Photo by Friends of the Earth Europe |
This is yet more evidence for the urgency of our
situation. The contents of the report contribute yet more “facts in waiting”, i.e.
consequences that will follow if we do not urgently heed the warnings
of climate scientists and activists. Greta Thunberg’s impassioned speech to the
UN Climate Action Summit in New York
provides yet another focal point for much needed global publicity regarding the
scale of the challenges before us. The challenge is underscored by the UNEP
introduction to the 2019 10-year summary of Emissions
Gap Reports.
At first glance, the news seems bleak. The
world would seem to have spent the last decade doing the exact opposite of what
it should. Despite the warnings in each year’s gap report, greenhouse gas
emissions grew at an average of 1.6 per cent per year from 2008 to 2017. In fact,
these emissions are now almost exactly what early gap reports projected they
would be in 2020 if the world did nothing to change its brown, polluting growth
models. With the policies currently in place, the world is heading for a 3.5°C
temperature increase this century, compared to pre-industrial levels.
Photo by Takver |
As this year’s 6th
UN Global Environmental Outlook Report also confirms, the evidence of a
direction of travel for our climate and ecosystems is clear. Collectively, as a
planet-pervading population (one divided by gross levels of inequality in
wealth and consumption) we have continued to do unsustainable things in the
name of “sustainable development” and economic growth. There are many ways to
express this direction of travel – each provides some evidence – as, for
example, our Ecological
Footprint. This provides evidence of a tendency, but as both Clive Spash and Ville Lähde note, if anything,
the technical procedures and focus of this measurement system underestimates the scope of the
problem. Global levels of consumption of resources and destruction of natural
environments and ecosystems are clearly unsustainably high.
However, as the IPCC, UNEP,
Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion and many more continue to state: it is not too late for meaningful action to
be taken. Although the 10-year summary of Emissions
Gap Reports paints an initially bleak picture, it too argues in favour of urgent
constructive changes. The consensus still holds that if sufficiently mobilized,
we have the means to address the problems we have created; we in fact do have
the potential to prevent the disaster that “facts in waiting” represent. In our
special editorial essay, we listed several of these things that might be done.
The fifth was support carbon taxes, and the last was to support collective
transnational solutions to our planetary dilemma. As Heikki Patomäki
has pointed out, it might have been preferable to explicitly conjoin these two,
since climate change is a global problem requiring globally coordinated
solutions. Heikki is one of many whose ideas, ingenuity and energy offer
sources of optimism.
There are, then, many current
initiatives deserving of support. We should also not neglect that places are
where policies happen, and whilst it is possible to work around and not wait
upon government and corporations, it is also imperative to place pressure on
them. It is important to note that more than eighty percent of global GHG
emissions derive from the G20 countries. So, the climate problem may be
planetary, but its sources derive much more from some places than others. As
loci of power and sources of climate change problems, both the USA and China
are extremely important. What China, as “the factory of the world”, for
example, does in the near future is of very great importance, and this cannot
neglect the scope for its workforce
to express themselves.
And whilst it would be reckless to
think that we can simply rely on new technologies to resolve our problems (the
proverbial “technological fix”) it is also manifestly the case that new technologies
and investment must be part of global solutions. It seems incontrovertible that
the scale of our economies must be smaller in terms of the demand for natural
resources, but this is different than suppressing human creativity or well-being.
This change is needed more than ever, but it too must be ecologically sensitive.
Neoliberalism,
even one advocating “Green
Growth”, remains untenable. There are many potentially transformative
technologies that are imminent. Yet the “fourth
industrial revolution” so far, abounds with contradictions.
Globalizations first hosted an
editorial on the Climate
Emergency over a decade ago. Let us hope that in 2030 we are able to look
back on a decade of real progress, not back to a fatal scenario of business as
usual. Let us now do everything within our capacity to construct a liveable future
for ourselves and all other living creatures on earth. If we are to do so, we
must avoid falling into the primary fallacy of surrendering now in the face of
the scale of the challenge. Costa
Rica has set the global standard for national de-carbonisation planning and
implementation. The planetary aim is urgent rapid and massive reductions in
carbon emissions by 2030 and net zero emissions by mid-century.
We live in disaggregated systems with
multiple centres of power and influence. No single authority is in charge (arguably
neither at national or global scale) and it can seem as though others are
better positioned to do what is required. But this is the fallacy: if we delay or do nothing and delegate responsibility
to others, then we are potentially
the difference between net zero and the emissions that produce a tipping point.
The situation is not one ripe for self-interested disabling “Game Theory”
articulated results, where no one acts because “why should they” (we are too
small, too insignificant) – the fundamental interest of all is the interest of all, individually and
collectively. Greta Thunberg epitomises this spirit of resistance and positive
transformative action. We must all now do whatever we can, because every small action,
every positive something, is one more step towards us collectively and cumulatively
meeting the challenges we face.
Greenhouse gas emissions must
be halved by 2030 and the Paris NDCs must improve by at least a third. We
don’t have a decade to begin to do
this, we have a decade to achieve this. Action starts now. In acting we radically
transform the world.
Barry Gills
is Professor in Development Studies at Helsinki University and Jamie
Morgan is Professor at Leeds Beckett University.
For correspondence with the
authors, please write to bkeithgills@gmail.com
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