If you think losing weight is hard you should try cutting global carbon emissions!
We’re supposed to be on a carbon ‘diet’ but we just can’t put down those donuts.
Picture this:
You’ve been gaining weight for some years. You’re not happy about it and you’ve started noticing some health consequences. But the pressures of life are such that you just haven’t been able to find the time, energy, or focus required to tackle it. Your Doctor has been warning you about it for years now, and you’ve promised yourself you’ll do something. You’ve made numerous New Year’s resolutions about it — but they never stick. You joined a gym but only went three times. You started a new diet but you quit after a week because it was just too hard to stick to with all those yummy donuts people keep bringing to work and the boozy gatherings with friends at the weekends. (God knows you need these things to get you through the week!) You know it’s a recipe for disaster, but you just can’t quite get your act together.
And now, after collapsing with chest pain at work, you’re sitting in your Doctor’s office as she goes through the test results with you. “You’re at serious risk of death” she says with grave concern written on her face. “If you continue living as you are for another 6 years there’s a 30% chance you’ll die, in another 10 years it will be 60%.”
What do you do?
Well if the patient is humanity, and the health crisis is climate change, then you’ll probably do nothing. At least that seems to be the situation. Because the health scenario I just described above is pretty much exactly what we are collectively facing with respect to global warming. Yet as the clock ticks on into 2021 we still appear to be incapable of taking meaningful action to avoid an early death that is — or at least was — utterly preventable.
Maintaining a healthy weight, in theory, is a fairly straightforward thing. At one level it’s a simple exercise in energy budgeting. If you were faced with the scenario above your Doctor would probably tell you how much weigh you need to lose to reduce your risk of dying and then put you in touch with a nutritionist and an exercise physiologist to set you some targets and help you work out a food and exercise budget to get you back to a healthy weight. In theory it’s pretty simple.
In practice of course weight loss can be anything but simple. Even with clear targets and a budget to stick to it takes serious resolve and considerable discipline. And there are all manner of personal and social impediments to overcome. It’s really hard work. And that’s why so many of us (myself included) find it such a struggle.
Responding to the climate crisis is much the same. Simple in theory but, apparently, impossibly difficult in practice.
A recent paper in Nature lays out in quite stark terms exactly what we need to do if we are to have any chance of avoiding an untimely death. It’s the equivalent of the Doctor’s plan for her at risk patient. And it’s a sobering read. The target is the same as it has always been — to get greenhouse gases in the atmosphere back down to safe levels. We need to first stop pumping more in, and then start drawing down the excess we have put there over the past 150 years.
But like the patient in the story we are still chomping on the donuts. And we have dithered for so long that the numbers are now seriously against us. In theory it is still possible. But in practice will we actually be able to do it?
Well why don’t you have a look at the numbers and see what you think?
This graph, taken from a summary of the Nature paper, is a little like the first step in the health plan for our at risk patient. It’s not about losing weight yet, it’s just about stopping putting more weight on and stabilising the patient’s weight at a level that still has health risks, but hopefully isn’t fatal. Instead of cutting ‘calories’ we are talking about cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that are pushing us into a dangerous climate scenario. This first step is not going to take us back to how we were before, but it will hopefully stop us spiraling out of control.
The graph is a visualisation of the carbon budget required to meet the global targets set in the Paris Climate Accord. And it says that if we want a decent chance — if in fact you can call a 50%-66% chance “decent” — of stopping global warming at a nasty-but-hopefully-manageable +1.5 degrees C then we need to cut net emissions to zero by 2040. Or if that proves impossible then maybe we can limit warming to a very nasty “well below +2 degrees C” by getting there in 2060 (and again that’s still only a 50:50 chance!).
There are really just two things to look at on this graph.
- The red upward pre-COVID trend line — which shows us that despite all the warnings, all the summits and all the talk we were STILL INCREASING our emissions prior to the pandemic and still expecting them to KEEP INCREASING into the immediate future. In terms of our analogy the patient is still gorging on donuts and putting on weight. They haven’t even stabilised their weight yet, let alone started to lose it.
- The orange (2019) and pink (2020) emissions stars that show us that emissions fell by 7% in 2020. Not by choice. Not because we finally decided to act. But because a global pandemic forced us to curb our behaviour. It’s like the patient in our analogy became ill and lost weight as a consequence of the illness. It wasn’t by choice.
If you look at the [very welcome] fall in emissions from 2019 to 2020 you see that the pink star is almost exactly on the blue line. In other words, quite by accident in 2020 we actually achieved slightly more than the cut in emissions required by the blue +1.5 degree C budget.
Or in other words the size of the reduction in global economic activity in 2020 as a result of the pandemic is exactly the sort of reduction we need to make each and every year for the next 20 years if we are to have any hope of keeping climate change to the nasty-but-not-deadly level. (Note this does not mean stay at ‘pandemic levels’ of activity for 20 years, it means we need to make additional cuts equivalent to a pandemic every year. So roughly two pandemics’-worth in 2021, three in 2022, four in 2023 etc). Just take a moment to think what that means. Think about what that is going to take!
This is not paper straws and organic face creams level stuff. This means a comprehensive pandemic-level overhaul of our entire way of life on an ongoing basis for decades.
On the one hand the drop in 2020 is great news because it proves it is actually possible to cut emissions at the levels required to meet the Paris target. On the other hand it is terrible news because we all know no one did this willingly and that the whole world is champing at the bit to get economic activity — and therefore emissions — right back to where it was before the pandemic. Just at the point we should be consolidating our gains and looking to make deeper cuts this year we’re actually all saying “I’m starving! Pass me a donut.”
And all this ignores the fact that there is still a 33%-50% chance that we won’t keep the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C, even with the equivalent of pandemic cuts each and every year for the next 20 years. (And according to the paper there is actually still a 17% chance we are heading to +1.5 degrees C even if we do.)
As a patient at risk of dying, how would you react to those odds?
So emissions reductions are a lot like the weight loss conundrum. In theory it’s simple, and we know that technically it is possible. But in practice do you think we can actually bring ourselves to do what it will take?
Endnote
It is always incredibly difficult to write about this subject, and just as difficult to read about it. But we must face up to grim reality of our situation and we must act to get the best possible outcome we can. My earnest encouragement to you is to act in any way you know how to raise awareness and bring about change. Stop thinking and acting like a consumer and start thinking and acting like a citizen. Talk to your family and friends about it. Engage with your political representatives about it. Join Extinction Rebellion and peacefully protest. The pandemic proves we can cut emissions at the levels necessary. We just need the political resolve and discipline to do it.
