In December this year, Denmark will host a major United Nations conference in Copenhagen. At this conference, the world’s rulers will negotiate their solutions for dealing with climate change. Phil Thornhill, National coordinator of the Campaign Against Climate Change looks at the science and the adequacy of the Copenhagen agenda.
The Climate Talks at Copenhagen, due for December of this year, loom larger in the climate campaigners’ calendar than any of the yearly Climate talks so far - most obviously because it represents a critical point in the process. This has been recognised as a ‘deadline’ for getting a ‘post-Kyoto’ agreement in time to replace that one before it expires. No panic over Kyoto expiring since any kind of success it represented was in terms of putting climate change more firmly on politicians’ and the public’s agenda - beyond that it was so weak and so full of holes that it was not going to achieve any significant concrete results and anyway wasn’t allowed to by the Bush administration which all but killed it. And this is why everyone is looking to Copenhagen – because it seems to represent a real chance to have a second bite at the apple and get an emissions reductions treaty that actually works – not least because the obstacle that was Bush has now been removed.
But the real drama here is not about the point in the process, it’s about what’s going on outside the process, actually all around us in the physical world we inhabit. Climate change is not a problem waiting for a solution – it doesn’t wait, it keeps moving and just lately it’s been moving very fast. The problem has got a lot bigger and we have been left with far less time to deal with it than we had before, or than we thought before. Hence the very special sense of urgency focussed on Copenhagen. That’s why they’re calling it our last chance to save the planet - the most important international meeting ever held.
So where do the science and the planet stand ? What scared most people who understand and follow this kind of thing was the extraordinary shrinkage of the summer arctic ice in 2007. Estimates for the total disappearance of the summer Arctic Ocean ice that had hovered in the region of 80 to 100 years tumbled to 20, 10 or even 5. So how significant will that disappearance be when it happens ? Well this brings us to that now ever more familiar expression - “tipping points”. The real problem is that most government plans to reduce emissions, such that they exist and such that they have any chance to actually be seen through, depend on the idea that we are looking at a graph with a smooth curve - a gradual increase in temperature that responds dependably to the increase in emissions in a way that we can plan for. But the likely reality looks more and more like what they call “non-linear” progression – a sudden leap in the graph when we hit certain thresholds or ”tipping points” . One of these (out of quite a number) is the moment the Arctic Ocean loses all its ice, and the dark exposed waters absorb heat that the white ice had used to reflect away – in an “albedo flip”.
Now the additional worrying factor is that eminent scientists like James Hansen from the NASA Goddard Institute are now telling us that we have already passed the limit of atmospheric carbon concentration that would ensure a safe climate. We are now at 387 ppm and to be safe we need to be below 350, maybe below 325 or even 300 (pre-industrial levels were around 280). It is currently only the inertia in the system that is giving us a breathing space…but even if we reduce global emissions to zero we will still be on an inexorable slide towards one of those tipping points unless we actually reduce atmospheric carbon concentrations (not emissions but what’s actually already up there) by 30 or more ppm from what they are now. This means that the task the global community faces is immense
Looking beyond Copenhagen
But it’s not the immensity of the task that actually scares me so much as the incalculability of the immediate risk – we really just don’t know at what point we might tread on the landmine of irreversible climatic meltdown. One thing we do know, though, is that an “albedo flip” will rapidly warm the Arctic Ocean and then the surrounding land masses with the permafrost they contain. Release of just 0.1 % of the carbon contained in the permafrost would cancel out all we might gain by reducing emissions by 80% by 2050. Feedback processes from the natural world itself would now be emitting more extra carbon than all the emissions-generating activities of humanity and the situation would be out of our control. How long would this take? How long before the Himalayan glaciers shrink to a point that severely impacts the great rivers on which most of Asia’s agriculture depends? How long before the world is in food-deficit and the whole great unspeakably ugly tragedy of desperation and conflict unravels?
And so to Copenhagen. There, what will be under consideration perpetuates many of the flaws of Kyoto. “Solutions” that are not only unjust but counterproductive like agro-fuels . There is a whole catalogue here. And there is the question of how much the South is going to have to pay for the excesses of the North. We have so little time that whatever can be gained at Copenhagen will be important, and relative to where we were some ground probably will be gained. But few people ’in the know’ are very optimistic. In the light of where the science has now moved to and the unfolding metamorphosis of the planet around us that I have tried to sketch above, we know that what is on the table at Copenhagen is simply not in the right ball-park, it is several categories away from where we need to be.
So we need to look beyond Copenhagen for sure. But we need to use it for all its worth to us and that’s the opportunity to make the biggest, loudest manifestation of a global demand for urgent climate action and climate justice, possible. Our best hope lies in not letting these talks pass without a huge and conspicuous condemnation of the inadequacy of what they are going to produce. That’s the sine qua non for real progress. So organise, mobilise, get to the London demo on the 5th, get to Copenhagen itself for the Global day of Action on the 12th……
But further to that we can best express our condemnation of what is currently on offer from the powers that be by better defining our vision for real progress, for what it means not to ‘deal with a problem’ but to ‘confront an emergency’. And we can probably do that most meaningfully at home in the UK with concrete measures, ‘emergency’ measures, that explode out of the box of conventional ‘political acceptability’. Aim for a short term target of 10% cuts by the end of 2010, ban domestic and short haul flights, institute a 55 mph speed limit, end the roads programme and counterproductive agro fuels, and embark on a bold, imaginative, daring, program of massive investment in public transport, a housing insulation programme, energy efficiency, a green energy revolution – and the million or so green jobs that we will need to create by the end of next year to do all that. Oh, and a really hard-hitting government information programme to explain why we need to do this – hours of climate info on TV, a booklet in every home and so on. Its time to articulate our outrage and sense of urgency into a positive agenda for radical change that starts right now.