The Politics of Climate Change (3 page)

Containing climate change is quintessentially an issue that we cannot put off – and yet at the moment we are doing just that. The volume of greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere continues to mount. Since current trends are out of kilter with what is needed if we are to bring emissions under control, we are essentially looking for breakthroughs. Where might they occur?

They could happen at the
international level
. The role of leaders is to lead, and where necessary to be well ahead of most of the citizens they serve. There are at least some encouraging signs. Until recently, the leaders of the developing countries argued that reducing emissions should be solely a concern of the industrial states, which got rich on the basis of the indiscriminate use of fossil fuels. That attitude has now changed rather dramatically. It is still incumbent on the developed countries to accept the main responsibility. However, the leaders of some of the large emerging economies, most notably China and Brazil, now accept that their countries have a key role to play. It is possible that in some ways they could come to be in the vanguard, as China already is in terms of investment in certain areas of renewable technology.

There might be breakthroughs in the
economic conditions affecting low-carbon technologies
, hence transforming the energy field. The Middle East is the site of about a third of the world's recoverable oil. For a century or so, Western, and then more specifically American, power maintained a certain stability in the otherwise volatile region – and protected the flow of oil. The price of oil never remotely reflected the true economic cost of keeping that flow going – billions of dollars were spent on sustaining that military and diplomatic presence. That situation is currently unravelling, hopefully as part of a process of the democratization of countries that had become frozen
in time. The price of oil could rise, and stay high, whether through protracted instability in the region, or other factors. Such an outcome could possibly give a dramatic new impetus to concerns about energy security, and hence to much greater investment in renewable technologies.

There could be breakthrough innovations in various areas of
technology
. Technological innovation, at least of a far-reaching kind, is not itself always, perhaps not even usually, predictable. The history of technology shows that most transformative innovations came out of the side-field. Their inventors initially had no idea of the impact they came to have – this was true of the cluster of innovations that created the internet, for example. So innovation relevant to climate change policy could come from anywhere, and be of a form that no one has even thought of as yet. Short of that, there are some areas where it is known that advances could make a major impact. For instance, if it became possible to store electricity cheaply and on a large scale, it would make an enormous difference, given the intermittent nature of some low-carbon energy sources. If nuclear fusion suddenly became a reality, it could provide endless cheap, renewable energy. A further possibility is so-called geo-engineering, above all discovering some way of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere on a large scale.

There could be an event, or set of events, clearly attributable to climate change, that cause a surge in
activism
around the world. These might be weather episodes which, while falling short of the cataclysmic, stimulate a breakthrough in consciousness. It is hard to think how such a scenario could avoid Giddens's paradox; but it is possible that unusual and extreme weather in a particular region could become a driving force of activism there, which could then spread elsewhere.

Finally, these possibilities could combine in various ways. Could, could, could – the ‘coulds' indicate the open nature of the future, but no amount of ‘could happens' necessarily add up to a ‘will happen'. In the meantime, humanity lives in the shadow of risks that are real, unprecedented and all the more dangerous because the changes they signal appear irrevocable.
Chapter 1
looks at these risks in more detail.

Our understanding of the origins of global warming in current times dates back to the work of the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier in the early part of the nineteenth century. Energy reaches the earth from the sun in the shape of sunlight; it is absorbed and is radiated back into space as infrared glow. When Fourier calculated the differential between the energy coming in and that going out as infrared radiation, he found that the planet should, in theory, be frozen. He concluded that the atmosphere acts like a mantle, keeping a proportion of the heat in – and thus making the planet liveable for humans, animals and plant life. Fourier speculated that carbon dioxide (CO
₂
) could act as a blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat and causing surface temperatures to increase.

Later observers, most notably John Tyndall, a scientist working at the Royal Institution in London, worked out just which atmospheric elements trap infrared. The gases that make up most of the atmosphere, nitrogen and oxygen, offer no barrier to heat loss. Those producing what came to be called the greenhouse effect, such as water vapour, CO
₂
or methane, are only present in relatively small amounts. Scientists use the calculation of ‘parts per million' (ppm) to measure the level of greenhouse gases in the air, since the percentage figures are so small. One ppm is equivalent to 0.0001 per cent. It is because a tiny proportion makes such a large impact that greenhouse
gases created by human industry can have profound effects on the climate (CO
₂
makes up less than 0.04 per cent of the composition of the air, and the other greenhouse gases even less). Since CO
₂
is the most important greenhouse gas in terms of volume, it is sometimes used as a standard of measurement when assessing emissions. The notion of ‘CO
₂
equivalent' is also often employed. It is the amount of CO
₂
emission that would be involved to produce the same output as all the greenhouse gases combined. It is usually written as CO
₂
e.

Over the past 150 years or so, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have progressively increased with the expansion of industrial production. The average world temperature has grown by about 0.8 degrees since 1901. The temperature of the earth is not only rising, it is doing so at an accelerating rate. From 1880 to 1970, global average temperature increased by about 0.03ºC every decade. Over the period since 1970, the increase has averaged 0.13 degrees per decade. Data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the US (NOAA) showed that 2010 tied with 2005 as the warmest year since reliable records began in 1880. Every decade since 1950 has been warmer on average than the one before.

We know from geological studies that world temperatures have fluctuated in the past, and that such fluctuations correlate with CO
₂
content in the air. The evidence shows, however, that at no time during the past 650,000 years has the CO
₂
content of the air been as high as it is today. It has always been below 290ppm. By 2010, it had reached 389ppm and is currently rising by some 2ppm each year.

The growth rate for 2010 was 2.14ppm, as measured by scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii. It was the seventh year out of the previous nine to see a rise of more than 2ppm. This increase was considerably higher than scientists at the observatory had expected. It could indicate that the natural sinks of the earth are losing their capacity to absorb greenhouse gases. Most climate change models assume that some half of future emissions will be soaked up by forests and oceans, but this assumption therefore may be too optimistic. Warming is greater over land areas than over the oceans, and is higher at northern latitudes than
elsewhere. Very recent studies show that the temperatures of the oceans are rising several times faster than was thought likely a few years ago. Higher temperatures produce more acidity in the water, which could seriously threaten marine life. Warmer seas release more CO
₂
, accelerating the global warming effect.

Figure 1.1  The global surface temperature is rising Global annual average temperature measured over land and oceans. Grey bars indicate temperatures above and black bars indicate temperatures below the 1901–2000 average temperature. The black line shows atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration in parts per million.

Source:
NCDC/NOAA

Satellite data, available since 1978, show that the annual average Arctic sea ice coverage is shrinking by nearly 3 per cent per decade, with larger decreases in the summer of over 7 per cent. The Arctic ice-cap is less than half the size it was 50 years ago. Over that time, average temperatures in the Arctic region have increased by about seven degrees, a result of a specific feedback cycle that exists there. The sun's rays strike the Arctic at a sharper angle than elsewhere over the summer, at a time when the ice is giving way to open water, which
absorbs more solar radiation. Until recently it was thought that ice-free Arctic summers would occur at some point near the end of the century. However, the actual melting has been faster than was anticipated and appears to be accelerating. Hence summers free of ice might occur much sooner.

Figure 1.2  The sea level is rising Annual averages of global sea level. Light grey: sea level since 1870. Dark grey: tide gauge data. Black: based on satellite observations. The inset shows global mean sea-level rise since 1993 – a period over which sea-level rise has accelerated.

Source:
NCDC/NOAA

Commercial trans-Arctic voyages could then be initiated. It would be possible to go from Northern Europe to East Asia or the north-west coast of the US avoiding the Suez and Panama Canals.

Mountain glaciers are retreating in both hemispheres and snow cover is less, on average, than it once was. Sea levels rose over the course of the twentieth century, although there is considerable controversy among scientists about just how much. Warming is likely to intensify the risk of drought in some parts of the world and lead to increased rainfall in others. Evidence indicates that the atmosphere holds more water vapour than used to be the case even a few decades ago – a major influence over unstable weather patterns, including tropical storms and
floods. Over the past 40 years, westerly winds have become stronger. Tropical cyclones in the Atlantic have become more frequent and more intense over that period, probably as a result of warming.

Figure 1.3  Glacier volume is shrinking Cumulative decline (in cubic miles) in glacier ice worldwide.

Source:
NCDC/NOAA

The most authoritative body monitoring climate change and its implications is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the UN (IPCC), first established in 1988. Hundreds of scientists and reviewers are involved in its major publications; few scientific documents ever can have been subjected to such exhaustive scrutiny. The IPCC has had an enormous impact upon world thinking about global warming. Its declared aims are to gather together as much scientific data about climatic conditions as possible, subject it to rigorous review and reach overall conclusions on the state of scientific opinion. In several authoritative reports, it has mapped the changing world climate in detail, showing that the potential consequences range from the worrying to the disastrous. In the fourth of such reports, published in 2007, the IPCC says, ‘warming of the climate
system is unequivocal'. It is the only part of the document where such a term is used. All the rest is couched in terms of probabilities. There is a '90 per cent probability' that observed warming is the result of human activity through the introduction of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, these coming from the consumption of fossil fuels in industrial production and travel, and from new forms of land use and agriculture.
¹
Records of global surface temperature date back to 1850. Since that date, 11 of the hottest years have occurred during the past
13. Observations from all parts of the world show progressive increases in average air and sea temperatures.