No Credible Pathway to 1.5C in Place
October 27, 2022 8:00 AM Subscribe
The UN has released the 2022 Emissions Gap Report. The report finds that only an urgent system-wide transformation can deliver the enormous cuts needed to limit greenhouse gas emissions by 2030: 45 per cent compared with projections based on policies currently in place to get on track to 1.5°C and 30 per cent for 2°C. This report provides an in-depth exploration of how to deliver this transformation, looking at the required actions in the electricity supply, industry, transport and buildings sectors, and the food and financial systems.
'He looked at me, and with a sad smile, simply said "They will die".' — James G Dyke
posted by jeffburdges at 8:21 AM on October 27, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by jeffburdges at 8:21 AM on October 27, 2022 [8 favorites]
At this point, I've given up on any technological transformation coming to save us in time. As with most of the commenters on it, the Wallace-Wells article struck me as wishful thinking, especially when this was on the NYT front page just yesterday.
I would be grateful if someone could explain to me how to raise kids who likely have little to no future worth living without constantly wanting to curl into the fetal position, however.
posted by ryanshepard at 9:13 AM on October 27, 2022 [10 favorites]
I would be grateful if someone could explain to me how to raise kids who likely have little to no future worth living without constantly wanting to curl into the fetal position, however.
posted by ryanshepard at 9:13 AM on October 27, 2022 [10 favorites]
The usual bosides perspective from the neoliberal paper of record, based largely on pat assumptions which are not borne out by actual evidence.
posted by viborg at 9:21 AM on October 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
on the one hand, Pollyanna-like faith that normality would endure, and on the other, millenarian intuitions of an ecological end of days, during which perhaps billions of lives would be devastated or destroyed. . ... First, worst-case temperature scenarios that recently seemed plausible now look much less so [FALSE]... Second... the likeliest futures still lie beyond thresholds long thought disastrous [TRUE]I had a recent Twitter exchange with a "skeptic" concern troll who insisted I back up my assertion that if it occurred, six degrees of warming in the next century would be really, really bad. Well it is plausible that we will reach 6 degrees, but it seems like there's not much interest in the scientific community in modeling just how bad that would be (or else Google hides those results). Needless to say, billions dead is still well within the realm of possibility.
posted by viborg at 9:21 AM on October 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
@ryanshepard do something that actively gives you hope. I planted a food forest of 1000 trees in my backyard, and for less $$$ than it costs to do a standard house remodel. Over the past eight years, I have watched an empty barren field repopulate with birds, frogs, snakes, jack rabbits, etc and grew 10,000 of delicious fruit this year.
We could heal the earth, we really could.
posted by birdsongster at 9:37 AM on October 27, 2022 [15 favorites]
We could heal the earth, we really could.
posted by birdsongster at 9:37 AM on October 27, 2022 [15 favorites]
Wallace-Wells, whose The Uninhabitable Earth one might put into the "nonfiction horror novel" category, does a great job in restoring sanity in the piece that Mr. Know-it-some links above. If you're feeling mentally and emotionally apocalypsed-out, it's a good tonic and I recommend you read it, especially if the UN report causes you to despair.
I think sometimes that despair, with the emotional shut-down it can bring, is really more of a survival tactic than anything else. A toggle switch to cut off one's very strained empathy. Realizing your nightmares are not going to come true--that we're in the realm of bad, really terrible, but not end-of-humanity bad--can, I think, help us come back to our empathy. And we're going to need so much empathy to survive this!
Having just read ryanshepard's comment, here's how I think about it, as a parent. I don't really allow myself to make judgments like, the future will not be worth living. In every moment in history, we find pockets--sometimes very big pockets--of humanity where people could be excused for sliding into hopelessness, raising their children to do nothing but despair and then die. Yet they don't really seem to? Even in the most horrible circumstances, people just keep going. They starve and keep going. The same hedonic satiation that makes a constant stream of pleasure seem dull, can make a stream of difficulties seem dull. Our minds can normalize anything. This helps us limit suffering. It keeps us--an aggregate us--within certain guardrails.
If there are values I want my kids to pick up on, they might include: That somewhere out there, someone is suffering worse, and we need to care about that person as much as ourselves. That the world is governed by systems too complex for human control, and that this is not new; things have always been bigger than governments, bigger than experts and emperors (the UN report gives a taste of that complexity). And that even if the climate is a tragedy larger than any humanity has ever faced before, it can be broken down into smaller tragedies that are comprehensible, that will be able to be understood if we keep one eye on history for similar stories. None of us are going to face everything the climate will bring.
And I want them to understand that optimism isn't a naive outlook, it's a tool. It lowers the background stress so that the mind can do the work of contextualization, the work of being a historian, the work of finding the ways to feel empathy and figuring out what one's part is. I want to model that optimism for my kids, so they understand how to keep going in suffering. Because, what other alternative is there? Someone is going to keep going, why not them?
posted by mittens at 9:41 AM on October 27, 2022 [18 favorites]
I think sometimes that despair, with the emotional shut-down it can bring, is really more of a survival tactic than anything else. A toggle switch to cut off one's very strained empathy. Realizing your nightmares are not going to come true--that we're in the realm of bad, really terrible, but not end-of-humanity bad--can, I think, help us come back to our empathy. And we're going to need so much empathy to survive this!
Having just read ryanshepard's comment, here's how I think about it, as a parent. I don't really allow myself to make judgments like, the future will not be worth living. In every moment in history, we find pockets--sometimes very big pockets--of humanity where people could be excused for sliding into hopelessness, raising their children to do nothing but despair and then die. Yet they don't really seem to? Even in the most horrible circumstances, people just keep going. They starve and keep going. The same hedonic satiation that makes a constant stream of pleasure seem dull, can make a stream of difficulties seem dull. Our minds can normalize anything. This helps us limit suffering. It keeps us--an aggregate us--within certain guardrails.
If there are values I want my kids to pick up on, they might include: That somewhere out there, someone is suffering worse, and we need to care about that person as much as ourselves. That the world is governed by systems too complex for human control, and that this is not new; things have always been bigger than governments, bigger than experts and emperors (the UN report gives a taste of that complexity). And that even if the climate is a tragedy larger than any humanity has ever faced before, it can be broken down into smaller tragedies that are comprehensible, that will be able to be understood if we keep one eye on history for similar stories. None of us are going to face everything the climate will bring.
And I want them to understand that optimism isn't a naive outlook, it's a tool. It lowers the background stress so that the mind can do the work of contextualization, the work of being a historian, the work of finding the ways to feel empathy and figuring out what one's part is. I want to model that optimism for my kids, so they understand how to keep going in suffering. Because, what other alternative is there? Someone is going to keep going, why not them?
posted by mittens at 9:41 AM on October 27, 2022 [18 favorites]
Several of us pointed out the glaring flaws in that article which you pointedly gloss over and instead choose to recommend the flawed apparent neoliberal apology? It seems our focus is now more on mitigating our guilt at completely fucking over the future rather than actually trying to stop fucking it.
At least The Guardian reports the IPCC version of the future:
posted by viborg at 11:23 AM on October 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
At least The Guardian reports the IPCC version of the future:
Current pledges for action by 2030, even if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5C, a level that would condemn the world to catastrophic climate breakdown, according to the UN’s climate agency. Only a handful of countries have ramped up their plans in the last year, despite having promised to do so at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last November.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/world-close-to-irreversible-climate-breakdown-warn-major-studies
posted by viborg at 11:23 AM on October 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
Crud missed the editing window: (IPCC version, which is still conservative by many expert accounts)
posted by viborg at 11:29 AM on October 27, 2022
posted by viborg at 11:29 AM on October 27, 2022
A couple of weeks ago I learned about the Energy Charter Treaty, which allows fossil fuel companies to sue governments if governments change policies in a way that affects company profits. Governments aren't just on the hook for the loss of money invested, but also for future profits that the company might've made. A bunch of European countries are trying to leave the treaty, but they're stuck with a two decade sunset clause.
It's pretty magical how oil companies are able to profit even off of our attempts to stop them from wrecking the planet.
posted by clawsoon at 11:50 AM on October 27, 2022 [12 favorites]
It's pretty magical how oil companies are able to profit even off of our attempts to stop them from wrecking the planet.
posted by clawsoon at 11:50 AM on October 27, 2022 [12 favorites]
I guess what confuses me about this article is that okay, we're not going to 4 degrees (we hope) but we're already at 1.5 and things seem...very bad, as the article admits midway. If things are very bad now and they only get proportionately worse (so no unforseen worsenings that build on each other) until we get to 2.5, it seems like things are going to be pretty bad indeed and a lot of people are going to die. A lot of people are dying now.
Third, humanity retains an enormous amount of control — over just how hot it will get and how much we will do to protect one another through those assaults and disruptions.
This does not give me a lot of confidence, because what I've seen in my lifetime has been that with enormous effort by wealthy and well-connected people small changes may be made if they don't disrupt the lives of the powerful too much - so we have, eg, HIV treatment and PreP in the rich world for many people, but huge prevalence of AIDS and and lots of deaths in poorer countries and among poorer people in the US. And it took so much work, so much really hard, sometimes dangerous political work to get the HIV treatment! I won't even mention the pandemic or the total failure to rein in the cops since police violence and corruption became openly discussed national topics.
All this article seems to do is to reassure the NYT readership that people like them - rich, well-connected, live in the rich world - will be able to survive a "not that bad" climate collapse. This seems like an inevitable brand of journalism since it reassures the got-mine-Jacks of the world who are letting the rest of us suffer and die.
posted by Frowner at 1:22 PM on October 27, 2022 [9 favorites]
Third, humanity retains an enormous amount of control — over just how hot it will get and how much we will do to protect one another through those assaults and disruptions.
This does not give me a lot of confidence, because what I've seen in my lifetime has been that with enormous effort by wealthy and well-connected people small changes may be made if they don't disrupt the lives of the powerful too much - so we have, eg, HIV treatment and PreP in the rich world for many people, but huge prevalence of AIDS and and lots of deaths in poorer countries and among poorer people in the US. And it took so much work, so much really hard, sometimes dangerous political work to get the HIV treatment! I won't even mention the pandemic or the total failure to rein in the cops since police violence and corruption became openly discussed national topics.
All this article seems to do is to reassure the NYT readership that people like them - rich, well-connected, live in the rich world - will be able to survive a "not that bad" climate collapse. This seems like an inevitable brand of journalism since it reassures the got-mine-Jacks of the world who are letting the rest of us suffer and die.
posted by Frowner at 1:22 PM on October 27, 2022 [9 favorites]
We recently discussed how neo-liberal economists like Nordhaus whitewash IPCC report parts that politicians actually read.
I typically hear +3.2°C or +3.3°C from fairly diverse sources, likely based upon the scientists sections in the IPCC report, so the +2.8°C here comes off optimistic, but anyways..
We think tipping points trigger lower than previously hoped, which means +2.8°C could easily turn into +4°C or worse, which means uninhabitable tropics, and maximum carrying capacity below one billion humans.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:40 PM on October 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
I typically hear +3.2°C or +3.3°C from fairly diverse sources, likely based upon the scientists sections in the IPCC report, so the +2.8°C here comes off optimistic, but anyways..
We think tipping points trigger lower than previously hoped, which means +2.8°C could easily turn into +4°C or worse, which means uninhabitable tropics, and maximum carrying capacity below one billion humans.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:40 PM on October 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
clawsoon: A couple of weeks ago I learned about the Energy Charter Treaty, which allows fossil fuel companies to sue governments if governments change policies in a way that affects company profits.
Just out of curiosity, I'd like to see their PR efforts and share prices after actually taking governments to court and having the needs of the many overruled by the needs of the LINE MUST GO UP.
posted by k3ninho at 2:43 PM on October 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
Just out of curiosity, I'd like to see their PR efforts and share prices after actually taking governments to court and having the needs of the many overruled by the needs of the LINE MUST GO UP.
posted by k3ninho at 2:43 PM on October 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
o hi where is kickstarter for children of kali
posted by lalochezia at 2:43 PM on October 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 2:43 PM on October 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
k3ninho: Just out of curiosity, I'd like to see their PR efforts and share prices
Looks like their share price almost doubled the day that the ruling came out. Their press release says they are "pleased" and "delighted".
posted by clawsoon at 2:58 PM on October 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
Looks like their share price almost doubled the day that the ruling came out. Their press release says they are "pleased" and "delighted".
posted by clawsoon at 2:58 PM on October 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
For a while, therefore, it looked like the great heat wave would be like mass shootings in the United States—mourned by all, deplored by all, and then immediately forgotten or superseded by the next one, until they came in a daily drumbeat and became the new normal.As Ministry for the Future quotes go, this's one I've seen less but which's stuck with me pretty good.
posted by CrystalDave at 2:59 PM on October 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
Their press release says they are "pleased" and "delighted".
... I'd give a lot to get the writers of that release and their bosses, and their bosses bosses and all the way up the line, get them to understand we are all crashing in the same car.
posted by From Bklyn at 5:03 AM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
... I'd give a lot to get the writers of that release and their bosses, and their bosses bosses and all the way up the line, get them to understand we are all crashing in the same car.
posted by From Bklyn at 5:03 AM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Both the UN update and the DWW NYT article are coming from the same place, which is that as time goes on, the most "extreme" of the possible outcomes are foreclosed by actual developments. In that sense, the "best extreme" outcome of 1.5C (still not great tbh but 1.5C was picked at the time as the best possible outcome that anyone could propose with a straight face) and the worst possible outcomes implied by RCP8.5 are both being squeezed out of likelihood by actual developments.
I think we don't have a great vocabulary or set of mental models for comparing really bad scenarios. So, yes it's great that the most extreme blasted hell scape scenarios are now much less likely to happen (although there remain substantial uncertainties about that) but the most likely scenarios of 2.3C to 2.9C are also very, very bad so it's not really sigh-of-relief time.
At this point, I've given up on any technological transformation coming to save us in time. As with most of the commenters on it, the Wallace-Wells article struck me as wishful thinking, especially when this was on the NYT front page just yesterday.
It's not really wishful thinking since the DWW scenario is still pretty bad. It's right to point out that RCP8.5 was never that likely to happen but the article also notes that actually the worst things we thought were going to happen at 5C scenarios might actually happen at 2.5C (which is where we're heading) so it's a bit of a pyrrhic victory. I think it takes a very strange lens to read that article and think it's optimistic.
The best reason for taking an optimistic view has little to do with realism (which does not seem to support taking a sunny view) but with mobilisation. It is easier to mobilise people into an action that they believe is possible than one they believe is not possible. In my experience, the majority of climate "denialism" is actually cognitive dissonance from people who just don't want to think about the choice between a horrifying future and preventative steps that they are unable to imagine working. If we have to bend the truth a little to get people to vote for politicians who will reduce emissions rather than just freeze up and pretend it isn't happening then so be it.
The reality is that we do not have very good frameworks for understanding the damage from extreme climate scenarios and that attempts to quantify them have mostly either been total waffle with ridiculous assumptions buried inside or have incorrectly and clumsily used discounting approaches that are not appropriate for threats to life.
See: Climate Change and the Future: Discounting for Time, Wealth, and Risk for a good summary of the latter.
A couple of weeks ago I learned about the Energy Charter Treaty, which allows fossil fuel companies to sue governments if governments change policies in a way that affects company profits. Governments aren't just on the hook for the loss of money invested, but also for future profits that the company might've made. A bunch of European countries are trying to leave the treaty, but they're stuck with a two decade sunset clause.
The majority of disputes under the ECT relate to renewable assets, especially after Spain and France unilaterally reduced production subsidies for PV. Anyway it just reveals how dumb most European countries have been over recent decades in approving new coal plants etc. without upfront reserving the right to close them early (or just not approving them). They all knew that their domestic laws as well as this treaty protected the property rights of the plant owners and that a coal plant has a 40+ year lifetime, so who in their right mind approved a coal plant for opening in 2005? This is why it's so important to get capital decisions right - virtually everything we need to do to reduce emissions is an investment decision about long-lived capital items whether that's household insulation or (not) building a coal plant so the capital spending decisions we make this year really do decide what our emissions in 2035 are going to be.
posted by atrazine at 5:08 AM on October 28, 2022 [6 favorites]
I think we don't have a great vocabulary or set of mental models for comparing really bad scenarios. So, yes it's great that the most extreme blasted hell scape scenarios are now much less likely to happen (although there remain substantial uncertainties about that) but the most likely scenarios of 2.3C to 2.9C are also very, very bad so it's not really sigh-of-relief time.
At this point, I've given up on any technological transformation coming to save us in time. As with most of the commenters on it, the Wallace-Wells article struck me as wishful thinking, especially when this was on the NYT front page just yesterday.
It's not really wishful thinking since the DWW scenario is still pretty bad. It's right to point out that RCP8.5 was never that likely to happen but the article also notes that actually the worst things we thought were going to happen at 5C scenarios might actually happen at 2.5C (which is where we're heading) so it's a bit of a pyrrhic victory. I think it takes a very strange lens to read that article and think it's optimistic.
The best reason for taking an optimistic view has little to do with realism (which does not seem to support taking a sunny view) but with mobilisation. It is easier to mobilise people into an action that they believe is possible than one they believe is not possible. In my experience, the majority of climate "denialism" is actually cognitive dissonance from people who just don't want to think about the choice between a horrifying future and preventative steps that they are unable to imagine working. If we have to bend the truth a little to get people to vote for politicians who will reduce emissions rather than just freeze up and pretend it isn't happening then so be it.
The reality is that we do not have very good frameworks for understanding the damage from extreme climate scenarios and that attempts to quantify them have mostly either been total waffle with ridiculous assumptions buried inside or have incorrectly and clumsily used discounting approaches that are not appropriate for threats to life.
See: Climate Change and the Future: Discounting for Time, Wealth, and Risk for a good summary of the latter.
A couple of weeks ago I learned about the Energy Charter Treaty, which allows fossil fuel companies to sue governments if governments change policies in a way that affects company profits. Governments aren't just on the hook for the loss of money invested, but also for future profits that the company might've made. A bunch of European countries are trying to leave the treaty, but they're stuck with a two decade sunset clause.
The majority of disputes under the ECT relate to renewable assets, especially after Spain and France unilaterally reduced production subsidies for PV. Anyway it just reveals how dumb most European countries have been over recent decades in approving new coal plants etc. without upfront reserving the right to close them early (or just not approving them). They all knew that their domestic laws as well as this treaty protected the property rights of the plant owners and that a coal plant has a 40+ year lifetime, so who in their right mind approved a coal plant for opening in 2005? This is why it's so important to get capital decisions right - virtually everything we need to do to reduce emissions is an investment decision about long-lived capital items whether that's household insulation or (not) building a coal plant so the capital spending decisions we make this year really do decide what our emissions in 2035 are going to be.
posted by atrazine at 5:08 AM on October 28, 2022 [6 favorites]
It's way worse than discounting as discussed recently. In brief, economists' IAMs wind up being bullshit, due to their numbers being invented whole cloth by economists who ignore all the science. These IAMs then appear in the sections of the IPCC report that politicians actually read.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:46 AM on October 28, 2022
posted by jeffburdges at 8:46 AM on October 28, 2022
I really don't know how to take the point about economists. The current IPCC report (AR6) is grim as hell. I'm not sure how any policy maker reads that and says, "ah, we just need a little work and we'll be fine."
posted by mittens at 9:26 AM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 9:26 AM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Thanks for the link, I'm familiar with Keen's academic output so I'll assume the video covers similar ground.
Another flaw with IAMs is that they typically have their technology cost curves as completely exogenous inputs to the model. That means that the logic goes like this:
1) We know that as more capital and research interest are allocated to industries, costs go down. This is due to R&D in new products but also returns to scale of manufacturing including of inputs to production.
2) Therefore we forecast cost curves that show the cost of technology like PV panels, wind turbines, electrolysers etc. going down over time.
3) Those cost curves are taken as static inputs into the model.
However that doesn't make sense because it assumes that PV panel cost will go down at the same rate regardless of how many are installed. Clearly the actual relationship is complex - above a certain growth rate you hit supply chain constraints, you can't just infinitely increase installation rates but... it is logical that over the medium time scale, if you increase installation and therefore production rates you should move down the cost curve towards the lowest possible price at a faster rate.
Ignoring that makes it less attractive to act earlier because "solar panels will be cheaper to buy in 2030" when actually they will be cheaper to buy faster if you make more faster.
These supply side interactions are basically never included in models because they're too complicated!
posted by atrazine at 9:29 AM on October 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
Another flaw with IAMs is that they typically have their technology cost curves as completely exogenous inputs to the model. That means that the logic goes like this:
1) We know that as more capital and research interest are allocated to industries, costs go down. This is due to R&D in new products but also returns to scale of manufacturing including of inputs to production.
2) Therefore we forecast cost curves that show the cost of technology like PV panels, wind turbines, electrolysers etc. going down over time.
3) Those cost curves are taken as static inputs into the model.
However that doesn't make sense because it assumes that PV panel cost will go down at the same rate regardless of how many are installed. Clearly the actual relationship is complex - above a certain growth rate you hit supply chain constraints, you can't just infinitely increase installation rates but... it is logical that over the medium time scale, if you increase installation and therefore production rates you should move down the cost curve towards the lowest possible price at a faster rate.
Ignoring that makes it less attractive to act earlier because "solar panels will be cheaper to buy in 2030" when actually they will be cheaper to buy faster if you make more faster.
These supply side interactions are basically never included in models because they're too complicated!
posted by atrazine at 9:29 AM on October 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
A billion snow crabs disappeared. What killed them?
posted by jeffburdges at 3:37 AM on October 29, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by jeffburdges at 3:37 AM on October 29, 2022 [3 favorites]
"We are in a race between Armageddon and awesome." from the Guarndian.
posted by From Bklyn at 3:12 AM on October 31, 2022
posted by From Bklyn at 3:12 AM on October 31, 2022
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posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:14 AM on October 27, 2022 [5 favorites]