Global Climate Emergency: after COP24, climate science, urgency, and the threat to humanity

ABSTRACT

This Special Editorial on the Climate Emergency makes the case that although we are living in the time of Global Climate Emergency we are not yet acting as if we are in an imminent crisis. The authors review key aspects of the institutional response and climate science over the past several decades and the role of the economic system in perpetuating inertia on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Humanity is now the primary influence on the planet, and events in and around COP24 are the latest reminder that we live in a pathological system. A political economy has rendered the UNFCCC process as yet a successful failure. Fundamental change is urgently required. The conclusions contain recommendations and a call to action now.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate Emergency
• climate change
• global warming
• degrowth
• IPCC
• UNEP
• COP21
• COP24
• political economy

Understanding the Climate Emergency: climate science, urgency, and the threat to humanity

We live in a time of Climate Emergency. Nevertheless, our collective actions do not yet approximate a real understanding nor fully appropriate actions. We are not yet acting as if we are facing an urgent and life threatening Emergency. What does ‘Climate Emergency’ actually mean? According to David Attenborough:

It may sound frightening, but the scientific evidence is that if we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade, we could face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies. (Attenborough, Our Planet)

History is written later, but the future is written now. Perhaps the central message of contemporary climate sciences consists in the realization that the entire planet is deeply interconnected. There are no isolated ecosystems. There are no ecosystems that are safe from the effects of climate change. All life on this planet is profoundly interrelated. What happens in one area of the globe has far reaching, but as yet insufficiently understood, effects upon and consequences for even far distant regions. The introduction to a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report states the urgency and magnitude of the challenges facing humanity as follows: ‘Now more than ever, unprecedented and urgent action is required of all nations’ (IPCC, 2018). According to the IPCC,

Pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot would require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings) and industrial systems … These system transitions are unprecedented in terms of scale … and imply deep emissions reductions in all sectors. (IPCC, 2018, p. 17)

In other words, the present Global Climate Emergency demands a profound historical transformation of our civilization. We have not only been pouring greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere; we have been collectively exceeding the regenerative capacity of the earth’s natural resources and ecological systems. Earth Overshoot Day, the day in the annual cycle when humanity’s demands for resources exceeds the capacity for regeneration of those resources, has advanced by two whole months over the past twenty years. This year Earth Overshoot Day took place on 29 July 2019. It now requires the equivalent of 1.75 planets to sustain us. Humanity is damaging the whole system upon which our lives, and that of all other species depends.

On a global basis, July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded. NASA data on global warming indicates that 17 of the 18 hottest years ever recorded in the past 136 years were during 2001–2018. Rather than decreasing, global emissions are actually increasing. Annual GtCO₂ emissions (Gigatonnes of carbon dioxide) have increased from less than 25 GtCO₂ in the year 2000 to well over 35 GtCO₂ during 2012–2018 and reached an all-time high in 2017–2018. Cumulative atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ in earth’s atmosphere, measured at the Mauna Loa facility in Hawaii, have been steadily rising and are now over 407 ppm (parts per million). This level of concentration of CO₂ has not been seen for three million years. The threshold figure of 450 ppm has been used in climate science to represent a critical level above which the probability of keeping global temperature rise to below 2 degrees centigrade drops dramatically. The Paris Agreement at COP21 now aims for 1.5 degrees. Some recent studies argue that we are at risk of reaching the 1.5 degree threshold as early as 2030, primarily due to extremely complex interactions between a variety of factors. Neither 2 nor 1.5 degrees is a magic number. Even 1.5 degrees warming implies setting in motion numerous cumulative effects in the global climate system and on the natural environments and ecosystems that constitute the global web of life.

The Arctic is now heating much faster than the average for the planet. This is accelerating the rate of melting of Arctic ice cover. The reduction of sea ice cover has multiple effects on the global climate system. The loss of ice reduces the albedo effect whereby the heat from the sun is reflected back into space, thus keeping the planet cooler. As the polar sea ice and the glaciers melt at an accelerated rate (e.g. in Greenland in summer 2018) huge amounts of freshwater are released into the northern seas, which affects the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), commonly known as the Gulf Stream. Measurements of the flow of AMOC have indicated that it has been slowing in recent years. If the AMOC were to be severely disrupted the consequences for the climate of Northern Europe and possibly the world as a whole could be severe. Recent measurements indicate that the Antarctic sea ice is melting at an accelerated pace and scope. Globally, some 90% or more of the world’s glaciers are melting. This situation is particularly important in the Tibetan plateau and Himalayan region. The glaciers in that region are an essential part of the watershed for the great river systems of Asia: from North China to Pakistan. Those rivers are a water supply for 40% of the world’s people.

In the past few months, we have witnessed an unprecedented wave of global fires. The fires across the circumpolar Arctic have dramatically increased, especially in northern Russia. Last year the largest source of deforestation on earth was not the cutting of trees but rather the burning of trees. The fires of the Amazon region are now at an alarming intensity, following the radical change in national government policies in Brazil under the Bolsonaro regime. If the fires in the Amazon continue, there is a risk that the whole forest system will be effected; triggering a retreat of the forests into dry Savannah, a process known as ‘dieback’. The water cycle of vast areas would be dramatically altered even in far-away regions such as North America. Fires in the tropical forests of Central Africa are more numerous than in previous years and a cause of increasing global concern. Likewise, the annual fires in Indonesia.

Finally, there is the issue of ‘tipping points’. These are thresholds of various types, which if breached imply a state change and these occur both globally and in diverse regions around the planet. Tipping points and thresholds involve complex feedback processes that are as yet insufficiently understood. Above all, according to a seminal study by Steffen et al. (2018) regarding trajectories in earth system dynamics, it is the interactions between the various tipping point zones (e.g. The Arctic; the Amazon forests; the AMOC; Antarctica) which may pose the greatest source of future climate change. These interactions between the various tipping point zones of the planet are vital. According to Steffen et al., there is a risk that if dramatic action on global warming does not occur in good time, the earth’s climate system will undergo a state change, moving into a new mode which they have named ‘Hothouse Earth’. This is a state of runaway and irreversible global warming. The consequences could include inducing societal collapse or even making the earth uninhabitable for humanity. Our own species would be part of the Sixth mass extinction in earth’s history. Systems evolve, and as they do so they tend to hit upon a maintaining synchronization with perturbations – a slowly accommodating chaotic pathway. Accelerated anthropogenic interference at all scales is disrupting this producing cacophony out of symphony. All this is the meaning of ‘Climate Emergency’.

The Anthropocene

Humanity is now the primary influence on the planet, and events in and around COP24 are the latest reminder that we live in a pathological system. Fundamental change is urgently required, but grasping what this means needs initial context, since climate change is just one component. Environmentally concerned scientists and social scientists have been saying for over 40 years that we are making a problem that we can collectively avoid, that the problem is eminently foreseeable and the sooner we take significant action the more likely it is that a manageable way of living can be hit upon.¹ The background has been relatively straightforward: the world population is increasing (albeit at a decreasing rate), resource use has continued to grow, and the combination of numbers and how we organize our socio-economies is leading to a collision course with natural systems based on scale, processes, and consequences. Economies industrialize, incomes grow, a middle class emerges, society changes, consumption becomes more widespread, the economy becomes service-oriented, and under the auspices of corporations, governments, and supranational organizations industrialization is shifted to other countries; there is continuous domestic economic expansion and this spreads to those other countries, which have in turn industrialized and who then seek to emulate the consumption pattern of ‘advanced’ countries.²

We have, caveats notwithstanding, acted as though there were no material limits to growth whilst modern life has rapidly modified the planet through deforestation, extension of intensive agriculture, industrial scale fishing, extraction of minerals, gas and oil, the proliferation of energy production, transportation, and manufacturing (much of it carbon dependent), and all tied to consumption patterns that treat our environment as a bottomless disposal site for plastics, pesticides, cosmetics, fertilizers, food waste, heavy metals, medicines and more. The unintended and yet known (understood, explained and cumulatively observed) consequences of such action has and continues to be water table depletion, eutrophication and rising toxicities in soil and air, desertification, rapid species extinction and general loss of biodiversity on land and sea, disruption and destruction of ecosystems, melting ice sheets, sea level rises, increasingly erratic weather patterns and extreme events, and generalized human-induced climate change tending to warm the planet on average.

To be clear, the direction of travel has been obvious and the human ingenuity required to obfuscate regarding the obviousness has been considerable (for example, Jacques, Dunlap, & Freeman, 2008; Oreskes & Conway, 2010).³ If as much effort had been put into early resolution, steering humanity along a different path, there would be no need for this editorial. However, priapic capitalism has continued to ransack the planet and so here we are. Increasingly concerned, wondering what to do.

As alluded to in the introduction, according to the Global Footprint Network, ‘Earth overshoot day’ this year was 29th July. This is the day in the year on which humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services exceeds the annual regenerative capacity of the Earth. This is two months faster than twenty years ago and requires 1.75 equivalent Earths (for seminal work see Wackernagel and Rees1996):

https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/press-release-july-2019-english/

Much of this is captured by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in their periodic Global Environmental Outlook Reports.⁴

The UNEP was established in 1972 and there are now many domestic, regional, and global organizations whose remit has encompassed some or all of the problems stated above. Still, what is generically termed a ‘Business as Usual’ trajectory has dominated, so much so that we are now into territory where environmentally concerned scientists and social scientists are getting to say on multiple fronts and with no satisfaction, ‘I told you so … ’. Urgent action is required.

Where are we now and how did we get here?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the main source of collated findings of models on the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and related aggregated data. In terms of volume, the main GHG is carbon dioxide (CO₂), though methane (CH₄) produces around twenty times the warming effect. An important measure of GHGs is parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere. The natural range of atmospheric CO₂ ppm over the last 650,000 years has been 170–300 ppm and the pre-industrial point of departure is typically given as 280 ppm.⁵ In May 2013 atmospheric CO₂ exceeded 400 ppm and, as noted in the introduction, in 2018 consistently exceeded 407 ppm which according to ice core tests is a level not seen in over 3 million years. The IPCC’s baseline is the year 1750 though reliable data starts later. The atmosphere contains a combination of GHGs and by 2016, using as a comparative the 1880–1900 mean as the estimate for pre-industrial temperature, global mean average temperature had increased by 1.05°C (using a running mean calculated from 1970; see for example, Hansen et al., 2017). The current linear trend increase is estimated at 0.18°C on a decade basis. The point, however, is not the precision inherent in the quantities (given these emerge from variable data modelled in slightly different ways) but the collectively recognized tendencies manifesting in the relations. Adverse climate impacts are being felt now, something that the iconic heat map of the whole world (contrasted with the patchy red, orange, and blue of 1976) forcefully drove home during the heatwave of June 2018. The image of a brightly glowing ball was prominent in the press and the implication was clear, failure to curb global warming has been endemic.⁶

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established following the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. According to Article 2 of the 1992 convention, the UNFCCC’s stated goal is the ‘stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’ (UNFCCC, 1992, p. 4).⁷ The phrasing is important – the focus is stabilized prior to dangerous anthropogenic interference. The basic climate science may have well developed conceptions of the direction of travel of warming, but there are different models and an emerging and developing understanding of different feedbacks in complex systems. This has been important in terms of the politics of climate policy tied to the political economy. Modern economies are predicated on growth, the fundamental constitution of those economies (energy production, much of the raw materials for manufacture – plastics and fertilizers, etc.) and the transportation networks in and between those economies have been carbon based. A line of least resistance perpetuation of the fundamentals of the socio-economic system has been the main tendency, and that tendency has exhibited a political fudge, conflating the increasing ‘efficiency’ of given resource use (less per $ unit GDP) with a gradual solving of the emissions problem. The dominant terminology has been ‘relative decoupling’ leading to ‘absolute decoupling’. Since the point of departure of the climate challenge was stabilization prior to a dangerous threshold, a goal that need not and did not lead immediately to a halt on the growth of emissions, an exploitable ambiguity emerged.

Bear in mind that growth of emissions has two inflections for the metrics. GHGs are not calendar conscious in the way GDP is. They take many years to break down into other compounds or to be captured by natural processes. The atmospheric lifetime of CO₂ can be well over a century and CH₄ is more than a decade. There is, therefore, a distinction between the cumulative measure of emissions in the atmosphere and the annual level of emissions contributed to the atmosphere. The latter can be increasing or decreasing but still contributing to the former. Moreover, cumulative emissions lead to cumulative warming, which in turn affects the existing environment and thus the storage and release of GHGs, and this has impacts on GHG levels over and above the level of emissions from human sources in any given year. The relations are not necessarily linear, they are rooted in complex relations that have feedbacks and thresholds for transitions in systems, and this is also part of ‘interference’. It is with this as background that the creation of the UNFCCC invoked the question, what is the level of ‘stabilization’? However, this question has been addressed not only as science but as politics.

For the political economy, what is the level of ‘stabilization’ has translated into: how far can we continue to emit GHGs into the environment? The problem has been one of imposing limits on a socio-economic system that is not built for limits and actively resists them – it is disaggregated and intrinsically expansionary. States and corporations have had reasons to resist disruptive immediately costly (perhaps, though this is highly disputable, development denying to poorer countries) action and instead have opted to merely curb what they do, hoping that ultimate adverse consequences are (eventually by someone) prevented in a still ever-growing system. Emissions policy has been pursued in a framework that tacitly takes as its point of departure the question, when will our economy inform us that it is time to change? The substructure has been, how do we prevent harm to our economies (for which we demonstrably will sacrifice some of the environment)? The emissions focus has been, what is the measurable threshold beyond which we do not wish to go?

However, emissions are a byproduct of economic activity not its focus, so the immediate economic trigger for changes to the economic activity producing the emissions has actually been two types of cost: whether sufficient damage has been done and whether a threshold of resource depletion has been passed. Both these ‘costs’ affect resource pricing (including via correcting ‘externalities’), and both are supposed to lead to signals that now is the time to invest or invest more and invent the technologies that fix this or that problem, and now is the time to decisively begin social redesign … These economic triggers have co-evolved with the institutional mechanisms developed to restrict the rate of growth of emissions.

There is a weird inversion here, a subtle shift from acknowledging that our economies are a primary source of the environmental-emissions problem and thus the location of much of what must be solved, to the prioritizing of the economy over the environment. The question when will our economy inform us it is time to change sounds rational, but it is rationally weird in terms of the practices and consequences we have cumulatively observed for a problem science recognized years in advance and knew in general was coming … It has tacitly encouraged dangerous delay because there is for some significant duration after recognition of the problem, always the next period in which emissions can fall or fall faster, there is always someone else who can do what needs to be done or can invent what will help, and this has subverted emissions policy – a problem compounded for many years because many of the most observable impacts are created in the current period but experienced later (heatwaves, drought, flooding …).⁸ This has allowed, until recently at least, a kind of exploitable proactive complacency, where despite its obvious continued dependencies and the very fact it is expansionary, economic growth has not been collectively recognized as the problem for emissions, but rather the unavoidable context of solutions and a source of those solutions. And yet the fundamental drive for expansion has consistently outpaced the particulars of incremental improvements in the provision of this or that … 

Ultimately, deferment, blame shifting, and procrastination has dominated because these have been compatible with how we live and work and, by extension, with what has been imposed and tolerated or preferred. The very framing has involved an odd kind of recklessness that has become one aspect of continuing to do unsustainable things in what, since at least the Brundtland Commission report of the mid-1980s, we have in self-congratulatory if illusory terms, themed the era of ‘sustainable development’ (WCED, 1987).⁹ For ‘developed’ economies this has been the perpetuation of consumption-based economies and for ‘developing’ economies this has been a form of industrialization that has included commodity export provision for growth, outsourced or relocated manufacturing to feed developed country consumption (reducing the direct carbon footprint of wealthy importing states), and a huge industry in processing, storing, and sometimes just abandoning the waste products of developed countries.

As populations, for too long we have been encouraged to think that the environmental problem in general and the emissions problem in particular has been recognized and must, therefore, be in hand. But we have also been encouraged not to think too hard about the problem because, in any case, the marvels of capitalism include the creation and solving of problems and this is just another problem on the road to progress. The environmentally aware have been consistent critics, but the criticism has until recently had limited traction, not least because mainstream parties in most countries have typically co-opted the language of Greenpeace and domestic Green parties whilst diluting concrete action (typically opting for gradual, mainly voluntary and market conforming change that has been corporate led – not least carbon trading). In the meantime, the perpetual gamble has been that there will in fact always be at some point a technological solution to the problems created, and so there would be no need to opt for immediate and radical social change that prevents such problems manifesting. And yet the fatal flaw in this line of reasoning has been that capitalism is not a unified system of unproblematic progress. It is, rather, a complex interplay of power and interests. One of the problems to be solved for corporations and for countries has turned out to be environmentally concerned ‘interference’. From this perspective, the question becomes: how to slow and subvert attempts to restrict, constrain, reform or transform their little part of the totality of globally expansive capitalism (even if there is also money to be made by green technology companies and sectors …). This has been the reality in which the UNFCCC call for ‘stabilization’ has been pursued. The continued growth of GHG emissions, despite formal recognition of the problem in 1992, has been one consequence of this. Some brief commentary on the institutional development provides some sense of this.

Institutional responses to climate change

The UNFCCC founding agreement includes a provision to create a body to discuss, develop, and review the Convention (UNFCCC, 1992, Article 7). After 1992 the UNFCCC began a series of regular conferences between countries to discuss the form solutions to emissions might take. The first ‘Conference of the Parties’ (COP) to the Convention took place in 1995 and began negotiations on target reductions (to be implemented as Protocols under Article 17). In 1997 COP3 in Japan resulted in the now well-known ‘Kyoto Protocols’: an initial 38 industrialized countries committed themselves to cut GHG emissions by 2012 to an average of 5.2% lower than a 1990 benchmark level. Detailed rules were finally adopted in 2001 at COP7 (the Marrakesh accords) and the Protocols were then intended to become binding in 2005, yet some mechanisms only became fully active in 2008.

Consider the context for what the Kyoto Protocols initially achieved: 5 years to agree targets should exist (1992–1997), another 4 years to agree actual targets (2001), another 4 years to initialize targets (2005) and another 3 years before the process of reduction began for some of the more technical mechanisms and components of the targets (2008), and this for a process to be formally completed by 2012 – i.e. 20 years after the beginning of the process. The Protocols, of course, were not all of what was happening in the world or under the Convention – economies were in any case becoming more efficient in the relative decoupling sense and individual governments were adopting some environmentally ‘friendly’ policies. But the collective global institutional framework to solve what is ultimately a planetary wide problem (emissions do not stop at borders and do not respect polities) was slow in its development in a way that the melting of glaciers has not been.

The Kyoto Protocols were initially targeted at the longstanding industrial economies of the time, the initial ‘Annex 1’ parties. This had little effect on developing countries like India or China, and the US did not ratify Kyoto early on under President George Bush junior. However, the Protocols did allow for a steadily increasing number of countries to become signatories and participate. By 2012, 192 countries were signatories (virtually all nations, though this did not necessarily place onerous binding commitments on them). The 2009 COP in Copenhagen was designated to develop a replacement agreement, but participants could not agree binding terms and targets, and so an extension to Kyoto was proposed in Doha and this has force from 2012 to 2020. It is during this period of extension that the Paris Agreement of 2015 was finally agreed at COP21.

Successful failures: from Kyoto to Paris to Katowice

Getting almost every country in the world to sign up to an agreement is a form of success, given the negotiating complexities of this. However, in the end results matter because you can’t negotiate with the planet. You either do what is scientifically necessary or you don’t. Kyoto and the COP process has so far been a successful failure. Complying with the Protocols and what has followed has not been the same as solving the problem that the UNFCCC or the process was intended to address; that is, the cumulative increase in GHGs that lead to global warming. Besides atmospheric ppm, GHGs are measured in Gigatonnes of Carbon (GtC) and Gigatonnes of CO₂ (GtCO₂) or a combined GHG CO₂ equivalent.¹⁰ The creation of the UNFCCC did not result in a reduction in total annual emissions. Instead annual emissions steadily increased and numerous data sources confirm this. As we stated in the introduction, according to the Tyndall Centre, emissions have increased from an annual GtCO₂ of less than 25 in 2000 to more than 35 GtCO₂ every year 2012–2018. On some measures GtCO₂ now exceeds 40 and according to the UNEP, total GtCO₂ equivalent for 2017 was a record high of 53.5 (UNEP, 2018, p. xv). The rate of increase of GtCO₂ has markedly slowed since 2012 (and stalled in 2015), but this is very different than a significant fall in annual total emissions or any kind of reduction in cumulative emissions in the atmosphere (expressed as ppm). Combined annual emissions for all countries have increased by more than 60% this century and are far higher than they were in the Kyoto benchmark year of 1990.

To reiterate, the formation of the UNFCCC has manifestly not prevented increasing emissions. Countries and corporations have in combination essentially continued to emit as though it made sense to proceed up to the level of ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference’. Over most of the duration of the UNFCCC the IPCC has maintained that it would be advisable to restrict atmospheric CO₂ to less than 450 ppm and warming to less than 2°C by the end of the century. The science of this is well developed and yet still allows for uncertainty. But this should not be misunderstood. It does not create leeway for a business as usual continuation of massive levels of emissions, though it does imply some ambiguity concerning what the exact level of ‘safe’ cumulative emissions will turn out to have been.

To reiterate, the climate is part of a broader complex system and the relation between atmospheric GHGs, warming processes and interrelated effects on land and sea is conditional. Climate scientists have different models and the IPCC collate these. Models express different scenarios and based on these the relation to outcomes is expressed probabilistically. This notwithstanding, the advice for decades has been to restrict cumulative emissions to less than 1000 GtC and the lower end of 3000 +  GtCO₂ for the 2°C target. As of 2018 total cumulative emissions over the industrial period were estimated at approximately 600 GtC and more than 2000 GtCO₂.¹¹ The remaining quantities that it is ‘safe’ to emit within this ‘carbon budget’ before NO MORE can be emitted (unless captured or in relation to net falls) across the range of scenarios are relatively small in the context of the heavy dependence of our societies on carbon.¹² We are using up this budget at an alarming rate and actual emissions per year need to sharply reduce otherwise the budget will be exceeded much earlier than the end of the century and 2°C warming will also be exceeded.

This brings us to Paris. By the time of COP21 in Paris the weight of advice on the 2°C target had begun to shift. As we have noted several times, the models are conditional. By 2015 climate scientists were reporting that restricting emissions consistent with human-induced warming of 1.5°C was probably advisable. This then became part of the Paris Agreement. Article 2 (1a) states that parties to the Agreement will aim to strengthen the Convention by ‘holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C’ (UNFCCC, 2015).

COP21 also included an invitation for the IPCC to report on the 1.5°C target. This special report was released in October 2018, and presented at the 48th session of the IPCC, just before COP24. The Report makes clear that an early and sustained attempt to reduce emission to achieve 1.5°C avoids a whole set of likely effects that might become ingrained if a 2°C target remained the goal. The Report states:

Limiting global warming requires limiting the total cumulative global anthropogenic emissions of CO₂ since the preindustrial period, that is, staying within a total carbon budget (high confidence). By the end of 2017, anthropogenic CO₂ emissions since the pre-industrial period are estimated to have reduced the total carbon budget for 1.5°C by approximately 2,200 ± 320 GtCO₂ (medium confidence). The associated remaining budget is being depleted by current emission of 42 ± 3 GtCO₂ per year (high confidence). The choice of the measure of global temperature affects the estimated remaining carbon budget. Using global mean surface air temperature, as in AR5 [see IPCC fifth synthesis], gives an estimate of the remaining carbon budget of 580 GtCO₂ for a 50% probability of limiting warming to 1.5°C and 420 GtCO₂ for a 66% probability (medium confidence). Alternatively, using GMST [global mean surface temperature rather than air] gives estimates of 770 and 570 GtCO₂ for 50% and 66% probabilities, respectively (medium confidence). (IPCC, 2018, p. 14) […] Pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot would require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings) and industrial systems (high confidence). These system transitions are unprecedented in terms of scale, but not necessarily in terms of speed and imply deep emissions reductions in all sectors. (IPCC, 2018, p. 17)

The IPCC Report translates achieving the target 1.5°C into a range where annual emissions reduce to net zero between 2040 and 2055. As the graphs below indicate, this is a radical shift, involving a situation where any additional emissions thereafter will have to be balanced or captured by technologies and managed natural processes: Source: IPCC (2018, p. 8).

To be clear, the IPCC projections indicate the need for major socio-economic change. The first step set out by the IPCC is a reduction in annual emissions of 45% by 2030 (IPCC, 2018, p. 12) compared with 25% for 2°C – and these figures are sensitive to current changes and delay. That is barely a decade, a startlingly brief period given what the general tendency has been. An IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land followed later (IPCC, 2019). It too emphasizes the unsustainable nature of current trajectories and the need for major shifts in land use and food consumption patterns.¹³

The immediate problem, however, is that though the Paris Agreement states a conditional 1.5°C target, the mechanism to achieve this is an aggregate of what parties to the Agreement volunteer to achieve. The Agreement does not begin by calculating the remaining carbon budget and then allocating it to parties as a maximum with some kind of formalized co-ordination system with accelerated reductions. Instead Article 4 requires parties to submit Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs). NDCs are formulated for 5 year periods. The basic logic stated in and for the Paris Agreement is that it is in member’s interests to achieve their NDCs and to be ambitious in both subsequently setting and exceeding them. Furthermore, it is built into the Agreement that growing public awareness will tend to pressure governments, such that collectively the result achieves the Article 2 target (see Morgan, 2016). However, as the data so far suggests there is no sign of this actually happening.

The actual tendency since 2015 has been a slowdown in the increase in annual emissions and not a sustained decrease. The UNEP publishes periodic emissions gap reports, which set out current emission levels, the tendency and the difference between this and what is required to achieve the Convention target (2°C and now 1.5°C). According to the 9th emissions gap report, published November 2018, again just before COP24, current NDCs are FAR IN EXCESS of what would bridge the emissions gap by 2030:

Current commitments expressed in the NDCs are inadequate to bridge the emissions gap in 2030. Technically, it is still possible to bridge the gap to ensure global warming stays well below 2°C and 1.5°C, but if NDC ambitions are not increased before 2030, exceeding the 1.5°C goal can no longer be avoided. Now more than ever, unprecedented and urgent action is required by all nations. The assessment of actions by the G20 countries indicates that this is yet to happen; in fact, global CO₂ emissions increased in 2017 after three years of stagnation. (UNEP, 2018, p. xiv) Global greenhouse gas emissions show no signs of peaking. Global CO₂ emissions from energy and industry increased in 2017, following a three-year period of stabilization. Total annual greenhouse gases emissions, including from land-use change, reached a record high of 53.5 GtCO₂e in 2017, an increase of 0.7 GtCO₂e compared with 2016. In contrast, global GHG emissions in 2030 need to be approximately 25 percent and 55 percent lower than in 2017 to put the world on a least-cost pathway to limiting global warming to 2°C and 1.5°C respectively … . Global peaking of emissions by 2020 is crucial for achieving the temperature targets of the Paris Agreement. (UNEP, 2018: p. xv; bold added)¹⁴

Here the UNEP report calls for 55% rather than 45% reductions by 2030, but according to both the IPCC and UNEP reports, current NDCs are consistent with temperature rises of over 2°C by mid-century and 3°C by end of the century (IPCC, 2018: D.1.1, p. 20). Moreover, panel members acknowledge that their models are if anything conservative in terms of both impacts from warming and the actual rate of warming. The inclusion of ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ feedback loops, tipping-points and non-linearity for the interaction of anthropogenic effects and the natural system could lead to changes pushing the planet irreversibly into the ‘hothouse Earth’ trajectory set out by Steffen et al. (2018), even if emissions were reduced to levels currently consistent with 1.5–2°C warming. According to work by James Hansen, perhaps the most outspoken and prominent climate scientist during the last four decades, the safest option would be to not just halt cumulative emissions during the century but to reduce atmospheric ppm from its current elevated position to around 350 ppm (Hansen et al., 2017).

So, the situation is clearly urgent. Adverse climate change is happening now, emission levels are not falling, and major change is required to prevent changes that soon we will not be able to control. The IPCC is not a hotbed of radicalism populated by hyperbolic panic-mongers. They are ill-suited as harbingers of catastrophe. But they and others from the scientific community are now mapping out a possible future that includes: heatwaves, droughts, flooding, loss of landmass, an environment on land and sea hostile to many current species and in consequence, falling yields and rising crop failures, food and water insecurity, famine, loss of life from ‘natural’ disaster, a dive into poverty and escalating problems of mass migration. This is the future we are currently writing, one that raises the question of what kind of civilization will be around to write that history.

And so to COP 24, Katowice, Poland. The situation is extremely serious but this was not reflected in COP24. Each COP round of meetings and negotiations is followed by published ‘decisions’ (see also UNFCCC, 2018).¹⁵ COP24 was notable for disagreement concerning how to respond to the IPCC report. Despite commissioning it, COP participants could not simply agree to universally ‘welcome’ or endorse the Report’s findings. Instead this became a source of acrimony and the COP24 draft text merely thanks the IPCC for the Report and invites members to ‘make use’ of its information. The US still remains committed to its withdrawal from Paris and now Brazil has begun to signal the same. Moreover, many participants have mid-term commitments to carbon energy exploitation: fracking, transitions to gas, ‘cleaner’ coal, the race to exploit resources in the Arctic etc. (see Spash, 2016). More importantly, COP24 did not include any firm commitment to more ‘ambitious’ NDCs. It did, however, lead to collective agreement on how NDC achievement can be transparently assessed and measured, and it did also include some additional agreement on pledges and finance for the most climate vulnerable countries, if only over the first Agreement cycle 2020–2025.

COP24 was also the scene and focus of growing civil action and disobedience. However, for most of us, COP24 came and went in a flash – becoming one more in a long line of anxiety-inducing reports on the ‘climate problem’. Until recently we experienced punctuated publicity. Consider this in the context of how the Paris targets have been positioned – predicated on public awareness and pressure. However, what has not been achieved so far is a consistent mobilization to make the climate problem core to politics, core to social action and civil society, and thus core to media reporting. There is a circularity here – a need for visibility characterized by continuity and consistency. Something has to change and that must be how we collectively mobilize for change. There are now signs of a more consistent press narrative spanning the news-cycle. Climate incidents are now often introduced as ‘another instance of climate change’ and this is a small positive.

However, as things stand in this time of rapid news-cycles, fake news and post-truth there are 3 incontrovertible facts we need to put before everything else:

1. Human-induced climate change is real;

2. The rate of change is such that there is only about 11 years to prevent irreversible and potentially catastrophic effects;

3. There is currently not enough being done to prevent irreversible changes.

Conclusion: the Anthropocene and civilization in revolt?

Perhaps one of the central attributes of capitalist modernity is the tendency to replace faith in the spiritually miraculous with faith in a demonstrated track record of astounding socio-technological feats. Modern life is amazing (if sometimes spiritually hollowing). But the ultimate issue is not whether there are facets of the way we live that our species prefers and benefits from, but rather whether our design for life is feasible, whether this is how a population of 7 billion and more can live. The consequences of climate change are now being felt, this is not a problem of the future and not a problem for the future. Action is needed now. But how should this be framed? Clive Spash captures some of the activist dilemma:

I was [recently] criticized by a member of the audience for painting too bleak a picture of policy on human-induced climate change. Apparently an approach was required that describes the opportunities and positive potential of stimulating future technologies and avoids noting the thirty years of international inaction and the structural links between economic growth and global greenhouse gas emissions increases. A strategic concern appears to be that environmental messages need to be sold to people in friendly packaging, using psychology and marketing. This is reminiscent of the attacks on degrowth for being a term that will scare people off, leading to the suggestions that a better approach would be to use a French word or instead talk about flourishing potentials and dynamic equilibriums with nature. Environmentalists are chastised for ‘negative framing’ that is claimed to empower what it attacks (Raworth, 2015); so we should not mention being anti-capitalist and for degrowth, but nice things like doughnuts, that avoid scaring the Davos elite. Presumably opposing the nasty side of humanity – slavery, violence, torture, rape, pollution – should never be conducted in oppositional terms (e.g. against, anti, non) for fear of empowering the perpetrators? Harsh realities should be made soft. (Spash, 2018, p. 215)

The IPCC panel members and the 2018 Report are at pains to emphasize that it is not too late. Achieving the emissions reductions required to avoid ‘hothouse Earth’ is technically possible, and the IPCC provide four illustrative pathways (all emphasizing renewables, reforestation, environmental management, green infrastructure and massive investment in technologies, including carbon capture).¹⁶ Equally, Raworth with her new ‘doughnut’ metaphor (2017) is not incorrect to argue a new way of thinking about the economy is needed. However, it is manifestly the case that the main impediment to change is our system of capital accumulation with its commitment to material growth of economies. This, as the evidence so obviously shows, creates both an escalating problem to solve and a whole set of interests continuously working to slow down solutions.

Moreover, it is implicit in all the current tendencies that global economic growth is incompatible with emissions reduction within the available timelines. Even if we accept for the sake of argument that there has been a ‘Carbon Kuznets Curve’ for some countries (whilst relocating some of their carbon consequences to other countries), then there is no good evidence that this is generalizable to the world (for the combination of production and consumption). If one includes Brazil, China, and India then a standard Carbon Kuznets Curve analysis extrapolating from what has happened in ‘successful’ countries indicates future ‘turning points’ at per capita income rates where the global carbon budget would already be exceeded before that level was reached. Though there have been attempts to make the case for ‘Green Growth’ there does not seem to be any plausible way to rationalize the evidence for this, even if one is otherwise committed to mainstream economic analysis, but especially if one is not (see for example, Morgan, 2017; Schroder & Storm, 2018). At worst, the concept of Green Growth has become one more way to encourage complacency (see Smith, 2016).

What is to be done, therefore, ought to start by accepting proper context. If we are to be committed to solving the emissions problem (and likely all the other aspects of the Anthropocene) then we have to accept material expansion (as growth) in the aggregate must stop and we must countenance degrowth as the rational course of action – our framework for what an economy can be and allow. To be clear, this does not mean an end to investment or opposition to technological change – economic progress. What it does mean is that we are going to have to accept different organizing principles in the form of social redesign and economic practices. The idea of survivable capitalism is going to have to give way to surviving current capitalism. We shouldn’t think of this as a retrograde step (see Büchs & Koch, 2017). We need to start thinking about degrowth as responsible and not radical. We need to start thinking of it as the realistic option. And we need to accept it is going to require states to step up and start intervening in the economy in a way that is quite different than has been the case over the neoliberal period. New thinking on the state is already available from June Sekera and Mariana Mazzucato. However, states are not rational and capitalism is a system of political capture. For the IPCC Report’s feasible suggestions to be realizable then we need to create sustained pressure in politics – making good on the claim that already frames the Paris Agreement. This is already beginning to happen. Greta Thunberg has become a globally visible figure and social movements such as Extinction Rebellion have added additional pressure to spaces long occupied by Greenpeace. There has already been a backlash in some parts of the press – reducing concern to Millenarian cultishness. This is distraction. Calls for transformation are neither histrionic nor virtue signalling.

As we emphasized at the outset of this essay, we live in the time of Global Climate Emergency. What we need now above all is to immediately begin to think and ACT as if it is a real EMERGENCY. Everything we do now, both individually and collectively, will matter. We are in a race against time. We must arrest the momentum drawing us closer to the critical tipping points and thresholds that once crossed would trigger runaway global warming. Every action at every level now matters greatly to the outcome and thus to determining our human future.

When only a few people make a small change perhaps it is not significant. When millions upon millions act however, that is social change. Everything we do NOT do now also matters. Inaction and passivity in the face of the realities of the Global Climate Emergency are the road to ruin, i.e. to climate catastrophe and societal collapse. We cannot allow this to be our future. It is time to act like the Climate Emergency is real. It is time to Act Now.

The IPCC Report with its focus on macro-changes requires associative action. There are things you can do and that we can all do. As an individual we internalize a sense of insignificance, which fosters inactivity as though we were powerless, and this is reinforced by a reflexive sense of hypocrisy that each act is not sufficient. But everything we do matters to some degree and every something is better than a nothing. Cumulatively and collectively this matters and there are multiple issue-areas that can be constructively pursued.

• The stubborn sources of individual emissions in developed economies are: private transport, aviation, household heating, and cooking (in relation to insulation and energy efficiency of homes) and consumption (food and goods). So, if this applies to you, make every possible effort to examine all aspects of your personal behaviour in relation to climate change impact. Practice low-impact living. Try to radically reduce your carbon footprint. Reduce or even eliminate travel by air. Reduce or even eliminate driving by cars using fossil fuels. Use public transport or shared transport wherever possible. Switch energy supplier to your home to renewables. Reduce personal consumption and waste, and reuse and recycle as much as possible. Reduce or eliminate consumption of beef in particular and other meats and dairy products (focus on local sources). Promote reforestation and conservation of forests locally and globally. Consume organic food and other organically grown products (e.g. cotton apparel) as much as possible.

• Act politically. Join social movements, civil society organizations, and political organizations dedicated to action to address global warming. Support and vote for ecologically aware political parties. Become better informed, become involved, take an interest in the mechanics of policy making rather than just the principles being espoused – communicate the understanding of climate science to others. Spread the concept of managed degrowth and the circular economy as rational and realistic. Investigate your links to global supply chains in all your activities and avoid ecologically destructive products and practices (e.g. palm oils grown on former rain forest destroyed for this production; soy products and beef grown on lands that were formerly rain forest …).

• Given that there has been progress in increasing renewable energy production from low and zero carbon sources, support policy efforts towards the electrification of all possible technologies that use power (transport, heating, home appliances, etc.), since this will progressively produce benefit from emissions reductions; support the creation of a new distributed energy landscape where residential and industrial and commercial consumption will be largely electric, and power is generated and shared locally, enabled by new technologies balancing and optimizing usage, via the infrastructure of a smart interconnected network. Promote the transition by industry and transport to hydrogen fuel and renewable electricity sources. Support public investment and public and community ownership of electricity sources and support massive public investment in green energy production and green infrastructure (look for these policies, advocate them). Support investment in electrified public transport and advocate low cost or free public transport in cities.

• Act collectively to support policies that stop the current massive subsidies to fossil fuel interests. Support campaigns to divest from fossil fuels (e.g. by banks, universities, pension funds, investment companies, local governments …). Divest your personal savings from fossil fuel industry investments. Change your personal banking account: avoid banks heavily investing in fossil fuels and switch to banks divesting from fossil fuels and investing in sustainable alternatives (See: Banking on Climate Change, 2019; for list of worst offending banks).

• Support efforts to establish carbon taxes set at levels liable to create significant costs; accept that this will affect you (we) too in the short term but that it is necessary to facilitate transitions to carbon neutral alternatives; accept that states should exercise their authority to prohibit some actions we have got used to thinking are domains of private sector rights (where we express our preferences in markets); support the primacy of the collective interest and the common good before that of private interests.

• Seriously consider having fewer children or only one child. Support campaigns for funding for augmented Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including especially funding for education of girls and for family planning (that reduces the global birth-rate). (See: Drawdown.org) Support intellectual commons rather than intellectual property. Support technology transfer that facilitates rapid transition to reduce current emissions levels.

• Support radically increased collective funding for climate mitigation and adaptation with a focus on transfers to the most affected and vulnerable countries.

• Given that they are liable to become prominent if the Climate Emergency is exacerbated, take an interest in and provide support to collective transnational solutions to our planetary dilemma. We are ultimately global citizens and now more than ever one species.

Some of this is going to be disruptive. But it is time to move beyond states of denial. Time to overcome inertia, fears and doubts. Our house is on fire. If we watch and do nothing the outcome is predictable. The house will burn down. We need to and we must mobilize action now on an unprecedented level in order to meet the unprecedented and urgent challenges facing humanity in the Global Climate Emergency. We have a world to transform. Our collective future, and quite frankly our survival now depends on our own actions.¹⁷

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Barry Gills

Barry Gills is Editor in Chief of Globalizations and Professor of Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. He has written widely on World System theory, neoliberalism, globalization, global crises, democracy, and resistance.

Jamie Morgan

Jamie Morgan is Professor of Economic Sociology at Leeds Beckett University. He co-edits the Real-World Economics Review with Edward Fullbrook. He has published widely in the fields of economics, political economy, philosophy, sociology and international politics. His recent books include: Economics and the ecosystem (Ed. with Edward Fullbrook, World Economics Association Books, 2019), Realist responses to post-human society: Ex machina (Ed. with I. Al-Amoudi, Routledge, 2018); Brexit and the political economy of fragmentation: Things fall apart (Ed. with H. Patomäki, Routledge, 2018); Trumponomics: Causes and consequences (Ed. with E. Fullbrook, College Publications, 2017); What is neoclassical economics? (Ed, Routledge, 2015); and Piketty’s capital in the twenty-first century (Ed. with E. Fullbrook, College Publications, 2014).

Notes

1 Herman Daly, Ernst Schumacher, Donella Meadows, Kenneth Boulding, Robert Costanza, etc.

2 The pattern is, of course, not new to the last 40 years. What is new is the recognition of the cumulative consequences. Anyone who has read Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto recognizes the pattern as a paraphrase and anyone familiar with world systems theory recognizes the longer degree of continuity and difference.

3 Al Gore and Naomi Klein have in well-known ways made the case that resistance to the evidence is systematic but in some ways subtle (e.g. Klein, 2014). Much of the argument is rooted in the subversion of skepticism. One begins from: ‘no species has influenced their environment as rapidly or pervasively as humans’. However, the precautionary principle that this formally invokes is undermined by: (a) the data problem mark one – ‘this’ has never occurred before so there is doubt about what will occur; how fast and how complex the interactions and consequences will be … (b) the data problem mark two – noted former changes occurred over very long periods, current observations are decades so the contrast allows for statistical anomaly and for the possibility real effects may be less or insignificant based on the appropriate contrastive comparative and timeline and/or they may be immersed in ‘natural’ processes … (c) future costs and uncertainty – since how we will do things in the future is not certain the subsequent effects cannot be adequately determined now; changing patterns of technology in the future will ultimately shape consequences, denying activity now may be unnecessary or even counterproductive to the wealth that solves problems later … These are all subversions that create complacency or trade on doubt to facilitate social recklessness rather than rational prudential conduct. Natural science by its very nature is cautious in its empirical claims and acknowledges the fallibility of its conceptual architecture and models. However, during the last 40 years there has been little dispute regarding the basic tendencies built into material relations (the chemistry and physics are not novel even if the applications are new) so there has been a subtle but exploitable difference between ‘environmental effects’ have been ‘known’ (if you continue to do x then degrees of y will result – the tendency based on the direction of travel of all of the factors) and ‘proved’. The manipulation of doubt is also basic to the future costs problematic: essentially the argument hinges on the perpetual future capacity of technology to solve problems that we do not try to prevent now – the most basic of which is doing more of what we know is damaging (the aggregate socio-economic effects of the way we live), the argument simply facilitates continual deferment to the point where irreversible material consequences apply that we have not done enough to prevent and which we are then unable to respond to either because there is no possible technological fix or because we do not now have time (this is a deeply unstable argument since in economics it depends on price signals that theorists claim are proxies for recognizing thresholds of irreversibility – but why should a price encapsulate or convey this ‘information’ and even if it could why would we trust that it will when we already have the actual environmental science to guide us? Moreover, the whole frame of analysis subtly creates a technological dependence consciousness and thus reduces the way in which we are prepared to countenance and implement radical social redesign as an issue that can be disentangled from the merely technological).

4 GEO 6 was published 2019 and is available: https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/global-environment-outlook-6 The standard definition of carrying capacity is the maximum population size of a given species that an area can support without reducing its future capacity to support that species. Carrying capacity is a function of both the characteristics of the environment and the species and so is a contingent measure, especially for a global species such as humans who also adapt the environment to themselves.

5 See also: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/new-climate-models-predict-warming-surge

6 This, of course, was not the first iconic image, there have been many previous; the gradual submersion of small islands, polar bears on melting ice rafts, etc; however the warming of the globe from space is a particularly powerful image – both abstract (invoking an evidential natural science frame of reference) and emotive. 

7 With endnote 3 as context one should note Article 3(3):

The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures, taking into account that policies and measures to deal with climate change should be cost-effective so as to ensure global benefits at the lowest possible cost. To achieve this, such policies and measures should take into account different socio-economic contexts, be comprehensive, cover all relevant sources, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases and adaptation, and comprise all economic sectors. Efforts to address climate change may be carried out cooperatively by interested Parties. (UNFCCC, 1992, p. 4)

8 See Hickel (2018), in a famous 1991 paper William Nordhaus, winner of the Swedish ‘Nobel' Bank prize 2018 (‘To slow or not to slow’) argued firmly let’s not be too eager to slow down global warming, because we don’t want to jeopardize growth.

9 The report states:

The environment does not exist as a sphere separate from human actions, ambitions, and needs and attempts to defend it in isolation from human concerns have given the very word ‘environment’ a connotation of naivety in some political circles. The word ‘development’ has also been narrowed by some into a very limited focus, along the lines of ‘what poor nations should do to become richer’. And this again is automatically dismissed by many in the international arena as being a concern for specialists, of those involved in questions of ‘development assistance’. But the environment is where we live; and development is what we all do in attempting to improve our lot within that abode. The two are inseparable.

And defines sustainable development as: ‘Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’

10 1 gigatonne of carbon = 1 billion tonnes. The CO₂ metric is 3.67 times the size of just carbon.

11 Note these do not all end up in the atmosphere, they are distributed between land sea and air depending on processes and cycles.

12 The Wikipedia entry for ‘Emissions Budget’ includes a useful table setting out a range of budgets targeted at 2°C and 1.5°C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_budget

13 Agricultural land use is a major cause of emissions and climate change: noting the significant increase in the global population; that human use directly affects about 70% of the ice-free land surface; agriculture accounts for 70% of freshwater use; since 1961 per capita supply of meat and vegetable oils has doubled, 2 billion people are overweight (compared to 821 million undernourished) and 25–30% of total food produced is wasted; dryland (desertification) area has increased by average 1% per year since 1961

14 And:

The updates to this year’s assessment result in changes of the GHG emission levels in 2030, compared with the 2017 Emissions Gap Report, consistent with limiting global warming to 2°C and lower. According to the new scenario estimates, emissions of all GHGs should not exceed 40 (range 38–45) GtCO₂ in 2030, if the 2°C target is to be attained with about 66 percent chance. To keep global warming to 1.8°C with about 66 percent chance, global GHG emissions in 2030 should not exceed 34 (range 30–40) GtCO₂. For a 66 percent chance of keeping temperature increase below 1.5°C in 2100 (associated with no or a low overshoot), global GHG emissions in 2030 should not exceed 24 (range 22–30) GtCO₂. (UNEP, 2018, p. xix)

15 https://unfccc.int/decisions_katowice

16 The technological solutions presuppose the efficacy of future iterations of technology at scale based on in-principle potential extrapolated from current demonstration – and this requires a leap of faith on their behalf.

17 Useful sites include: https://www.greenpeace.org, https://rebellion.earth, [email protected], www.drawdown.org, https://www.ran.org, https://www.clivespash.org, https://www.greattransition.org/publication/economics-for-a-full-world