The world will ignore the shadow of climate change at its own peril. The money and effort needed must be forthcoming, notwithstanding the pandemic and related disruptions
The COVID-19 pandemic has sidelined the issue of climate change. This can have very serious consequences given that the matter had been receiving far from adequate attention even before the virus began its global surge. Two things have been impeding progress. First, leaders like US President Donald Trump and President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil are known to be dismissive of the environmental threat. The second is a lack of will on the part of governments and people to take effective preventive action.
A recent report in The New York Times, (last updated on July 15) by Nadja Popovich, Livia Albeck-Ripka and Kendra Pierre-Louis, cites a New York Times analysis, based on research by Harvard and Columbia law schools and other sources, saying that the Trump administration has officially reversed, revoked or otherwise rolled back nearly 70 environmental rules and regulations. More than 30 other rollbacks are works in progress.
A report by Sarah Gibbens in the National Geographic, published on February 1, 2019, mentions 15 important decisions by the Trump administration that would adversely impact the environment. The list, which starts with the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, includes decisions that would undo measures to ensure clean power and fuel, prevent air pollution and protect wildlife. Besides, the Trump administration has opened up public land to business and dropped climate change from the list of national security threats. Bolsonaro’s policies regarding de-regulation of economic activity and tax cuts to encourage FDI are liable to severely damage the environment and devastate the lives of Brazil’s indigenous communities.
As to the lack of will to take preventive action against climate change, one must begin by recognising that the task here is vast and daunting, requiring basic and transformational changes in the pattern of development followed by most countries since the industrial revolution in the second half of the 18th century. Whether in the form of steam produced by burning coal or electricity generated by coal-based thermal power plants, diesel or petrol combustion, it has been driven by fossil-based fuel, the burning of which has been a potent cause of air pollution. The institutional structures, management and/or administrative procedures, communication systems and, in more recent times, information transfer and processing, have all been based on this form of energy utilisation.
Clearly, the pattern of fuel use has to change. Of course, the use of fossil-based fuel cannot be given up immediately. It has to be gradually reduced and alternative forms of energy have to be harnessed. Hydro electricity is a safe bet but its generation is limited by the availability of dam sites and water. The world has taken baby steps towards the utilisation of solar and wind (through windmills) power. Even though the potential of both are yet to be fully grasped, it is doubtful whether they can by themselves meet the steady, gargantuan increase in global energy demands that will continue.
This leaves one with nuclear energy. It produces zero-carbon emission as it is generated through nuclear fission and requires less land to produce more electricity than any other clean air source. The second is important at a time when finding land for establishing power plants often prompts mass protests against land acquisition, particularly in India. Against this, there is still a problem of waste disposal, though technology is taking care of it through its re-processing and re-cycling to generate nuclear power.
The major fear, of course, is of the spread of radiation through accidents like the ones that occurred at the Three-Mile Island in the US in 1979, Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 and Fukushima Daiichi in Japan in 2011. Clearly, one has to proceed very carefully and slowly in generating and harnessing nuclear power. Indeed, what one needs is a mix in generation patterns to cater to diverse consumption demands with local variations. Solar panels, for example, have already begun providing household power.
The mix will have to be different for different countries and even regions, depending on the nature of power demand. This will require planning at the international, national and regional levels and also huge amounts of investment for which the developing countries would require assistance. The World Bank has increased climate-related spending and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has set climate change as a priority in its capacity-building efforts. These efforts are constrained, however, by funding, that is not commensurate with the scale of the challenge as well as by deeper challenges in the development aid model. Under former President Barrack Obama, the US had pledged three billion dollars to the Green Climate Fund — a global reserve fund created to, among other things, help developing countries invest in renewable and low-emission technologies. A sum of one billion dollars had already been given during his tenure in office. Trump has pledged no money to the fund.
The question of funds is particularly important in respect of the introduction of technologies to reduce emissions. An example is the Carbon Capture and Storage technology, which focusses on securing and storing carbon dioxide emissions before they are released into the atmosphere. Although it is still in its early stages, successful pilot projects offer hope of developing and implementing it on a large scale. Some countries are committed to implementing variations of it and both bilateral and multilateral cooperation is under way. One, however, has still to wait and watch as implementing it on a large scale can be expensive beside offering few obvious economic benefits.
Meeting the costs of implementing such technologies, indeed of all measures against climate change, will require political will. This takes us back to the second factor — identified at the beginning of this piece as impeding the fight against climate change — the lack of will on the part of governments and people to take effective preventive action. Governments are constrained by groups whose incomes and profits are going to be reduced by the implementation of climate change measures as well as the compulsion of having to decide among diverse demands on their resources. People are generally hostage to their existing ways of life. This applies especially to the elite, who decide on policies and measures in every society and who enjoy all the comforts — like air conditioning, which is highly polluting, and conveniences that present technology-powered civilisation has brought them.
The answer lies in developing and introducing non-polluting technologies relating to heating/cooling, transportation, cultivation, construction and all other human activities. The money and effort needed have to be forthcoming, the COVID-19 pandemic and the disruption caused by it notwithstanding. It is important to recall here that the Paris Agreement on climate change, signed on December 12, 2015, calls for holding the increase in global average temperature to well below two degree Celsius above the pre-industrial-revolution level and to try to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degree Celsius above it, stating that this would significantly reduce the risks and impact of climate change. The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at Incheon, South Korea, on October 7, 2018, makes the chilling statement that at the current rate, the global mean temperature is likely to rise to the 1.5-degree mark sometime between 2030 and 2052.
The world has already warmed one degree Celsius since the industrial revolution. Hence, it is really a question of another half degree. Further, the report clearly indicates that warming, even if limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, would not reduce the risks and impact of climate change. Sea levels will continue to rise beyond 2100, threatening coastal ecosystems and infrastructure. Flooding, drought and extreme weather events will wreak havoc on communities around the globe. Many species will continue to be driven toward extinction and marine ecosystems could face “irreversible loss.” The is long and written on the wall. Humankind will ignore it at its own peril.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and author)
