COP21 - Is there any hope?

Having just had a super interesting workshop on COP21 to understand the complexity of the negotiations on an agreement to limit global warming to 2°C, I'd like to go a little off path and spend this blog post exploring the whether there is any hope of limiting warming to 2°C.

Firstly, before COP21 even began, many nations submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) that detailed out, in varying degrees of specificity, their plans for 2050 to tackle climate change and ensure global warming limited to 2°C. 158 INDCs were submitted and included time frames and/or periods for implementation, scope and coverage, planning processes etc. Climate Action Tracker analysed 19 of these documents, covering about 71% of global emissions, to come up with an estimated global warming of 2.7°C, which means a failure to keep to the internationally agreed 2°C target. They also rated the INDCs as either inadequate, medium or adequate, with only 2 of 19 INDCs rated as adequate: Ethiopia and Morocco, covering 0.7% of global emissions. Dishearteningly, the 8 INDCs rated as inadequate are all "developed nations", including Australia, Japan, Canada and Singapore. This means their plans are "not considered to be a fair contribution to limiting warming to 2°C from almost any perspective. Alternatively, the rating of medium means plans (including USA, the EU and China) are "consistent with 2°C, according to some perspectives on their fair-share contribution, but they still rely on others to have more ambitious
targets in order for the world to hold warming to below 2˚C".

Country ratings and share of emissions from Climate Action Tracker analysis of 19 submitted INDCs

These results were very discouraging to me, particularly as the most powerful nations (who are also the biggest emitters) are relying on other nations leading the way in ambitions for limiting warming to 2°C. Surely this needs to be reversed if we are to actually make our targets and enforce these plans?

One interesting idea that I've encountered in reading up about COP21 is the "ratchet mechanism". Carbon Brief wrote a great introductory article about it. Essentially, the ratchet mechanism entails new plans and targets being created every 5 years, with increasing ambition and increasing actions. In this way, even though the current plans do not lead to 2°C, hopefully after a few reiterations of INDCs, plans will be made to keep to 2°C before it actually happens. This is an idea many are clinging onto as it means the proposed plans of the INDCs can be used and we can still keep to 2°C by 2100 if the ratchet mechanism is used. In many ways, the ratchet mechanism is good in that it will encourage strong, legally binding review processes, as they will be required in order to keep 2°C as the long term target.

Nevertheless, I'm unconvinced. If we can't come up with a long term plan to keep to 2°C now, at Paris, where the world has come together, there's no concrete way to know we will ever make the plans to ensure 2°C. Additionally, these plans, however ambitious, are still plans. How realistic they are and how feasible, remains to be seen. Although there has been promising progress, and nations such as the EU are on course for their climate targets, more needs to be done. With more ambitious changes and overhauls of processes that are well-established, such as using coal, I'm unsure how well nations will be able to stick to their targets, and this needs to be accounted for. I'd prefer if nations aim high now and then adjust realistically as they encounter changes, than to never aim that high and never reach any semblance of preventing the consequences of 2+°C.

One of the arguments against very ambitious targets is the technicalities required. For example, our simulation workshop stipulates that an emission decline rate of 3.5% is the upper limit, as anything higher than that could potentially lead to economic instability, amongst other dangers. This argument is probably the most persuasive for me, but that doesn't address the fact that this limit will likely remain in the future, thereby restricting targets both now and in the future.

Sir Brian Hoskins, a climatologist from Imperial College London, explained that hitting peak emissions early is important, as it means there is a lower cumulative volume of CO2 in the atmosphere which will make it easier to remain below 2°C warming. If a climate agreement isn't ambitious enough in its peak emissions date, there is more accumulated CO2 to deal with, meaning there may be the need for carbon capture and storage technologies or other removal techniques. This sounds promising but in reality, the technology does not exist yet, and who knows when it will be available and viable? However, the International Business Times article from which Brian Hoskins is mentioned, reveals that there may be some hope. The article states that there is a chance that greenhouse gas emissions have fallen for 2015, marking the first time there is a drop in emissions in the "modern era" (presumably post-industrial). This revelation, in conjunction with the knowledge of economic growth for 2015, is a cause for optimism, as it indicates that cutting emissions and economic growth are not mutually exclusive.

Hopefully the representatives of the many nations at COP21 will take these pieces of news into account when creating a climate change agreement, and build upon the progress from COP21 when returning to their homes.

If it seems I am pessimistic about a clear outcome of COP21 that will successfully keep us below 2°C of warming, it is because I have yet to see explicit evidence that this can and will happen. Even in our COP21 simulation workshop, with our individual geographer biases, we failed to reach a negotiation that enabled a 2°C rise only (we got to 2.7°C). Just today, the BBC is reporting criticism for the UK as they are looking like they will fail to follow through on the big talk of David Cameron at COP21. According to them, the UK's climate policies have changed in recent months by George Osborne, for the worse, not the better. For example, £1 billion for a CO2 capture demonstration plant was recently cut; along with cutting many subsidies for renewable energy.

With the majority of the general public agreeing that climate change is now a real threat, I think it's time for leaders to step it up with their plans for climate change; and to make these plans legally binding in order to ensure all this work isn't all talk. We'll see how things turn out.