means NOW IS A SUPER IMPORTANT TIME. If we return to business as usual post-Covid, it will be a disaster that may be unrecoverable. Climate change needs to be at the heart of every country's recovery plans in 2021.
For the first time in a very long time, there are emerging signs that we are starting to get back on the right course on climate.
Rejoining Paris might be a bigger deal than we thought
President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to re-join the Paris agreement on the first day of his presidency. To do that, though, he’ll need to officially submit a new national goal (a “nationally determined contribution”) to improve upon the one that President Obama originally committed us to in 2015. That’s the harder part of rejoining Paris. (Here’s a good overview of the nuts and bolts of the process.)
Obama’s goal was pretty weak: A 26-28% reduction in emissions by 2025, compared to 2005 levels. Climate experts think Biden could ramp this all the way up to 50% by 2030 – something that was honestly unthinkable even just a few years ago, and nearly in-line with a path to a less-than-2°C–warming world.
As my conversation this week with Biden’s frontrunner for EPA Administrator Mary Nichols shows, a rapid decarbonization of the US economy seems imminent. An analysis last month showed Biden’s climate plan alone could achieve up to 54% emissions reductions by 2030, but that will be hard to do without comprehensive climate legislation. Democrats can win control of the Senate if they maintain their lead in the two Georgia elections on January 5. By 2030, says Nichols, “almost the entire energy system, both our electricity and our transportation systems, [could] be zero carbon” and we’ll have made tremendous progress on the tougher sectors like agriculture, industry, and buildings, too.
Of course, “nearly” on a path to 2°C is still not enough, and a 2°C warmer world is still unacceptably dangerous. Cutting emissions is just the first step. To be a climate leader on a global scale, Biden will need to pledge resources to help countries who have done the least to cause the climate emergency adapt to escalating disasters, including debt relief, and a permanent shift to repairing the centuries-long harms of extractive capitalism and inequality.
Limiting warming to less than 1.5°C is an existential necessity. Joe Biden won’t get us there on his own, but he could make a transformative leap in the right direction.
A better world is possible. It’s never too late.
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The decrease in CO2 emissions was because of the lockdown and not because politics achieved something. On the contrary, politicians are doing everything they can to get things back to what they were before the lockdown. The "invisible hand of market" is destroying and cannot be slowed down with only ideas and wishes. No politician can intervene in the market anymore. For 50 years we have been saying: "We tried!" but we know how the situation has gotten worse since then.
Hundreds of billions of euros are being printed in Europe right now. This will lead us into inflation. It would be better if all progressive forces on earth help to deliberately devalue money in order to pave the way for a society without money, on the basis of voluntariness.
We could achieve this through a global referendum. In return, everyone's debts will go away. Nothing bad will happen.
Look here: https://letusbe.one/a-world-without-money/
But we are not in a climate emergency. According to the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the suna and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. We are all far better off if efforts are made to improve the global economy for everyone. There are many good reasons to be conserving on the use of fossil fuels but climate change is not one of them.