Latest IPCC Report: No time to lose
The latest IPCC report was released today. It makes for sobering reading:
The report provides new estimates of the chances of crossing the global warming level of 1.5°C in the next decades, and finds that unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5°C or even 2°C will be beyond reach.
Over 600 scientists contributed to the report and their consensus view is that we need to immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Given that during 2020 there seems to have only been a reduction of about 5% and the projection for 2021 is that there will be an increase of 4.8% there is little hope that we will see a reduction on the scale needed anytime soon.
Keep in mind what this means: there will be catastrophic events occurring simultaneously around the world. From fires in the U.S. to floods in China to droughts in Africa, there will be virtually no part of the world is not affected. Many of these events are already occurring, but as the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases they will become more frequent and more destructive. Here is is David Wallace-Wells on what the world would look like under different warming scenarios:
At two degrees, [centigrade] the ice sheets will begin to collapse, 400 million more people will suffer from water scarcity, major cities in the equatorial band of the planet will become unlivable, and even in the northern latitudes heat waves will kill thousands each summer. There would be thirty-two times as many extreme heat waves in India, and each would last five times as long, exposing ninety-three times more people. This is our best-case scenario. At three degrees, southern Europe would be in permanent drought, and the average drought in Central America would last nineteen months longer. In northern Africa, the figure is sixty months longer — five years… [A]t four degrees, there would be eight million more cases of dengue fever each year inLatin America alone and close to annual global food crises. There could be 9% more heat-related deaths. [I]n certain places six climate-driven natural disasters could strike simultaneously, and, globally, damages could pass $600 trillion — more than twice the wealth as exists in the world today. Conflict and warfare could double.
The latest IPCC report makes it clear that this is the direction in which we are headed. Unless drastic action in taken to reduce emissions these catastrophes will come to pass. As The Economist notes, even if all the governments kept the promises made at the signing of the 2015 Paris Agreement, there is a very good chance that we would fail to limit warming beyond 1.5 degrees centigrade:
The Paris agreement of 2015 created a compact to limit global warming to “well below 2°C” above the pre-industrial, ideally seeing it rise no more than 1.5°C. That more stringent target was demanded by, among others, small-island states which see the amount of sea-level rise inherent in two degrees of warming as an existential threat. A huge subsequent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the difference between the two targets, even if it was just 10cm of additional sea-level rise by 2100, would wipe away the livelihoods of millions. Compared with 1.5°C of warming, 2°C would also expose an additional 420m people to record heat. And it would devastate Arctic ice cover.
What then are we to do in the face of such calamities? Some have argued that the only way to achieve a rapid reduction in emissions is directly target fossil fuel infrastructure. There have been a few examples of this lately. In 2019 the Bakken oil pipeline was sabotaged by Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya. Andreas Malm, a historian and social theorist has written an interesting book on the topic, entitled How to Blow Up a Pipeline in which he makes the case that normal political mechanisms have failed and that the civil disobedience on movements like Extinction Rebellion are not radical enough to prevent a complete climate catastrophe. Instead, he argues, we should consider the possibility that sabotaging fossil fuel infrastructure might be (in these difficult times) a reasonable course of action. Graeme Hayes, in an article discussing Malm’s book, describes it like this:
Malm’s solution is straightforward: sabotage, from local and everyday targets (Malm is particularly focused on making city streets inhospitable to SUVs) to large scale acts of destruction. ‘Damage and destroy new CO2-emitting devices. Put them out of commission, pick them apart, demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep on investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed’, he proposes.
Is this a reasonable course of action? Is the time for ‘normal’ politics and even civil disobedience past? I’m not so sure. Looking back to the civil rights movement, the struggle for Indian independence and South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, it is clear that civil disobedience can play an important role in bringing about significant political change. The problem in the case of climate change is that time is running out. We need to reduce emissions immediately and continue to do so in the decades ahead. That means there needs to be political change now, so that measures can be taken to reduce emissions as rapidly as possible. Can civil disobedience help to bring about this change? My tentative answer is that, yes, it can play an important role in spurring rapid political change at crucial moments. It is a very powerful tool that, when wielded effectively, can open opportunities for political change that would not normally occur. Whether this will happen in the case of the climate crisis is an open question. The globalised nature of the problem makes things more difficult, but it does seem like the global climate justice movement is growing and ever more willing to take on governments and corporations that are not taking the necessary steps to avert a climate catastrophe.
