The Trouble with Targets
Forge the Future #39
Welcome to Forge the Future, your weekly guide to all things climate.
This week’s climate commitments come from the banking sector, with Swiss Re committing to net zero by 2030, and RBS looking to be ‘climate positive’ by 2025. Both banks are gradually cutting out financing to the most carbon-intensive industry, though neither has pledged to fully eliminate such support.
A study released this week has estimated that a quarter of all tweets about climate on any given day are by bots. Unsurprisingly, the bots appear to tend towards climate denialism and support for big oil. Whilst Twitter banned political adverts last year, it decided not to act on climate denialism, meaning the bots have free reign, for now.
State of the Climate
CO2 levels this week: 414.01 ppm
This time last year: 411.22 ppm
A new study estimates that human methane emissions are potentially 25-40% higher than previously thought. The study specifically looked at non-biological sources, and saw a sharp rise in emissions after around 1870, when widespread industrialisation began. Other grim scientific findings this week included a Swedish paper that, amongst other findings, estimated that extreme weather events will decrease the reliability of power grids by up to 16%. Rising ocean temperatures and acidification is likely to eliminate virtually all coral habitats by 2100, regardless of restoration efforts. Speaking of coral, the Great Barrier Reef is on the verge of its third major bleaching in 5 years, if current high ocean temperatures continue for another two weeks. Previous bleachings in 2016 and 2017 killed about half the reef’s corals.
The Pearl River in Mississippi has flooded after days of torrential rain, reaching its highest level in 35 years after the area received four times the normal amount of rain for February. The UK is also suffering from heavy floods, with much of Yorkshire and Wales suffering after two storms in quick succession. Some areas have seen as much as a month’s worth of rain in a day. The government is coming under criticism for its sluggish response to the crisis.
Meanwhile, California has the opposite problem, with extensive drought across the state - the worst in over 150 years. The dry conditions and high temperatures have meant there’ve even been some wildfires, in the middle of winter. The state has extremely low snow conditions, which could put water supplies under pressure for the rest of the year. Declining snow levels have also been linked to the declining level of the Colorado River, which is dropping by 9.3% for every 1°C rise in temperature.
Visualisation of the Week
This week’s visualisation goes back to basics, and highlights the increasing difficulty of stabilising world temperatures under 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The Trouble with Targets
An article by Wired hit a nerve this week, discussing the increasing unlikeliness of achieving the 1.5°C temperature goal set out as part of the Paris Agreement. The 1.5°C and 2°C targets have received increasing attention over the past few years, and have become rallying cries - they focus attention on the issue. They also give deadlines, which help give an otherwise intractable issue some teeth. After all, it’s much more emotive to say ‘we only have 12 years to solve this’ versus the vague ‘we should do everything we can’. Anyone who’s had school or work deadlines knows the power of a hard target in motivating us to get moving. And indeed, it does seem to be working - the massive expansion of the climate movement in the last year or two is at least partially due to the shocking nature of these self-imposed deadlines.
However, they have a flaw that we’re about to become very familiar with. They aren’t really deadlines, but aspirational targets. If we miss 1.5°C (which is looking ever more likely), the world doesn’t immediately keel over, although the impacts will be ever worse with each increment in temperature. However, there’s a risk that many give up once we pass these headline numbers, believing the cause to be hopeless. That’s dangerous - we’ve built up a lot of momentum now, but it’d be all too easy to lose the wind from our sails, and end up with a world far worse than we could’ve had.
Pitching that as a concept is far harder - continual battles without a clear endpoint are mentally difficult - but we need to find a way to move beyond these numbers to the longer battle for a more equitable world, not dominated by the never-ending quest for ever more material wealth at the cost of those less fortunate.
News Highlights
US vs the Climate
The US car emissions rollback is still stalled, and now it appears that it will actually cost consumers money. This makes it much less likely to withstand court challenges. The rule is also still lacking several key supporting documents, meaning it is unlikely to pass this year.
One of the few Trump-era climate policies has been stuck at the IRS for nearly two years. The policy offers extensive tax breaks to carbon capture projects, but the IRS has yet to finalise how the scheme will work.
The EPA is to remove requirements for PFA manufacturers to hold a financial reserve for cleanups, despite increased levels of the ‘forever chemicals’ being detected across the US.
Pete Buttigieg has unveiled his $2tn climate plan. It’s unlikely to get implemented, but it’s less extreme than some of the other Democratic proposals.
The Trump administration completed the fewest Superfund site cleanups since 1986 - only 6 were completed last year.
The USDA has launched an initiative to reduce the environmental impact of US farming. However, it is voluntary, and details are sparse at this stage.
The FERC has (as expected) set a price floor for subsidised renewables in New York’s energy market, making it harder for them to compete with fossil fuel power plants.
The New York state pension fund has put $800m into sustainable fixed-income strategies this year, as part of a $20bn commitment to sustainable investments and solutions. MSCI, a leading ESG data provider, expects ESG indexes soon to have more following than its conventional offerings.
Starbucks and McDonalds are running a pilot in California to collect, clean and reuse plastic coffee cups. It could be a solution to the ever-growing problem of disposable cups.
Other News
JP Morgan Chase, the world’s largest financier of fossil fuels, have warned in a leaked report that climate change threatens the entire human race.
Canadian mining company Teck has withdrawn the $20bn Frontier oil sands project in Alberta. The decision appears to have been economic, due to current low oil prices.
Latin America is creating large amounts of green bonds to fund environmental projects, looking to cash in on the rapidly growing green bond market, estimated at $205bn last year.
The vice-president of the EIB has suggested that a wholesale price of €0.02-3 for clean energy would allow green hydrogen to replace natural gas and decarbonise the entire European energy market.
Indonesia has announced a significant levy on plastic bags, sugary drinks and vehicle emissions.
A new study suggests that diverting 2% of flights higher could avoid around 80% of the energy forcing effects of contrails.
The Green party in Hamburg has doubled its support to nearly 25%, as climate support in Germany climbs to new highs. Meanwhile, the Heartland Institute (the US anti-climate think tank) is sponsoring an ‘anti-Greta’ to try and limit the spread.
The number of solar projects over 200MW is growing massively, with 35 commissioned last year alone. Economies of scale and ever lower solar panel costs mean that projects are going to keep getting bigger.
Equinor has dropped plans for a large oil drilling project off the Australian coast, citing climate concerns and lower oil prices.
Long Reads
CarbonBrief has dived into the massive effect of coronavirus on China’s emissions. While likely temporary, the dip could amount to 6% of global emissions.
Another CarbonBrief piece - this time a profile of Iran, diving behind the sanctions and politics and looking at an oil-based economy that will be hit hard by climate change.
Wired dives deep into some of the material constraints behind the enormous rise in battery manufacturing. Cobalt in particular looks to be tricky in the near future.
The End Times
That’s all I have for you this week. As always, thanks for reading, and if you’ve any feedback or suggestions for me, I’d love to hear them (you can reach me at oli@forgethefuture.com). If you know anyone who’d be interested in this, please do share it with them - it massively helps me out!
See you next week,
Oli