Some of my previous posts have been a bit gloomy, but I feel the need to inject some positive energy into the conversation we’ve been having about climate change.

Actually… scratch that.

I injecting “positive energy” just for the hell of it isn’t really my thing. However, I have come across some research recently that has actually given me some real hope and reassurance.

Previously, I focused a lot of my ire on policymakers’ reliance on unrealistic mitigation solutions mainly revolving around negative emissions technologies (NETs), most prominently BECCS. Now my stance on NETs hasn’t changed; which is, though they should be thoroughly researched these technologies are in no way reliable, as of yet, and cannot be considered as a plan A for addressing climate change. However, after reading books like Drawdown and Growing a Revolution I’ve come across techniques to sequester carbon that are not only feasible but are already viable and in many cases profitable.

This is a bit of a game changer. Immediate action still must be taken to phase out fossil fuels —and retroactive action would be a lot better though unfortunately that’s still impossible— but these techniques, which mainly focus around agriculture, can give us some much-needed breathing room. And unlike the other NETs I reviewed in earlier posts, we don’t have to wait around for new technology to be invented to implement these strategies. In fact, many farmers across the world are already doing so and all we need to do is just expedite that process.

So what are these magical techniques and strategies I’ve been teasing? Well, the five big ones are conservation agriculture, regenerative agriculture, tree intercropping, managed grazing, and silvopasture —and no silvopasture does not involve herding cows with silver, though what it does involve may be even more surprising.

According to estimates from Project Drawdown, together these five techniques could reduce our CO2 emissions by almost 100 gigatons by 2050. For reference, Project Drawdown does not predict maximum utilization of these techniques but instead integrates them into a global network of solutions to produce feasible yet aggressive figures without double counting (if you want to dig deeper into these & the rest of their proposed solutions I would highly suggest reading Drawdown and visiting their website)

So now let me give you the way too short summary of how these five techniques & strategies work.

To start, they’re all based on the simple concept of returning carbon to the soil. Traditional farming and grazing practices don’t only deplete soil carbon, but they actually initiate the release of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere accelerating the greenhouse effect warming our planet.

The first strategy I’ll review, conservation agriculture, involves the use of cover crops, diversified crop rotations, and no-till farming to return that carbon back to the soil and keep it there. When used in tandem these practices revitalize the natural symbiotic relationship between plants and soil microbes. This improves soil health & fertility, and healthier soils trap more carbon then degraded soils.

However, the real beauty of conservation agriculture is that increasing soil carbon content also allows farmers to reduce the amount of pesticides, herbicides, and petrochemical fertilizers they have to use to run their farms. This dramatically reduces the input costs to farming, resulting in higher profits, while at the same time reducing the amount of time they have to spend working in the field.

So it’s the proverbial win-win.

Farmers make more money and have more free time all while helping to save the planet. Oh and as a side benefit conservation agriculture reinvigorates unproductive and degraded land, which is the exact opposite of what traditional farming does. So conservation agriculture will not reduce our greenhouse gas emissions but will also help to combat world hunger by increasing the amount as well as the productivity of arable land.

So it begs the question why haven’t all farmers converted to conservation agriculture?

Well, so but surely they are, but unlike traditional agriculture which just involves calculating how many chemicals you need to put into the ground, conservation agricultural techniques only truly work when the three legs of the stool (cover cropping, crop rotation, and no-tillage) are used in tandem and many farmers just aren’t aware of that yet. This is where government programs, and most importantly local research farms can persuade & help teach farmers around the world how to implement these techniques most effectively. (I would also highly suggest reading David Montgomery’s growing a Revolution to see how leaders in the agricultural world are already trying to do this)

Regenerative agriculture most simply is just a supercharged version of conservation agriculture. It involves fine-tuning cover cropping, crop rotation, and no-tillage techniques to completely eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. This is not to be confused with organic farming which on his own doesn’t significantly sequestered carbon or improve soil health.

Regenerative agriculture requires careful study of the local ecology and soil biology to determine what crops should be used for cover cropping & commercial cropping, and which rotation & crop diversity strategies will best inhibit the growth of weeds and infestation of pests.

Together conservation agriculture can be seen as a bridge to regenerative agriculture. Young farmers would start off by implementing conservation agricultural techniques and by studying their successes and failures will eventually discover regenerative techniques that will further reduce their need for petrochemicals while increasing the amount of carbon their farmlands sequester.

Tree intercropping is a particular regenerative technique that involves the planting of well… trees, alongside commercial crops. I highlight this technique because of its unique ability to sequester carbon. Intercropping trees amongst shorter commercial crops can more than triple the amount of carbon a plot of land can sequester when compared to typical conservation agricultural techniques.

Trees and deep-rooted plants, in general, draw up nutrients and minerals up to shallower parts of the soil which benefits short-rooted traditional commercial crops. Trees also act as windbreaks reducing soil erosion while creating habitats for birds and other pollinators. Additionally, the planting of trees facilitates the growth of fuller and richer ecosystems, which contrary to popular belief, benefits farmer’s commercial crops in the same way it does for short plants and shrubs in the wild.

Now in this long conversation about agriculture and farming we have thus far ignored a major elephant in the room —or you could say a cow in the room. Raising livestock accounts for about 11% of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions annually. So what if we could use livestock to actually sequester carbon?

Well here’s where managed grazing comes into play.

Earlier I failed to elaborate on why conservation and regenerative agricultural techniques improve soil health. These practices reinvigorate soil biology by reanimating the natural process that results in the exchange of resources between plant roots and the soil microbes that live alongside them.

Microbes feed on animal waste, plant debris, and minerals trapped within the soil. Microbial digestion then returns nutrients back into the soil in a form plants can consume. Recently, however, scientists have discovered that this process also works in reverse; some of the sugars plants produce from photosynthesis aren’t consumed by the plant itself but rather excreted back into the soil.

Why pump good plant food back into the soil you ask? Well, these sugars called plant exudates supercharge microbial growth, and as we just mentioned soil microbes convert rocky minerals into a form plants can use to grow and thrive. Now, this is where managed grazing comes in.

When cows graze they cut and wound the foliage beneath them. To heal plants need additional nutrients from soil microbes so they excrete more exudates in the ground, this leads to an increase in microbial population and in turn more fertile soil that sequesters more carbon.

The key to managed grazing, however, is that you must rotate the Iivestock in a fashion that allows the plants they graze to recover, as opposed to pinning up cattle on a single plot of land as traditionally done. Managed grazing aims to recreate the conditions of natural grazing which maintained healthy ecosystems like the Great Plains for thousands of years.

Last but not least, the final technique I’ll be overviewing today is silvopasture. So what is it? Well, it’s the practice of planting trees on a pasture.

Now for those of you into old westerns and cowboy movies planting trees on a pasture seems pretty counterintuitive; however, silvopasture is an ancient practice and according to the researchers at project drawdown this technique sequesters 5 to 10 times more carbon then treeless pastures. Additionally, introducing ecological diversify to the pasture not only improves the health and well-being of livestock but the trees themselves can be cultivated to produce fruits and nuts giving farmers additional revenue streams.

Planting trees on the land also makes the pasture more resilient to erratic weather and extreme droughts, which in turn makes them more resilient to impending consequences of continued global warming.

The implementation of these techniques requires a skilled hand & a sharp mind, but our farmers are up to the task. However, like with most things bad policy and slow-footed lawmakers are making it harder than it should be for farmers to adopt these practices. Thoughtful and focused public policy could accelerate this transition rather than stymie it so I implore us, activists, to lobby our politicians to re-examine our agriculture policy at all levels of government. The benefits are far too great —and the costs much too low— for us not to act to implement these solutions.

Hello again, long time no see (no pun intended), as some of you may know even though I went to school in Pennsylvania (GO STATE!!!) I’m a long time Virginia resident. The Commonwealth, as our politicians like to call it, has gone through a lot of changes since I moved here in 1995 and it’s going to go through a lot more in the years to come.

Also because VA is a swing state that just happens to be a stone’s throw away from our nation’s capital the politics here can get pretty intense, especially when it comes to energy and the environment. So I thought it would be worthwhile to report on some of the happenings here in the “Old Dominion” (which is Virginia’s less pretentious nickname)

Right now the local airwaves are dominated by the fight over the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), so let’s start off by asking the most obvious question; what is it? Well as the name suggests it’s a pipeline, but to be more specific it is a proposed natural gas pipeline scheduled for construction, pending government approval, that spans across three states (WV, VA, and NC) and 600 miles of terrain.

The project is a joint venture between Dominion Resources, Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas, and Southern Company Gas. Dominion Resources, typically just referred to as Dominion here in the commonwealth, is the lead stakeholder for the ACP and the target of most of the ire from activists & environmentalists.

Before we dig deeper into that fight, however, let’s focus more on the metrics of the pipeline as well as the stated purpose for its construction. According to Dominion, the diameter of the pipeline will be 42 inches while it runs through VA & WV, and 36 inches through NC. More importantly, the carrying capacity of the pipeline will be 1.5 billion cubic feet of Utica & Marcellus shale natural gas per day. The gas will be drawn from wells in West Virginia and the pipeline will terminate in Robeson County, North Carolina, which lies just above the North Carolina-South Carolina border.

The stated purpose of the ACP according to the environmental impact statement (EIS) issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is “to deliver… natural gas to customers in Virginia and North Carolina.”

Now interstate pipelines are multi-billion dollar projects, so they aren’t welfare programs or economic stimulus packages. Pipelines are economic investments built for economic reasons.

Typically to be financially attractive a project like the ACP must fulfil one or both of the following conditions:

1) reduce day-to-day transmission costs when compared to other means of transportation or,

2) allow the parent company to access an otherwise inaccessible market of customers

Pipelines are not built to reduce your energy bills or create jobs, these are just peripheral benefits; and they are certainly not built to reduce carbon emissions. Natural gas pipelines only lead to reductions in carbon emissions if the power plants buying the gas previously generated their electricity using dirtier fossil fuels like coal.

Critically, however, if the proposed pipeline significantly increases the net-consumption of natural gas over the long-term then emissions will actually increase. Many proposed pipelines pass the first test but completely fail the second,

This is one of many reasons why activists & environmentalists are opposed to the construction of the ACP as well as any other interstate pipeline. When a pipeline is constructed the parent company assumes it will be able to service customers with the fuel running through that pipeline for as long as the pipeline is structurally sound. Thus interstate pipelines lock-in decades of future carbon emissions by making it harder to retire our ever-expanding carbon infrastructure down there line.

The pipeline’s investors also become incentivized to fight against environmental policies that may dampen natural gas consumption. So if some future politician or government agency wants to impose regulations that reduce the amount of fuel their constituents —and the company’s customers— use they will be lobbied relentlessly not to do so. The lack of regulation, in turn, encourages future fossil fuel investment.

It’s a vicious cycle that makes it extraordinarily difficult to decarbonize the grid, and a cycle many regulatory agencies don’t factor into their analysis when they permit these fossil fuel energy projects.

For example when the State Dept. issued its report on the environmental impacts of the Keystone XL it stated that pipeline was “unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands or the continued demand for heavy crude oil” and estimated the increase in emissions related to the projects were negligible (State projected a 0.02%-0.4% increase of U.S. annual GHG emissions as a result of Keystone’s construction)

This flies in the face of logic. How can you assume that the demand for heavy crude oil will be unaffected by the construction of the pipeline?

The world’s governments are marshalling their forces (though much too slowly) in a global effort to reduce fossil fuel consumption, and for fossil fuel companies that means reduced profits.  So they are going to lobby like hell to keep pumping that oil out of the ground. Consequently, the continued extraction of those Canadian oil sand deposits is not compatible with a 2 degrees C or less world and thus the demand for this heavy crude must be reduced to zero.

So how can you square all of this with the findings of the State Dept. report that assumes an extraction rate of 830,000 barrel of crude per day over the Keystone XL pipeline’s lifetime.

You can’t. State’s analysis ignores the political factors that maintain the “demand” for heavy crude (i.e. the prevention of environmental regulations reducing carbon emissions) and only analyzed the market effects of the pipeline’s construction.

This same dynamic has played itself out during the debate over the ACP.

The National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) has pointed out that the EIS conducted by FERC also doesn’t factor in the political & economic incentives the construction of ACP would create for maintaining the status quo thus inhibiting the expansion of new clean energy capacity. Dominion can claim that the construction of ACP will reduce carbon emissions because under normal market conditions the demand for power would otherwise be met by dirtier fuels.

However, as we previously alluded to, these are not normal market conditions and the increasing demand for power in the Mid-Atlantic can & must be met with alternative fuels instead.

Additionally, the NRDC questions whether there is any demand for the natural gas that would run through this pipeline in the first place. Independent analysis published by the IEEFA (Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis) in consultation with Kunkel Energy Research determined that according to demand projections made by the ACP stakeholders themselves 400 million-cubic-feet per day of the 1,500 million-cubic-foot daily capacity of the pipeline will no longer be necessary due to reduced energy consumption forecasts in VA & NC.

This is not an insignificant amount. So why are Dominion and its partners still pursuing the project? Well, when the company selling the fuel is also the company consuming and distributing the fuel there’s a third way to make money on a pipeline construction project: up charging customers.

Dominion is not only the lead stakeholder of the ACP but its affiliates —or “sister” corporations— are the utilities buying the fuel being transported by the ACP. So in the event that the demand for natural gas does indeed fall below the carrying capacity of the pipeline Dominion won’t lose any revenue.

How? Well, the Dominion affiliated utilities will just purchase the natural gas at a higher price and then those same utilities can just pass along those excess costs to its customers by increasing the end-use gas prices homeowners pay. In fact, expert analysis made available by the NRDC has calculated that this upcharging will cost Dominion customers an additional $1.6-2.3 billion in electricity bills.

So the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will increase electricity bills and lock in decades of carbon emissions. Doesn’t sound like a good deal for us Virginians, but what about jobs? Well yes according to Dominion 17,240 jobs would be created during construction and 2,200 operation jobs would remain permanent, but are these jobs worth the cost? Will they actually materialize at the size and scope Dominion is saying they will? And is there a better, cleaner alternative?

We will dive down this rabbit hole in the next series of the VA Slant, but for now, you should look at the ACP as more of a Faustian bargain and not the “win-win” these fossil fuels companies have been trying to sell it as.

When most people talk about the dangers of global warming and climate change they usually bring up sea level rise or extreme weather events as examples of what will happen if the problem remains unaddressed.

Some of the most savvy environmental activists even talk about the connection between climate change and geopolitical catastrophes such as the war in Syria.

However, most people neglect to talk about one of the most obvious consequences of global warming. Extreme heat.

It seems obvious but in an age where most Americans believe that access to central A/C is ubiquitous (even though it isn’t), heat waves & high heat events haven’t gotten the spotlight they deserve. Extreme heat is not only an increasing & ever-present danger to human health, but it will also jeopardize our food supply in the not so distant future

The now infamous European heat wave of 2003 led to the deaths of over 35,000 people across the continent (though some more recent calculations push that number to above 70,000 deaths). The French were hit particularly hard that summer with reports sighting 14,802 documented deaths attributable to the blistering heat and record-setting temperatures. 

However, as we continue to dump more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere these sorts of record-setting heat events will become more and more common.

Between 1960 and 1989 Paris experienced a heatwave approximately once a decade; between 2020 and 2049 that frequency is projected to increase to one heat ware every two years!

This is not good news if you don’t have central A/C; however, according to the most recent survey conducted by the EIA (Energy Information Administration) more than 16 million homes here in the US don’t have access to either central or even single room (window) A/C.

Many of these people are poor, disabled, or elderly making them extremely vulnerable to the health risks associated with extreme heat events.

Others living in cold weather cities like Chicago who might only just be able to afford a reliable A/C unit may decide to forgo the expense in order to save money. However, cases like the 1995 Chicago heat wave, which in just a five-day span hospitalized 3300 people and took the lives of more than 600, serves as a cautionary tale.

In fact, those living in more temperate climates may be at higher risk because they aren’t accustomed to dealing with consecutive 90+ degrees F days.

Now those of us who enjoy the luxury of reliable central heating & cooling aren’t out of the woods either. An increase in extreme heat events will also put immense pressure on farmers and thus our global food supply.

In the United States agricultural professionals typically aren’t too concerned about marginal fluctuations in temperature and in fact, up until recently, most experts didn’t expect global warming (as opposed to other climatic disturbances such as changing precipitation patterns) to significantly affect US crop yield in the near term.

However, a recent analysis headed by David Battisti, Tamaki Endowed Chair and Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Washington, upended this consensus.

Normally changes in temperature only significantly reduce crop yield at the extremes and in the US, and mid-latitudes in general, we sit well within the optimal temperature range for most commercially grown crops.

So for example, if Iowa experiences a hotter than average summer, which would constitute an average temperature increase of a couple of degrees or so, that would only push their average summer temperature from 71.6 degrees F to around 74 degrees F (approximately 23 degrees C). The optimal growing temperature range for wheat is between 53 to 77 degrees F (12 to 25 degrees C) so wheat farmers in the state would see very little change in their crop yields.

Now let’s imagine in the year 2050 global warming has increased Iowa’s average summer temperature by 1.5 degrees C or 2.7 degrees F. Temperatures for a hotter than average Iowan summer would then hover around 28 degrees C or 82 degrees F, and now we have a problem.

Outside of the optimal temperature range wheat yields reduce dramatically as the graph above illustrates; during this hotter than average summer, the same farmer in 2050 will experience a yield reduction of more than 25% percent.

If you push that temperature increase to 1.8 degrees F or just 1 degrees C, that farmer’s wheat crop would be all but lost. Such volatility would be devastating to the agricultural sector.

Combine that with perennial drought, soil degradation, and continued population growth and you have the makings of global food shortage,

This is why scientist say that global warming above 2 degrees C is so dangerous.

Society often feels so robust to change but the fact is that our way of life rests on an extremely fragile foundation. Rising temperatures all on their own provide enough of a jolt to the system to cause major disturbances and crises. So when you’re talking to your friends and family about the danger of climate change, don’t forget the heat.

Global warming is caused by an energy imbalance between the solar radiation (i.e. sunlight energy) that hits the Earth and the heat (thermal energy) the Earth radiates back into space. The laws of physics dictate that the thermal energy emitted from the Earth and solar energy that strikes the Earth must be in equilibrium i.e. the energy the Earth receives has to equal the energy the Earth radiates.

Greenhouse gases emitted by humans, however, trap some of the thermal energy the Earth would normally emit into space causing an imbalance. In order to return to equilibrium, the planet must emit additional thermal energy thus raising the Earth’s temperature. How do these greenhouse gases trap heat?

By absorbing the infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface (infrared radiation is analogous to heat).

A molecule’s chemical composition determines how it will interact with different wavelengths of light (i.e. types of radiation); so greenhouse gases, like methane & carbon dioxide, are simply molecules in the atmosphere that allow visible light emitted from the Sun to pass through but prevent infrared light radiating from the Earth’s surface to escape into outer space.

We understand the physics behind this process very well, in fact back in the 19th century the renowned Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius calculated that a doubling of CO2 would cause a 4 degrees C rise in average global temperatures (above pre-industrial levels); today in 2017, the world’s best scientists calculate that a doubling of CO2 will cause a 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C rise in temperatures. (that’s impressive accuracy for a 100+ year old calculation!) So the science behind the greenhouse effect is well established.

We also know that fluctuations in the Earth’s temperature caused by the greenhouse effect can have a profound effect on the planet’s many ecosystems. This is climate change. By analyzing ice cores, tree rings, and other geological data climate scientists can determine how the Earth’s climate changes with corresponding increases in CO2 concentration. For example, the last time CO2 concentrations were above 400 ppm like they are today, global average temperatures were 3-4 degrees C higher than during the pre-industrial era and sea levels ranged between five to 40 meters higher than they are today. (Scripps Institute of Oceanography)

The terms climate change & global warming are often used interchangeably and I believe this leads to confusion and, in some cases, skepticism. When critics point to uncertainty in climate models as proof that global warming isn’t occurring they are fundamentally misunderstanding the science.

As we previously described, the increased greenhouse effect caused by human activity mandates global warming and this fact is grounded in centuries-old science. The connection between changes in CO2 concentration and changes in the climate is also a well-established fact, being bolstered by the geological evidence and historical data. The uncertainty in our climate models stems from our lack of data on climate sensitivity i.e. we’re not sure how sensitive today’s climate is to increases in CO2 and greenhouse gas concentrations caused by human activity. Changes in the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere typically have taken place over timespans of many millennia. However, humans have pumped billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere in a span of time shorter than two centuries; carbon which had been locked away safely underground for well over 200 million years.

We just simply haven’t seen CO2 concentrations increase this rapidly before. That means we don’t have any historical examples that can tell us how quickly we should expect the climate system to respond to these changes. This is why our climate model projections contain so much uncertainty in regards to future risks. Will the effects of anthropogenic global warming fully manifest themselves over many centuries or much sooner than that? Will the changes occur gradually or will we experience abrupt shifts in the climate system? Is 2 degrees C of warming unmanageable or can we deal with a 3 degrees C increase? Or will disastrous consequences kick in well before we reach 2 degrees C of warming as we cross unforeseen climate tipping points?  

Additionally, the climate system is infamously complex and we simply don’t have the computing power necessary to analyze the thousands of possible future scenarios (unless we crack quantum computing of course). Analytical modelers try to compensate for our lack of computing power by using a myriad of mathematical and statistical shortcuts to simplify the data, but these techniques can only get us so far.

However, all that being said, when our models are run in reverse they do accurately describe the historical changes in the climate we have already observed, demonstrating that the methodology behind our modeling is essentially correct. So it would be foolish to totally dismiss the predictions they make for our future. Also given the potentially catastrophic consequences of inaction and the limited time we have to act, we simply can’t wait a decade or two for models with near perfect precision. As I laid out in my previous post every ton of carbon we emit today is a ton carbon we can’t emit tomorrow, so the longer we wait the harder the problem is to solve until we eventually hit the point of no return.

Hopefully, you found this refresher to be useful. The next article in this series will examine how global warming has affected the climate at the poles, as well as expound upon the potential consequences of these changes.

Addressing climate change will require trillions of dollars in investment, and as I laid out in my previous posts we don’t have much time to spare given our current rate of emissions. Creating the political momentum necessary to facilitate a complete restructuring of the economy, from a globalized system based on cheap fossil fuels into a more regionalized model based on sustainable & renewable resources, will be a long, hard-fought, and arduous process. So one might ask… is it worth it? Will it really be that bad if we maintain the status quo, and keep burning fossil fuels? Now, I assume most people reading this post already agree that we obviously won’t be better off just letting climate change go unchecked, but there’s still value in asking the question. Knowing the full breadth of the problem will, like it did for me, inspire you to take more action in your daily lives and your local communities.

But that begs the question, how does the average person go about learning “the full breadth of the problem”; especially when the subject in question is so vast, complicated, and complex. When you’re trying to understand an issue that many academics have labeled “the problem from hell” it’s easy to get lost in the mishmash of click-bait news stories, empty political rhetoric, and boring technical reports.

So I have decided to do that research for you, and have compiled a simple but holistic guide to understanding the consequences of climate change. I based my finding almost exclusively on scientific journals, peer reviewed reports, academic lectures, and government sources, avoiding references to newspapers and other online periodicals whenever possible. ― Now to be clear, I’m not saying that institutions like the Guardian, the New York Times, and the Washington Post aren’t award winning organizations with stellar reputations, but it’s very easy for even the most well-intentioned person to misread or misinterpret a technical report. In order to avoid that possibility, along with any other biases, I always try to reference my statements to the scientists and academic institutions that performed the research firsthand

So how is climate change going to impact us here in the US and in countries around the world? Well, to be frank, we’re not quite sure. Even though the science on global warming is irrefutable, and its link to climate change is equally undeniable, we still don’t have a full picture of how exactly those changes will alter the climate system and affect our daily lives. Scientists and researchers around the world are putting in yeoman’s work in order to pin down the precise answer to this very question.

However, this doesn’t mean that there will be no effects, we are already experiencing changes to our climate as a result of global warming and those changes will become more dramatic as time passes. When I talk about this subject with my friends and family I often say that the scientific community isn’t debating whether there will be consequences for heating up the planet, but rather how dire will those consequences be. What are the timescales? How quickly can we adapt? Will we cross any “tipping points” that lead to irreversible, sudden, and/or catastrophic changes to planet’s climate system? These are the types of questions that our academic and political leaders are agonizing over.

Additionally, the uncertainty associated with lack of clarity in and of itself is problematic. All industry be it finance, retail, agriculture, tourism, etc. loathe uncertainty and aversion to climate-related risks directly impacts our economy, often in a negative way. For example, imagine that you are the CEO of a publically traded home insurance agency with assets in Miami, FL that are under threat from rising sea levels. It wouldn’t matter much to you that scientists were uncertain whether changes in the climate will render those properties uninsurable in 50, 75, or 100 years. What the scientists & researchers are certain of is that at some point in the not-so-distant future those properties will be destroyed. The potential liabilities associated with the risk of sea level rise are so great that you have to start planning for those future eventualities today, in the present, and eventually you are going to have to stop insuring properties in Miami altogether (in fact insurers are already starting to get worried about this very possibility).

Now extrapolate this analogy to the home insurance industry as a whole, and it quickly becomes apparent that aversion to the risks of sea level rise will have large-scale negative impacts on the local, state, and even national economy. This behavior of risk aversion can be modeled across any industry affected by climate change, and when combined with other knowable factors such as temperature increase and CO2 concentration we can generate detailed analyses of the potential consequences of anthropogenic global warming. (by “knowable” factor, I mean independent or pseudo-independent variables that we already know the value of, can reasonably determine, or set as parameters)

Modelers can also compare our past estimates to present day events & historical trends to check the accuracy of their methods and procedures, and ultimately generate a general range of expectations for what the future holds for us.

So what predictions have the academics made so far? Well, the succeeding posts in this series will examine that very question. Each piece will lay out the current state of affairs, what changes we expect to see in the near future, and examine the long-term risks of inaction and business as usual economics. I have identified eight differents area of inquiry I feel are most relevant to understanding the gravity of our current situation.

Those are as follows: climate change at the poles; climate change and extreme weather; global warming and the oceans; climate change and health; climate change and the economy; climate change, food production, & population growth; climate change, war, & human suffering; and lastly feedback loops & climate tipping points. This is by no means a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of climate change, but it not designed to be one.

As I alluded to earlier, you should look at this series as a useful guide to refer back to as we all try to become better stewards of the environment. In order to halt the onset of climate change, all peoples from across the world must work together, in ways past generation would have deemed impossible. Today’s society lacks the sense of urgency necessary to spur on this revolutionary change; however, I believe if enough people gain a full understanding of what’s at stake the wheels of change will start to set in. Humans are a race gifted with unbounded potential, but it will be for not if we don’t fight to protect the only planet we can call home. Because, you know, we can just hop ship and head over to Mars (at least not yet anyway).

Welcome back! This week I wanted to change things up a bit. Since creating Climate Politique I have received numerous questions from you all both face to face and on Quora, and I wanted to share some of my responses. The questions included requests for comment on current events and recent environmental policy changes (and some surprising decisions not to change environmental policy); others asked me to react to some climate-related articles circulating through the news cycle; and a few folks that came across as climate skeptics (though who asked me questions in good faith) wanted me to explain some of the basic concepts underlying climate policy and climate science. I’ve sifted through your questions & my responses, and posted below the ones I felt were most relevant, topical, or just happened to intrigue me (or hit one of my pet-peeves). So without further ado let’s get started, I hope you enjoy.

What impact will the executive order to cancel the clean power plan have on the progress made on climate change?

Well if the order indeed canceled the Clean Power Plan (CPP) then it would essentially eliminate any chances we had of meeting our emissions targets we pledged to achieve during the Paris climate talks; however, the EO doesn’t cancel the CPP, or at least not yet. Fortunately for us, Trump can’t just change all climate policy with a stroke of a pen. Even though the President just wants us to “give [him] clean beautiful and healthy air – not climate change (global warming) bull***t!”, all the radical policy changes Trump wants to make are almost all subject to judicial review. Without getting into too much jargon, legally speaking the President has an obligation to reduce GHG emissions (according to rules written by the EPA during the Obama administration) so he has to prove in court that either climate change isn’t dangerous (which is a ridiculous legal argument that will be thrown out by a judge just like his first immigration ban) or argue that the changes he wants to make will accomplish similar goals in terms of emissions reduction.

He can also argue that the CPP puts too much of a burden on coal companies but he would still have to come up with a reasonable alternative. Now, there are still some climate policies he can change without going through a judicial review but the CPP just doesn’t happen to be one of them. This EO, however, sends a damaging and demoralizing message to the rest of the world and can halt the substantial progress the international community has made toward finally addressing climate change in a more serious way. GHG emissions need to be radically reduced in order to prevent the onset of dangerous climate change. Keep in mind that we still would have been woefully behind schedule for avoiding a 2 degrees C+ future even if the CPP was fully implemented.

Why would Exxon Mobile ask the White House to honor the Paris agreement on climate change?

Let me make a quick aside. During the Obama administration, I had a chance to sit down with stakeholders discussing the approach that Commonwealth of Virginia would take to comply with the Clean Power Plan. The stakeholders included environmental groups like the NRDC (Natural Resource Defense Council) as well as the major public utilities, most notably Dominion Power, who are quite powerful in my state. However, this meeting took place after the courts stayed the former President’s CPP rule. The stakeholders had decided to work on the compliance plan anyway because they had already made significant progress in their previous discussions & they anticipated that in the end, some action would be coming regardless. I give that example because it shows that even though these oil & gas companies are primarily responsible for the warming we are experiencing today they still understand that climate change is a major issue that the international community has pledged to address it.

So even though they might not like these new regulations they rather have them stay in place as opposed to continuously getting scrapped and replaced. Continuity in energy policy is more important to them than fighting to re-establish the status quo. Also companies like ExxonMobil, or Dominion Power here in Virginia, are major players in the natural gas market but are not heavily invested in coal so in the short term CO2 emission reduction regulations push electricity demand away from coal to their natural gas assets (though the lowering cost of natural gas has already been accelerating the demise of the coal industry).

Which term is more accurate: “global warming” or “climate change”?

Climate change is the more “accurate” or correct term. Yes, average global temperatures are rising due to human activity, but the effects of global warming differ from region to region depending on the local geology and geography. Because of this, some regions of the planet will actually see a fall in average temperature, not a rise. For example, there is a phenomenon called the “cold blob” in the North Atlantic off the coast of Britain where average ocean temperatures are actually falling while the temperatures in the mid-Atlantic are warming dramatically. This effect is being caused by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet; the cold fresh melt is flowing into the nearby ocean and trumping the heating that has resulted from the emission of excess greenhouse gases by humans.

This phenomenon also has the potential to break down the jet stream that brings warm water from the tropics to Europe and without this jet stream, Britain and other Western European countries would be as cold Newfoundland and the northern regions of Canada along the same latitude. So even though these changes are all brought about by rising temperatures in the Arctic, which are responsible for the ice melt, the effects they manifest actually drive down average temperatures in the surrounding regions. So to avoid confusion experts in the field adopted the phrase “climate change,” which can be used to describe both warming and cooling effects.

In international relations, why does the USA have a responsibility to combat climate change?

Because the US, and the West in general, have contributed the most to climate change. The U.S. is second, only to China, in annual CO2 emissions and that has only been the case since 2005. In fact, over the last 150 years, the U.S has been responsible for nearly one-third of the total amount of CO2 emitted by humans, more than tripling China’s share. So you can think of our current situation like this, the U.S. and other developed countries burnt fossil fuels with reckless abandon since the mid-1800s in order to build up their economies and increase the standard of living of their citizens. Meanwhile, countries in the developing world have only become serious emitters after 1960 and now we, the rich countries, are telling them to peak their annual emissions which will subsequently slow down, or potentially stall their economic growth. As a result, many of their citizens will be stranded in poverty until renewable energy sources become cheap and accessible to them. It only seems fair that the country that has emitted the most CO2 and has become the wealthiest nation on the planet by doing so should be held most responsible for combating climate change, and that country just happens to be the U.S.

What one book will convice me that global warming is real?

Pretext: Yes, I know that in my very first post I said I’d let Bill Nye handle questions like these, but a piece on Vox.com by David Roberts presented a unique & insightful critique on the way conventional journalism has responded to extremism in American politics, and his argument seemed to be particularly applicable to the climate change issue & “debate” as well. So I applied his theory when crafting my answer to this question and as it turns out this response has been my most popular posting during my short time on Quora so I thought I’d share it here as well. (Disclaimer: the person who submitted this question upvoted my response but also wanted to let people know that he doesn’t consider himself a denialist)

I can’t really say. If you not a scientist with educated hypothesis that can prove the contrary is true (that climate change isn’t actually happening or that it’s not anthropogenic) or are deeply knowledgeable about the peer review process and can prove that it has failed to validate the science in this instance, then there isn’t much convincing to be done. I don’t say that because the scientific literature isn’t convincing but because the exact opposite is true. There is no credible data out there that refutes the science of climate change nor is there an active “debate” in the field of climate science over whether global warming can be attributed to human activity, all of that has already been settled. So it stands to reason that your disbelief stems from the fact that you won’t actually acknowledge the scientific consensus on climate change as it is now common knowledge that has been widely reported by the media (assuming you’re a climate skeptic of course).

Now there are many people out there who don’t accept the idea that science as a field can be trusted as an independent arbiter of facts, even though many of those same people trust their family doctor and feel safe driving across bridges designed by engineers. If you are in fact one of those people, then throwing a bunch of facts at you won’t do me much good. But whether or not you fall into that camp I think it would be useful to explain something about the nature of scientific inquiry to whoever may be reading this response (but first sorry for possibly coming off as a bit pretentious). Adherence to the scientific method, i.e. the process of peer review and the emphasis on the repeatability of experimental results, is a fundamental tenant of every field of science be it medicine, architecture, astrophysics, or climate science. So if 97% of all the peer-reviewed studies in a single field all validate a single conclusion or set of conclusions, like it does for the causal link between human activity & rising average global temperatures, then that consensus conclusion for all intensive purposes has become a rock solid facts that can’t be summarily dismissed. This is especially true when the consensus around said conclusion has been growing steadily decade, after decade, after decade. The scientific consensus around climate change is as strong as the scientific consensus around the fact that smoking cigarettes cause cancer.

Building on that analogy, there was a time when many people were convinced that cigarettes didn’t cause cancer, or at least thought they themselves wouldn’t get cancer if they smoked. Many of those people saw the science and rejected it, believing that if the tobacco companies themselves didn’t buy into the consensus then why should they. Nowadays it would be silly to even question whether cigarettes caused cancer; however, for those who ignored the initial warnings and smoked cigarettes anyway, it was too late. The tobacco they had been smoking regularly now for years, or even decades, had already done its damage, and the result was that many ended up dying early deaths because of their ignorance. The “debate” on climate change is very similar; the consensus is already rock solid, but by the time society has come to a point where it would be utterly ridiculous to even suggest that burning fossil fuels doesn’t cause climate change the damage would have already been done. So you can either accept the science today and fight for change, or look back at this point in time a few decades from now and ask why the hell didn’t we listen.

If you do, however, want to go deep into the science I would suggest reading the 2014 National Climate Assessment; also I would check out this video on why a former climate skeptic in the scientific community changed his mind.

And that will do it. Hopefully, you found this exercise to be helpful, and thank you to everyone who sought out my expertise to answer their questions, I greatly appreciate it. Also, I apologize to the people I haven’t yet responded to, everyone has had good questions but I just haven’t found the time reply to all of them. Hopefully, someday I can make a career out of this writing business so I’ll have more time available to reply to everyone. However, I’m doing my best with the spare time I have now so please continue to send me more questions, especially on Quora. Watch out for my next post where I’ll be outlining some of the immediate consequences of climate change that will and have already resulted from our delayed response to this crisis.

 

Well as I alluded to in part 1 of What Policymakers Aren’t Telling You About the State of Climate Change, geo-engineering, combined with the concept of negative emissions, has become a deus ex machina for climate policymakers (as well as carbon taxes but we’ll get into that in another post). Now there are many negative emissions technologies (NETs) for policymakers to choose from including direct carbon capture (DAC), enhanced weathering (EW), and afforestation & reforestation (AR), but here we will be focusing on bio-energy with carbon capture and storage or BECCS as it seems to be the only NET that is remotely feasible when scaled globally. Solar radiation management is another popular form of geo-engineering, however, SRM only affects albedo, a measure of how much sunlight is reflected back into space, and not the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere, so it isn’t a permanent or ideal solution.

As the threat of climate change has become more salient, it appears that our policymakers have started to take the view that if the findings from climate scientists & economists are not consistent with the current economic paradigm, why not just adjust the findings so they are consistent with the current economic paradigm by extending the time horizon for climate change mitigation policies.

Now we aren’t talking about cooking the books or anything nefarious, but if we assume that in the upcoming decades NETs can be implemented at a global scale, then in theory we can “overdraft” our carbon budget in the near term and pay back on our loan to the climate in the future so by the end of the century warming stabilizes at 2 degrees C. From a scientific and economic standpoint this is perfectly reasonable (if we don’t cross any climate tipping points in the meantime), there are many instances where it is not only acceptable but proper to incorporate “ future advances in technology” into your analysis; Andrew Kennedy’s “Wait Equation” for traveling through space is a good example.

Policymakers can factor these negative emissions/geo-engineering strategies into their integrated assessment models (IAMs) and develop mitigation plans based on this underlying assumption that these NETs are in fact possible and will be implemented. Assuming BECCS is deployed from 2020 onwards and significantly ramps up in the 2040s & 50s, IPCC scenarios representing the lowest cost cases for emissions reduction typically require 20 Gt of CO2 to be sucked out of the atmosphere yearly by 2070; for context present-day emissions are about double that or 40 Gt of CO2 emitted annually.

So is it reasonable to assume that these negative emissions technologies are not only cost-effective but actually are plausible purely from an engineering standpoint, given the time & resource restraints? No. At least that’s the point of view of the engineer writing this article that you are reading right now. This is also the point of view taken by Kevin Anderson the mechanical engineer whose research underpinned most of the arguments I made in my previous post; additionally, here is a report written by a group of 15 independent researchers that stress that reliance on NETs as the predominate mitigation strategy for addressing climate change could become “a dangerous distraction.”

So what is BECCS? Well for a full explanation of how BECCS work’s I would suggest reading this article, but here’s the short version. To start off, society would have to plant approximately 300 to 900 mega-hectares of biomass (i.e. trees and bushes) across the globe; that’s equivalent to planting a forest 1-3 times the size of the Indian subcontinent! Then all those trees would have to be cut down and shipped around the world where the existing carbon infrastructure would use this new biomass as fuel, replacing coal, oil, and natural gas wherever possible (this all has to be done while emitting ZERO-net emissions by the way)

Secondarily, all the CO2 emissions produced by burning this biomass has to be captured, if not this entire process would be carbon neutral not carbon negative. Then all the captured carbon must be stored away (presumably underground) in a fashion that would guarantee that the CO2 would never ever leak back into the atmosphere, or at least not for the next couple of millennia or so.

Lastly, this entire process, from planting the trees to capturing and storing the CO2, would have to be repeated EVERY year, until total annual global emissions from all other sources are net-zero. And this scenario assumes that all of this infrastructure will be up and operational by the middle of the century. There may not even be enough land out there to plant all the trees in the first place, given the fact that we still need enough farmland to feed the 7 billion people living on this planet.

To complicate matters even further if you decided to plant some of these trees in a snowy place like Siberia you could actually end up accelerating the warming of the planet. Snow reflects sunlight back into space because it’s white but tall dark coniferous trees absorb sunlight transforming that energy into heat (in essence you’re lowering the planet’s albedo). And there is a whole host of other problems ranging from putting stress on the global water supply (because you know, trees need water too) to actually finding enough suitable underground reservoirs to store the billions of tonnes of CO2 that will be captured in the BECCS process.

Now this wouldn’t be that big of an issue if just one or a few scenarios required the use of BECCS in order to halt climate change, but seemingly every emission reduction scenario calculated by these IAMs requires some form of global biomass generation and subsequent carbon capture & sequestration (107 out 113); and the ones that don’t assume that global emissions for GHGs peak in…. 2010, so unless there is a time-machine out there that I don’t know about this is utterly ridiculous. Our reliance on BECCS as the overarching climate mitigation strategy has stemmed from our governments’ insistence that the current economic paradigm must be protected, regardless of the cost. This is also what policymakers aren’t telling you about the current state of climate change.

The underpinnings of all our commitments and all our pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions assume, incorrectly, that these geo-engineering technologies are feasible and economical to implement. As a society, we have allowed our elected leaders to promote this friction and that must stop. Is there some role for NETs in our global mitigation strategy? Yes; many sources of GHG emissions will be very difficult, if not impossible to decarbonize, agricultural-based emissions come to mind as a prime example. So our lawmakers need to appropriate the money necessary to seriously analyze the efficacy of these technologies; however, we cannot use the concept of negative emissions as an excuse to delay action.

There are going to be some tough trade-offs that we, as a society are going to have to grapple with; politicians are going to have to explain to their constituents that if we are really going to be serious about addressing climate change we will all personally have to make some sacrifices. That is what happens when you procrastinate and refuse to tackle any issue of this much importance for multiple decades. But deluding ourselves with this fiction that biomass and carbon capture & storage can cure all of our ills is not only irresponsible it will ultimately lead to our ruin. Right now BECCS is our plan A and there is no plan B. That is absolutely unacceptable.

Are you ready for Round 2? Well before I reveal what policy makers aren’t telling you, let me first reiterate what they are telling you. Here’s a list of quotes that summarize the opinions of the chattering class as it pertains to climate change.

“We should reframe our response to climate change as an imperative for growth rather than merely being a way of being green or meeting environmental commitments.” – William Hague, Former British MP & Leader of the House of Commons

“Warming should not exceed 2 °C… [however], it is possible to stick to this limit by introducing measures to cut emissions that only cause an annual 0.06 percentage point cut in … economic growth” – The Financial Times, 2014

“Houston has proven that it can maintain its title as the energy capital of the world while at the same time pursuing green policies… but we must continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions…This is not only good for the health of our residents… but we know it also improves our economic performance and growth.” – Annise Parker, Former Mayor of Houston

“The amount of… ‘churn’ or job destruction and job creation linked to climate mitigation is expected to [be] about 0.5% of total employment – quite small compared with the overall ‘churn’ that normally occurs in a market economy.” – The New Climate Economy Report 2014

“We now know that climate action does not require economic sacrifice… [it] is up to all of us to make smart policy choices that will help combat climate change.” – Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Former Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of the World Bank

All of these statements paint a similar picture. While the fight against climate change won’t be easy, committing ourselves to finding a solution will save the planet for future generations while not significantly affecting the global economy or our current standard of living. In fact, this is a view that I (until recently) championed myself, and for good reason.

A recent report conducted by Environmental Entrepreneurs estimated that there were 3 million clean energy and transportation jobs in the U.S. in 2016. Additionally, since 2006 the U.S. has installed nearly 36 GW of solar capacity (combining residential & utility installation). By the way, just as a point of reference, there was essentially no installed solar capacity in the U.S. before 2006. In fact, the compounded annual growth rate (CAGR; a measurement of annual growth that can be used to compare investments across different industries) for American made photovoltaics (60%) nearly doubled the CAGR of smartphones made worldwide. Investments in wind & solar outpace investments in coal & natural gas by approximately 2 to 1. And as of 2013 global electricity generation from renewables matched that of natural gas according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 2016 report tracking clean energy progress.

So the growth of the clean energy sector has been more than encouraging, but as I illustrated in my last post what matters most isn’t the growth of renewables (though the expedited growth of clean energy capacity is absolutely vital) it’s the capping of CO2 emissions. It’s great that renewables account for nearly 25% of electricity generation globally, but over 75% of global emissions originate from sectors other than electricity generation. That includes transportation, industrial processes, deforestation, agriculture, and many more.

All energy produced from all sectors must emit net-zero greenhouse gas emissions before we blow our carbon budget. That is what it means to “solve” the civilization-threatening problem of climate change. So let me detail for you, as promised, the full-scale view of the climate crisis, a view that our policymakers & national media outlets are neglecting to make clear to the public.

In 2015 Kevin Anderson, the Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, performed a straightforward analysis, using simple algebra, to calculate the rate at which we, humanity, have to reduce CO2 emissions in order to avoid dangerous climate change Failure to do so, by the way, will result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people (we always have to keep that fact in mind). Now sit tight, because Prof. Anderson’s analysis paints a very bleak picture for progress. However, I have to provide some context first. The Paris climate talks during late 2015 established this aim for the international community:

[Hold] the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and… pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C… [in recognition] that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change

So to start off, Anderson took the IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) carbon budgets for a 1.5 & 2 °C global temperature increase and calculated how many tonnes of carbon emissions we have left to “spend” or emit into the atmosphere. For, example the carbon budget for an outside (33%) chance of avoiding a 2 °C rise in average global temperature is 1500 billion tonnes (1500 Gt) of CO2 emitted between the years 2011 & 2100. Simply by updating this budget to account for the CO2 that has already been emitted or “spent” since 2011, (which was 140 GT at the time his report was written in 2015) you’ll find that society has 1340 Gt of CO2 left to emit or “spend,” as of 2015, before it becomes essentially impossible to halt a 2 °C temperature increase.

Next Anderson incorporated the current growth projections for the three sources primarily responsible for CO2 emissions, energy consumption, deforestation, and (oddly enough) cement production, into his budget analysis; the professor then uses this information to calculate (in tonnes of CO2 per annum or p.a.) how rapidly society, as a whole, has to decarbonize in order to avoid dangerous climate change. (Note: reductions per annum are annual reductions based on the previous year’s total i.e. the total percentage reduced each year; so the total amount reduced annually gets smaller over time)

For a full overview on how Anderson incorporates these projections and performs his analysis, I would encourage you to read his report published in Nature Geoscience, Duality in climate science, or watch one of the many lectures he has posted regarding this subject on YouTube. But to be brief, Anderson essentially weds his analysis to another aim of the Paris Agreement which mandates that the nations signing on to the accord promise to address the long-term consequences of increasing greenhouse gas emissions “on the basis of equity, and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.” In layman’s terms, this means that developing countries, struggling to feed their people and grow economically, will be more reliant on fossil fuels, as well as other carbon-intensive technologies, in the short term. Thus they must be allowed to peak their CO2 emissions at a later date and decarbonize at a slower pace; as opposed to rich & developed countries, like the US, who should be asked to do more and peak their emissions as soon as possible.

So, what did Prof. Anderson find out? How quickly do we have to reduce CO2 emissions? Well first let’s start with the good news.

As luck would have it, China dominates the CO2 emissions produced by developing countries so effectively when China peaks its emissions we can reasonably assume the entirety of the developing world has peaked its emissions, in aggregate (and yes that assumption takes into account the emissions from India, which surprised me).

Anderson postulates that CO2 emissions from the developing world must peak by 2025, so a Chinese emissions peak by 2025 will essentially accomplish this. Well as it turns out, a 2025 emissions peak is not as unreasonable as it sounds. China has already vowed to peak their emissions by around 2030 and an independent report commissioned by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment shows that an emissions peak in 2025 is not only feasible but likely. This is truly fantastic. However, here comes the bad news.

Without relying on any geo-engineering hocus pocus, in order to stay within the carbon budget for an outside chance of avoiding a 2 °C global temperature rise the developing nations must then reduce their net emissions each year thereafter and ultimately reach a reduction rate of 10% p.a. by 2035, fully decarbonizing by 2050. There are currently no plans in the works to reach emission reduction rates even approaching this and in fact, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change argues that emission reduction rates of 3% p.a. or more are likely not consistent with economic growth.

For reference, the impressive ramp up of nuclear power by the French during the 1970s only reduced carbon emissions by around 1% p.a., according to the Stern Review. For comparison, Russia’s emissions rate dropped by approximately 5.4% p.a. between 1989 & 1998 in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union (which was obviously not a time of economic prosperity).

Now, there have been new studies published since the commission of the Stern Review in 2006 that show evidence of a decoupling of economic growth from carbon dioxide emissions. Most prominently, an International Energy Agency (IEA) report found that global CO2 emissions from energy-related activities remained constant between 2013 & 2016 while global GDP grew by more 3%. However, the IEA readily admits that if the economy grew faster emissions would invariably have risen (remember society was still recovering from impacts of the Great Recession).

Additionally, this reported “decoupling” ignores the fact that our economy is still heavily reliant on fossil fuels and deep decarbonization remains an immense challenge. So reducing emissions at rates approaching 5-10% p.a. poses real risks of economic stagnation (at least until clean energy and carbon-neutral technologies become cheap and easily accessible).

The picture doesn’t get any rosier when you move on to address the developed nations; in fact, the implications are even more dire. Assuming again that the poorer countries peak their CO2 emissions in 2025, in order to stay within our carbon budget for an outside chance at 2 °C, Anderson calculated that the developed nations have to completely decarbonize by 2035.

Yes not 2100, or even 2050, the U.S. economy, as well as the economies of France, Germany, and all the other wealthy nations, must operate on net-zero emissions in less than two decades. In order to achieve such a feat the developed countries, according to Anderson’s analysis, must reduce their emissions at a rate of 10% p.a., starting…. NOW! TODAY! Or preferably back in December 2015, when Anderson’s report first was released.

I should also point out that since we took the last year or so dilly-dallying that reduction rate has likely increased to more than 12% p.a. And, just as for the developing nations, an emission reduction strategy this aggressive is most likely not consistent with sustained economic growth. Cuts this deep and this sudden outpace our capacity to reduce emissions simply by shifting energy supply from fossil fuels to renewables, even without considering the political constraints. 

So in the short-term sharp reductions in energy demand, and thus overall consumption, are required (i.e. less driving, less electricity use, less meat consumption, etc). Efforts to sequestration carbon will alleviate some of these burdens, but carbon sequestration is by no means a panacea.

Now the technological progress the green energy sector has made is truly astounding and believe it or not, the innovative solutions social entrepreneurs are concocting genuinely give me hope for the future. (pick up a copy of Project Drawdown if you want some reality-based optimism) All that being said, deep and rapid decarbonization simply is not a recipe for booming financial markets.

So given all of that, how can it be that policymakers (and even many scientists) are out there as we speak making statements applauding the potential for green growth and the great economic “opportunity” that the climate crisis has handed us.  Are they unaware of these finding? Do they dispute this analysis or the concept of carbon budgets? Are they purposely trying to deceive the public?

Well, I believe the answers to those questions, especially the last two, are no. So what’s actually going on? Well, to be frank, politics are to blame (and capitalism to an extent). The modern capitalist system has been built on the tenant that the economy of the future must be larger than the economy of the past for society to thrive & prosper; abiding by this tenant, most politicians have prioritized economic growth above almost all other things. This “growth imperative” as it’s called may or may not be real or necessary, but in a world where it is taken as economic law, any legislation that negatively affects economic growth is DOA, dead on arrival.

So instead of building climate policy upon the unforgiving reality of carbon budgets our lawmakers, and the academics that work alongside them, frame all policy through this current economic paradigm that society has deemed infallible. This paradigm doesn’t only dictate how legislation is written, but which projects get federally funded, what types of research are awarded government grants, and whose opinions get taken seriously by are our elected leaders. This overwhelming political pressure has lead to denialism, procrastination, and irresponsible policy-making by our world’s governments.

By the way, speaking of irresponsible policy-making, exactly how are lawmakers dealing with the reality that we are quickly running out of time to halt the onset of dangerous climate change. Well luckily for them (and unluckily for the future of human civilization) geo-engineering, and the concept of “negative emissions” more generally, has squared that circle. Now they say that the perfect length for a blog post is 1600 words and this one is rapidly approaching 2000, so we’ll get into the “hocus pocus” they call geoengineering (and the over-reliance on negative emissions pathways) next week in part 2 of What Policymakers Aren’t Telling You About the State of Climate Change.

Hello and welcome to the Climate Politique! Now, I’m not oft to write about myself, but I suppose it’s only proper to begin by giving you an introduction given that this is my first blog entry. But really who cares about formalities, and you all, like myself, probably want to get into the nitty gritty of why I created this blog in the first place so I’ll make this introduction short.

I’m a recent graduate from Penn State University earning a degree in Energy Engineering from the College of Earth & Mineral Sciences. My formal experience analyzing energy policy & politics is modest, mostly derived from my time working for my local Congressman, Rep. Gerry Connolly, interpreting the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and taking a first-hand account of how the state government & local stakeholders (mainly the utility companies) went about designing the implementation process. I’ve also worked on a local policy incentive while still a student at Penn State assisting the Union County Housing Authority’s effort to develop a system of low-cost, energy efficient housing; specifically, I focused on researching the best insulation materials and building envelope design for the project.

I’ve always been passionate about issues involving sustainable develop & energy security. My fascination with the topic began in grade school where I wrote my first major research project on the peak oil scare of the mid-oughts (yeah remember when we all were worried about skyrocketing gas prices & running out of cheap oil, THANKS OBAMA!… and [mostly] fracking); but, now my mind and my thoughts are consumed by the current climate crisis and the realization that anthropogenic climate change isn’t just a threat to the environment, but to humanity at large and ultimately the continuation of a civilized society.

So, even though I am not in a position right now to have any real effect on U.S. energy policy (my career goal, however, is to be in such a position in the near future) I have, for some time now, felt the need to express my thoughts on the subject and explore how we, as a nation, should be tackling this issue now, and into the future.

Now with that (not so) short introduction completed let’s get into the nitty gritty I was talking about earlier. The Climate Politique was not created to explain to the poor misguided souls out there why 97% of climate scientists are screaming at us to stop recklessly burning fossil fuels, I’ll let Bill Nye handle that; this blog, however, is meant to convey the message to the 64% of Americans who care a great deal about global warming that we are far behind schedule in our struggle to halt the effects of climate change (by the way, “the effects of climate change” will, quite literally, endanger the lives of billions of people across the globe).

I’ll go into greater detail about how far behind schedule we are in my next post, but in simple terms, we have just less than five years left to cut CO2 emissions down to a level where we have a good chance at stabilizing global temperatures at 1.5 °C and avoid dangerous climate change. Yes, you read that right, less than FIVE years! For context, the first major review of the Paris Agreement and the INDC’s (intended nationally determined contributions, i.e. each country’s emissions targets) is set for 2023 or after we would have blown our carbon budget for a good chance at not surpassing 1.5 °C of warming by 100 billion tonnes! That cold reality puts into question much of the flowery rhetoric behind the “advances” we have made to address the issue of climate change.

Now I’m not trying to paint a picture of doom & gloom, or say we are destined to fail (though any chances of hitting the 1.5 °C target are essentially gone & a strong argument could be made that a 4+ °C future is inevitable); I still have faith that we have all the tools necessary to address the climate crisis in the long-term, given the political will to do so.

Now you probably have heard similar sentiments from a lot of writers and environmental advocates but have any of them really explained what it actually means to get the “political will“ to address climate change.

What political, economic, and social decisions will we have to make as a society in order to turn our will for systemic change into reality? Whose political campaigns & what policy ideas will be promoted and advanced to cultivate said “will” in the first place? Can we really solve the climate crisis by implementing a simple carbon tax? Will we be able to reduce our CO2 emissions to the necessary rates using only green renewables (wind, solar, geothermal) or will we be forced to ramp up nuclear power?

We have already proven that renewable energy projects can create millions of jobs but can we really sustain economic growth if we have to cut carbon emissions by 5-10% annually? Should we even care about sustaining economic growth, at least in terms of financial/GDP growth, if that means condemning billions of people across the globe to certain death due to natural disasters and other climate-related catastrophes? How much are you (yes, you! whom, by the way, I am eternally thankful to for reading this far through my semi-professional rant) willing to sacrifice personally to solve the problem? Are you willing to drive less? Eat less red meat? Or stop flying? In order to do your part in addressing this global issue.

These are the types of questions we have to answer as a society and the topics we will explore here at the Climate Politique.