Tag Archives: climate change

Rishi Sunak’s retreat on climate policies is troubling

Last week UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the scrapping and watering down of several key climate targets. Academics Dr Pam Yeow, Reader in Management and Dr Becky Briant, Reader in Quaternary Science, share their thoughts in a blog. 

Planet Earth

We read with disappointment and concern the latest announcement from the UK Prime Minister, of the intentions to roll back climate positive strategies and priorities until 2035. This is unfortunate for both scientific and economic reasons. 

Over the past decade it has become increasingly clear that the impacts from climate change are being experienced at lower levels of change than previously projected. Most climate mitigation policies propose to keep warming below 2 degrees centigrade beyond pre-industrial averages and yet at current levels of warming (only 1.2 degrees), we are already seeing extreme weather events on an annual basis, from the wildfires that started in Canada in June and are still alight, to extreme heatwaves and wildfires in southern Europe and the Middle East this July, to significant hurricane disruption in the US in August, to multiple floods and landslides just this month, for example in Libya and Hong Kong. The facts of climate change don’t stop being facts when we choose to ignore them. 

Similar thresholds are being crossed in all areas of environmental degradation, with the reporting this month that six of the nine ‘planetary boundaries’ identified back in 2009 as ‘guard-rails’ beyond which humanity should not go if we want to live on a habitable planet have been crossed, meaning that Earth is now significantly outside of the safe operating space for humanity. For example, the disposability of single-use plastics, once hailed as a symbol of modernity with its low cost, convenience and durability has resulted in significant social and environmental concerns such as low recyclability rates and large volumes entering landfills and marine-based environments, leading to health concerns. Action is needed across the board to ensure our planet remains habitable; also to avoid the extreme costs associated with both clearing up and rebuilding after extreme weather events and taking care of those whose health has been damaged by the degradation of our environment. The issues involved are so intertwined that action on one will increase the likelihood of success on another. 

Globally, the only way to avoid the worst climate change scenarios is for all countries in the world to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and then to move to negative emissions. Reaching net zero by 2050 requires such a steep emissions reduction that emissions need to halve by 2030 in order to reach it, in what the United Nations (UN) have called ‘the decisive decade’. The UK’s previous policy commitments were barely able to bring the UK economy to net zero by 2050 anyway, but last week’s announcements move us even further away from success. Furthermore, given that the requirement is global and many countries are moving much more slowly to action, the UK has an ethical obligation as an early and substantial historical emitter to double down on climate action, not roll back. 

These announcements are particularly troubling because we had not so long ago led the field in taking environmental action, with the first statutory commitments in the 2008 Climate Change Act and a raft of strategies and policies over the last decade that addressed many, if not all, of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in addition to straight emission reduction commitments. For single use plastic waste for example, in 2017, the UN adopted an additional resolution in relation to SDG 14 (Life Below Water) that included an agreement to implement long-term and robust strategies to reduce the use of single-use plastics and microplastics (UN General Assembly, 2017). In 2022, a UN resolution was drafted to end plastics pollution. Meanwhile, the UK, alongside the EU, introduced similar measures around single-use plastics, including a 5p carrier bag charge which increased to 10p in 2021, and a ban on single use plastic items that included plates, trays, bowls, cutlery and food containers from October 2023. A plastic packaging tax generated £276 million in the first year of introduction (2023) and there were other consultations that took place, regarding the introduction of deposit return schemes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  

More industries than ever have now come aboard and engaged with the sustainability agenda, giving hope that concerted action might be possible. Many voluntary initiatives were introduced and taken on by organisations like the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation which introduced concepts like the plastic circular economy and the encouragement of a reduction alongside recycling and reusing. The UK Plastics Pact have some of the world’s largest packaging producers, brands, retailers and NGOs signed up to a shared vision with targets of eliminating ‘problem’ plastics, increase the use of reusable or recyclable plastics and achieving 30% average recycled plastic in items (WRAP, 2022). Similarly, many companies have signed up to the UN’s ‘Race to Zero’. 

The UK government needs to recognise that environmental action and economic health are not mutually exclusive. We need a systemic framework of engagement, involving global, national and local groups, which occurs in the context of cross-party consensus and does not change. In addition to the environmental harm caused, chopping and changing government policy kills jobs and future investment. After the shock announcement this week, the car industry reacted furiously as they had agreed as an industry to work towards more environmentally friendly automobiles, contributing to an infrastructure of electric charging network as well as better performing fully electric vehicles. Other global leaders have also reacted with dismay at this turnaround and have urged the UK government to reconsider.  

We are clear that negative climate changes and environmental degradation are already taking place. It is imperative that governments work in tandem with industry, local governments and citizens towards priorities and strategies that help our planet thrive. We urge the UK government to take the lead again in creating opportunities for a greener planet and healthier and happier citizens.  

Further information 

Share

Decoupling coal from India must keep climate justice in mind

MSc Politics, Philosophy and Economics student Sonia Joshi argues that the western approach to
addressing climate change is far from equal.

COP26 ended with more of a whimper than a bang. Last minute changes proposed by India and backed by other coal-emitting countries requesting the ‘phase out of unabated coal power’ to be changed to ‘phase down’ were considered a dilution of already wavering commitments. The International Energy Agency recently reported that in 2021 the world consumed more coal-fired electricity than ever before. India is the second largest global emitter of CO2 from coal whilst also suffering from the ravages of climate change, including a high susceptibility to deadly flooding, famines and air pollution.

As one of the biggest polluters and a country most at risk from the fallout of climate change, should and could India be doing more to phase out coal? The answer depends on how you frame the question.

Graph showing biggest coal CO2 emitters.

India has been hit hard after a COVID-19 induced recession with an additional 75 million people in poverty; cheap energy is essential for its recovery. India along with other emerging nations argue that the Global North’s rise in economic prosperity has been accelerated by its extraction and consumption of fossil fuels for over 200 years; according to a recent study, since 1850 in fair share terms the G8 countries (USA, EU28, Japan and Canada) have overshot their ‘carbon budget’, being responsible for 85% of aggregate carbon emissions despite only accounting for 12% of the global population.

Graph showing biggest CO2 emitters.

In contrast, India is in credit of 90 billion tonnes of CO2 or 34% of the total credit. When accounting for CO2 emissions per capita, the impact of wealthy nations on atmospheric CO2 is even more striking; Qatar takes the top spot, USA drops to 14th place and India falls to 134th. India’s per capita energy use is in fact extremely low; approximately one third of the global average, and one tenth of the USA average.

For now, India needs coal to help keep electricity flowing in an already resource-constricted population. Coal is necessary for 70% of its current electricity generation, with the State-owned Coal India Limited employing 21 million people. Despite this, a significant percentage of the 1.4 billion population still has no access to electricity. Fair share matters if the atmospheric commons have a finite capacity for CO2. With this calculation in mind, one could argue that members of the G8 such as the USA, one of the highest gross and per capita emitters, should be doing more to decelerate coal usage to buy time for other emerging nations to transition.

India is clear it needs to phase out coal; grass roots movements and labour organisations, including the 2 million strong National Hawkers Federation, regularly highlight the impacts of pollution on India’s cities and consistently call for a transition to renewable energy. However, a rapid decoupling from coal would not only leave millions in the dark but also create huge swathes of unemployment creating a political and humanitarian crisis.

Chart showing cumulative CO2 emissions 1750 - 2020.

An understanding of India’s predicament helps to shed light on how much progress was made by India in COP26 and how much more is needed. India’s government has pledged to reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by 45% and obtain half of its energy requirements from renewable sources by 2030. For India to participate in a green transition, it will need funding to help economic diversification, investment in improving efficient coal use, green technologies and distribution of infrastructure to roll out renewables such as solar panels. Industry restructuring could provide alternative, sustainable and ecological opportunities for employment outside of fossil fuel intensive industries, helping the economy and the people decouple from climate disasters.

Further Information

Share

Life of an international student during a pandemic

Embarking on studies in the UK has been made even more challenging due to the pandemic. In this blog, Presley Gitari tells us what motivated him to study at Birkbeck, and his life as an international student.

Presley Gitari

My name is Presley Gitari. I am 27 years old and my nationality is Kenyan. I am a conservation biologist currently pursuing an MSc in Climate Change at Birkbeck, University of London on a Chevening Scholarship.

Ever since I was a child I have always been fascinated by the natural world. It has fuelled my curiosity to learn about how the environment works and how we can conserve it for future generations. I attained a BSc in Environmental Conservation and Natural Resource Management from the University of Nairobi. My previous role was with Kenya’s Interior Ministry where I was working on a programme which focused on helping underserved communities in utilising environmental conservation as a socio-economic empowerment tool. I was both humbled and honoured to contribute to our country’s goal of achieving 10% tree cover by 2022.

Why Birkbeck?

Presley with Chevening scholar sign I was drawn to Birkbeck’s diverse and talented faculty and student base. While searching online for a graduate course focusing on Climate Change, I stumbled upon the College which had an impressive course overview and also had an opportunity to listen to an introductory lecture by Dr. Becky Briant on ‘Climate Change and the River Thames’ I was impressed by the factual analysis in the lecture. It was also an incentive that being an evening university, I could interact with students who bring perspectives from their daytime jobs into the classroom, which has been an enriching experience.

Being awarded a Chevening Scholarship by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office was an exhilarating prospect. In the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, travel arrangements were thrown into disarray which created a lot of uncertainty about whether we would travel to the UK or continue our autumn lectures virtually. Eventually, Kenya lifted the ban on international flights which was a huge relief.

Moving to London

I have been to London before to attend an international meeting and as always have been fascinated how diverse London really is. A real melting-pot of cultures! Getting used to the tube was made easier by technology which makes getting between points a seamless experience. Coming from a coastal city with a laid-back demeanour it is quite a cultural turn-up for the books having to experience the hustle and bustle of an international hub that London is. I have taken a huge liking for the amazing parks where I regularly go out for a jog or just to admire the scenic beauty on afternoon walks (the squirrels are an interesting lot!).

Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, I haven’t got to visit many attractions as I would have loved to, but I keep an ever-growing list of places to visit when many of the affected places open up.

Studying during pandemic

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Birkbeck’s shift towards virtual learning has been possible by asynchronous as well as synchronous learning activities. The asynchronous component takes the form of pre-session activities. We get to interact with pre-recorded lectures, activities and reading material on our university Moodle platform. I usually set aside 1-2 hours in the evening in preparation for our live session where we go over the provided material with our lecturers and ask questions. This forms the synchronous component. We then join a seminar session where we are divided into groups to carry out joint activities which in many ways provides an opportunity for us to put into practice the knowledge acquired from the pre-session as well as the live session.

In a particular module, we had the opportunity to work on a group presentation highlighting a key environmental report which beyond building my in-depth understanding of the content of the material also helped me develop my communication skills. We use Blackboard Collaborate for our live sessions, as well Microsoft Teams for one-to-one interactions with our tutors and dissertation supervisors. The platforms allow for students to efficiently interact and present material, as well as take polls. We also make use of Google Jam Boards which allow all students to put in their contributions without feeling left out. The broad array of options provided by these platforms are suitable for both extroverted and introverted personalities. The live sessions and group work/presentations take about an hour and a half.

A typical day for me would start with a jog in the park or a visit to the gym. I then work from home through the afternoon. I usually take my live sessions from home but sometimes use the Library if I happen to have a book that I need to collect or drop off. The Library has set aside safe spaces to study and participate in lectures which one may access by reserving online, especially for students who may not have a conducive learning environment from home.

Challenges and highlights

Being far away from home in the midst of a pandemic has been quite a challenge. The situation diminishes any opportunities for human connections which form an important role in our mental and physical well-being as a social species. The pressure is thus more on international students who are far away from their loved ones and seek to form crucial connections with their new environment.

My highlight in the UK is when on a whim, I hired a Santander bike and decided to ride from Buckingham Palace, taking in the sights of London’s architecture, finally ending up at Canary Wharf! It was a healthy and environmentally friendly way of introducing myself to London.

I look forward to fully interacting with my fellow students as well as having the full Birkbeck experience when we will be able to. My 2020 has been an opportunity to reflect and develop gratitude for many of life’s pleasures which we take for granted.

Share

The silent extinction of the truffle kingdom

Could climate change lead to the complete extinction of truffles? BSc Financial Economics with Accounting student Nada Hinic explains.Mushrooms on a forest floor

         “All that is gold does not glitter,
          Not all those who wander are lost;
         The old that is strong does not wither,
         Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”

         (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring)

Could climate change lead to the complete extinction of truffles? According to some scientists, it is quite possible: the increase of dry and hot weather in the regions of Italy, France and Spain can lead to a very serious situation for truffles, with the possibility of them disappearing completely in these regions by the end of the century. This would mean that the delicacy, which is already dizzyingly expensive and can be compared to the price of gold, would reach the value of an even more incredible level.

Average retail truffle prices in 2019

Source: https://truffle.farm/truffle_prices.html

We can find strong evidence in historical articles on culinary culture that 18th and 19th century Europeans consumed truffles abundantly, from which it can be concluded that this fungus was not expensive. In the last 100 years, crops in the regions of Italy, France and Spain have decreased from a harvest of 2,000 tonnes a year to just about 20, due to global warming, acid rain, and, more recently, heat waves and reduced rainfall.

Scientist Ulf Buntgen, in his latest study ‘Black truffle winter production depends on Mediterranean summer rainfall’ (for which he used 49 years of continuous harvest and climate data from Spain, France and Italy) claims that truffle production rates from November to March significantly rely on previous rainfall from June to August, and that too much autumn rain adversely affects the later winter harvest.

The question might be asked how the market manages to survive. The logical answer would be that dealers have turned to alternative sources. Truffles themselves are not uncommon. Many sources in Europe still under the radar are producers in Croatia, Poland, Serbia, Albania … where they grow the same species as in the three most popular European regions. Why is that so? Truffles that are claimed to come from France or Italy (regardless of country of origin) achieve a premium price.

China has been, for several years now, the largest producer and exporter of truffles in the world. However, the quality of Chinese truffles is not satisfactory to any world standard, so their market price is very low. Australia and New Zealand are also on the horizon, but their production only covers their local demand. With the greatest sadness, one must also ask: will the Australian truffle market survive the devastation brought by the recent forest fires? The US has also entered the market recently, but it cannot be considered a serious competitor to the Europeans as yet.

All the sources combined are not enough to keep up with the demand for this delicacy. In 2019, a pound of quality black truffle cost about $650, and white almost $2000 (however the price soared again in November 2019). In 2017, due to too much drought in the previous year, the yield of white truffles was so weak that the price of one pound of white truffles skyrocketed to $4000.

Average white truffle prices (USD/lb)

Source: https://truffle.farm/truffle_prices.html

London restaurateurs charge around £5 per gram of truffle shavings, claiming they make no profit on truffle, but the reason for the offer is the quality of the dish: ‘only few shavings can turn the dish from ordinary to extraordinary’.

Because of their hidden underground life cycle, truffles have aroused the interest of many scientists and many mysteries about them have now been revealed, though not all.

Truffles are hypogenous fungi: that is, unlike mushrooms on stems, they grow underground. Buried, their interaction with the rest of the living world is very complex. They depend on their hosts on which they feed, which are primarily oak and hazelnut trees and fir trees. The development of truffles is a wonderful harmony between the tree and the truffle itself: the tree provides the truffle with sugar and the fungus gives the tree nutrients from water and soil. Fertilisation depends on the animals they can feed with their trunks, not on the wind, to spread its spores. To attract the attention of animals, when truffles mature, they turn on their spectacular scent, sending signals to anyone available to them that they are ready to be excavated so they can be dispersed.

But if truffles are so rare and desirable, why not just grow your own? The answer is that truffle cultivation is harder than it looks, and many scientists have addressed the issue. In recent decades, techniques have been developed to vaccinate tree seedlings with truffle mycelium, but the process is still difficult and does not necessarily guarantee that truffles will mature. Italian white truffles do not respond to these techniques at all, while French black truffles, on the other hand, are more susceptible to domestication.

Leading countries by truffle production in 2017 and 2018

Source: Leading countries by mushroom and truffle production 2018 (source: https://www.atlasbig.com/en-us/countries-mushroom-truffle-production) Leading countries by mushroom and truffle production 2017 (source: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-world-s-top-producers-of-mushroom-and-truffle.html)

The irrigation technique remains a safe method to preserve the survival, especially of the white truffle, as Buntgen observes in his work, but this also has its limitations. Recognising the vulnerability of the sector, there is a need to further foster stronger connections between farmers, politicians and scientists in order to maintain environmental and economic sustainability under the predicted climate change in southern Europe.

Further Information:

Share

Why even a soft Brexit gives the oil oligarchs what they want

Dr Frederick Guy, Senior Lecturer in Management, explains how Britain’s decision to leave the European Union will hamper efforts to combat climate change and bolster the power of Putin and other major fossil fuel exporters.

Putin – whose name I use here as shorthand for the entire oligarchy of not just Russia but all major fossil fuel exporters – wants to prevent the emergence of international institutions which would be able to bring climate change under control. That is because the control of climate change would require destroying the oil and gas business, and with it his wealth and power.

To this end, two of the central objectives of the oil oligarchs have been the installation of a US government which is hostile to international cooperation in general and cooperation on climate in particular; and the fragmentation of the European Union. Trump, and Brexit; more broadly, a science-denying Republican party, and resurgent nationalism in every European country and region.

Even soft Brexit will be enough for Putin
I will explain below why these two political objectives, in the US and in the EU, are necessary – and, unfortunately, probably sufficient – for Putin’s ends. But first let me just say that, for Putin’s purposes, any Brexit will do, Hard, No Deal … or the softest of soft, as long as Britain withdraws from the political institutions of the EU.

In Britain, where anti-Brexit arguments have focused on the damage to the UK economy and the threat to peace in Ireland, a very soft Brexit is alluring: some kind of Norway ++ which keeps the UK essentially in both the Single Market and the Customs Union, but removes it from the political institutions of the EU. In British politics such an outcome would of course be a sorry face-saving compromise, letting politicians claim to have left the EU while retaining the economic advantages of membership (at some considerable cost in the form of lost voice in making the economic rules). For Putin, though, it would be a great victory, because what threatens Putin is a coherent West- and Central European voice on climate policy. The more he can fragment the EU – through the withdrawal of a big actor like Britain, and the discord which follows – the better off he is.

We can’t know how large a factor Putin has been in the political successes of Trump and Brexit. Obviously, there’s a lot more behind the surge of nationalism around the world than such plutocratic manipulation. Yet propaganda does work – ask Goebbels, ask Maddison Avenue, ask any company or political party that invests in public relations or advertising. And just the fact that Putin has made such obvious efforts to influence domestic politics in so many countries, raises the question of why he would do so.

Geopolitics in the anthropocene
I am writing here about the power of the oligarchs of oil: about the politics of plutocracy, and also about geo-politics.

The oligarchs of oil are just one segment of the larger plutocracy which afflicts our age. The oil oligarchs present us with a different set of problems than other oligarchs, however; our diagnosis of these problems is hindered if we think of plutocracy, or of capitalism, as one undifferentiated thing.

The other most prominent members of the plutocratic class have fortunes based on locking down parts of the digitized network economy (Amazon, Google, Microsoft,  privatized telephone networks, and so on), or on the extravagant protections now offered intellectual property (notable in pharma, biotechnology, and certain profitable corners of publishing). We might add to this list fortunes from the world of finance, but finance needs something to finance, and it is the monopoly sectors of the “real” economy – both in natural resources like oil and in information resources – which nourish finance. So let us speak simply of oil oligarchs and information oligarchs.

The two groups of oligarchs have a common interest in preventing the public from taking away their unearned hoards of wealth. The information oligarchs fear laws that would restore both our digital networks and our funds of accumulated knowledge to their proper state as a commons without monopolist tollgates – in short, that we will make their products free. The fossil fuel oligarchs fear that we will simply stop using their products. If justice ever comes for the information oligarchs it will be a piecemeal and prolonged set of battles, leaving the principals humbled but probably well heeled. The oil oligarchs, on the other hand, have their backs against the wall: they know that the health of the biosphere requires that their euthanasia – to borrow a technical economic term from Keynes – comes soon.

We can also think of what Putin and his ilk do in terms of state power – they act not merely as wealthy and influential individuals but as rulers – and thus of geo-politics. At first blush, we might think in terms of traditional Great Power or superpower rivalries. Putin’s politics, however, are about oil. And the geo-politics of oil is no longer primarily about control of the oil supply, but about the right to keep selling it. Any effective climate policy will sharply reduce demand for fossil fuels, which will mean, even if it is not all left in the ground, that both the quantity sold and the price will fall – shredding colossal oil fortunes.

If it seems far-fetched to reduce the policy objectives of a large state, once a superpower and still possessed of a huge nuclear arsenal, to permission to sell a single product, just look at the dependence of Russia on fuel (oil, gas, coal) exports. In 2017 – the latest year for which the World Bank provides these figures – Russia’s net exports of fuel amounted to 13% of GDP – an astonishing level for a country of that size. The only countries with higher levels of dependence on oil exports are states, like the Gulf monarchies, which produce little else (see Figure 1). Leaving the oil in the ground would not destroy Russia – if anything, it would free the country from the influence of oil, which entrenches corruption and despotism, and crowds out most other economic initiative – but it would destroy Russia’s oligarchy.

Figure 1

This is why the interests of the Russian state and the House of Saud, despite their quarrel over dominance in Syria and the Gulf, align at the global level: they need to block the emergence of institutions of international governance capable of dealing with the problem of climate change.

Governing climate change
The governance problem is well known: eliminating greenhouse gas emissions requires deep changes to our material way of life; attendant social changes; and vast investments in new clean technologies and clean infrastructure. Moreover, we have dallied so long that, in order to have any realistic hope of preventing very dangerous climate change, we need to decarbonize fast (Figure 2) – meaning that the process will be more expensive, more socially disruptive, and more politically difficult than it would have been had action been taken when the problem was first understood some decades ago.

Figure 2. Past delays mean that rapid decarbonization is necessary for climate stabilization. Graph from http://folk.uio.no/roberan

What nation will undertake such changes without the assurance that other nations will do so as well? Technically, this is what we call a “collective action problem”, a prisoner’s dilemma game with many players, blown up to the global level. Agreements are made – in Porto Alegre, Kyoto, Copenhagen and Paris – but there is nobody to enforce them, and greenhouse gasses continue to accumulate.

Dealing with climate change of course requires action at every level, from the global down to individual and community choices about how to live and what to consume. But without an overall grip on the collective action problem between countries, there won’t be effective national policies in most countries. And without effective national policies, the efforts of individuals and local communities will be weakened by the knowledge that others are taking no action, and so will not add up to enough.

For the past quarter century we have had climate agreements which have no teeth. There is no prospect of having an actual global government to enforce the agreements. How, then, do collective action problems get solved at a global level? Some say it only happens in periods of history when single hegemonic power – notably, Britain from the defeat of Napoleon until the mid-1800s, and the USA in the decades after World War II – had the weight to enforce international rules of trade and finance (rules used, of course, to the hegemon’s advantage); the same might serve for rules about greenhouse gas emissions, but there is no single dominant world power to play that role today.

Our best hope – is it shocking that it has come to a point where this is something more to hope for than to fear? – is that a small number of very large powers would act in concert as leaders, and enforcers, of international agreements to cut greenhouse gasses. The method of enforcement could be a combination of threatened withdrawal of access to export markets, and conditions placed on foreign investment.

What countries could exercise such power? In Figure 3a I plot the GDP and the greenhouse gas emissions of the world’s 25 largest economies – again, treating the EU as one country. Note that I have used ratio (logarithmic) scales, so the differences between the larger and smaller countries are compressed on the graph, but even so three big ones stand out in both GDP and emissions: China, the USA, and the EU. Big as they are, if these three giant economies decarbonized, it would not be enough to stop global warming. But all other countries depend on access to these three big markets, and investment from them. Individually, none is globally hegemonic; together, they could fill that role.

Figure 3

Figure 3b plots the same information, but with the EU split up. This leaves the US, China, and then a large mass of mid-sized emitters: six of the 25 biggest CO2 emitters are members of the EU. It is within in the mass of mid-size CO2 emitters that the collective action problem becomes overwhelming, each saying “after you”, each proposing actions that will shift costs to others. It is a recipe for non-action, for fatal delay, and that is why Putin needs to make the EU ineffective as a political unit. If you add to that the effective side-lining of the USA – its de facto alliance with Putin and the House of Saud – this configuration leaves no plausible leader, no plausible enforcer, for climate policy.

It may seem a faint hope any of that those three powers – China, the EU, and the USA – will actually choose to take decisive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps it is, but other hopes are fainter still. And, if it were really such a far-fetched possibility, I do not think that the petro-powers, together with fossil fuel interests in the industrial countries themselves, would be doing so much to prevent it. Their support for both Trump and Brexit – any Brexit – is a central part of that effort to prevent the US and EU from taking decisive action on climate change.

What this should say to you if you are looking forward to any sort of Brexit, whether it be the ice bath of No Deal or the warm shower of Norway++, is that Putin will thank you for it, and that your great grandchildren, if they are among humanity’s survivors, will curse you.

Share

COP 21: Saving the rainforests and ice sheets

This post was contributed by Dr Becky Briant, senior lecturer in Physical Geography at Birkbeck’s Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies (GEDS)

Paris_skyline_from_the_observation_deck_of_the_Montparnasse_tower,_July_2015 - By Joe deSousa (Paris skyline) [CC0], via Wikimedia CommonsEach December for the past six years I have sat in a lecture room on a Tuesday evening in December and had the same conversation with a new group of students on my Climate Change module – what will be the outcome from the latest round of climate negotiations?

In 2009, I had only just launched the Birkbeck MSc in Climate Change Management. The Copenhagen COP was all over the news and hopes were high. One of my students worked in government and was actually there – sending back a daily briefing and entertaining us all with stories of Ed Miliband being woken up to respond to the hasty US-China deal that was brought together in the last few hours. But in the end it felt like failure. And the next few years were very quiet. It was hard to find useful resources online for the students to read and it seemed like no one expected the annual negotiations to yield much that was new.

Yet slowly things have been changing. Now, at COP 21 in Paris, it feels again like a useful deal might be struck. We have greenhouse gas emissions pledges on the table from most of the countries in the world and it seems like we have a chance of a useful reporting and review framework to surround them. It’s not yet enough, but it’s close enough and important enough that I took my family on the annual climate march for the first time. They were too small in 2009 for Copenhagen and perhaps I was too complacent about the hopes for a deal.

What we need to do

Dr Becky Briant on a climate march

Dr Becky Briant on a climate march

We need a deal to work this time though. We need to move on from the details of frameworks to actually acting to reduce emissions, as so many of our Birkbeck alumni already are across government, business and the third sector. We need to start holding countries accountable to their pledges, and urging joined up thinking in Governments as yesterday’s analysis of how many future coal fired power stations are planned in various economies shows.

The pledges we have now are a good start, but they are only that. Research by the Climate Interactive team at MIT shows that in themselves they will only limit global average surface warming to 3.5 degrees Celsius above the 1850 pre-industrial baseline. This is well above the 2 degrees that the world agreed at Copenhagen would constitute ‘dangerous’ climate change.

It starts to run the risk of crossing thresholds in the climate system such as complete Amazon forest dieback due to extreme drying which would severely affect the amount of carbon dioxide the land system can store for us. Or melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, causing sea levels to rise by some 7m. Once these tipping points are crossed, the system would be changed forever – at least longer than any human lifetime – and the new system would act to reinforce the changes seen. For example, losing the ice sheets would lower the reflectiveness of the earth’s surface, causing it to absorb more energy and so heat the world further.

The current pledges on the table only run until 2030 so there is plenty of scope for more ambitious pledges to reduce projected warming further, detailed very helpfully by the Climate Interactive team here:

The action required to have a strong chance of actually staying below 2 degrees Celsius rise in temperature is challenging and I don’t think we can scale up the technologies required in time. But I am hoping that in another six years’ time my students and I will be having a very different conversation. And that my children will get to raise their children in a world that still has an Amazon rainforest and ice sheets at the poles because we acted now to stabilise temperature rise to at least near the 2 degree limit.

Find out more

Share

The UN in Paris: Follow the Carbon-Free Money

This post was contributed by Jo Abbess, associate research fellow at Birkbeck, and graduate of the college’s MSc Climate Change. Her book, Renewable Gas: The Transition to Low Carbon Energy Fuels, was published this autumn by Palgrave Macmillan

By Joe deSousa (Paris skyline) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

The great caravan that is the United Nations has assembled some exceedingly important officials from almost every nation on Earth in Paris, France, for the annual jamboree of climate change negotiations. Some very exciting things have already been announced:

  • 183 of 195 countries have pledged voluntary and unenforceable action on climate change
  • Bill Gates has promised us that new Technology, brought about by the might of Innovation, in his new “Breakthrough Energy Coalition”, will be investable and bankable clean energy;
  • Obama’s “Mission Innovation” will see 20 countries pledge to double their Research and Development funding;
  • and all but nine of the climate change activists that were trying to stage a peaceful public demonstration in Paris have been released from highly secure custody.

Like the police and army in Paris, we are on high alert. Maybe there will be genuine progress. Maybe there will be a treaty that licks global warming and locks the risk of dangerous climate change out. Maybe I’m being too cynical, but I very much doubt that the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will really get to grips with the business of curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

A delaying tactic?

For one thing, even though Technology and Innovation are the twin gods of all business schools, we don’t need to wait for any more Research and Development (R&D) – we already have all the types of clean energy we need. It’s right that clean energy is essential for tackling global warming, but some could argue quite reasonably that waiting for the results of another decade of R&D is just a delaying tactic. Who, we could ponder, would be interested in delaying the deployment of renewable energy? Have Obama and Gates and the United Nations itself been hoodwinked by the baseless promise of, say, new designs for nuclear power in two decades’ time, instead of onshore wind and solar farms that we can build today?

The UNFCCC has a history of being diverted from the main solutions to global warming: namely, the extensive application of energy efficiency principles in all business, commerce and manufacture; the application of demand-side reduction measures for all energy consumers; and the massive, geographically dispersed installation of renewable electricity generation stations. To roll out new clean energy technologies will take some fossil fuel energy to start with – so this needs to be compensated for by the application of stringent energy consumption controls.

We need a transition plan

Does anybody talk about this seriously? To wait any longer to transition from fossil fuel consumption to renewable energy consumption puts the entire habitable surface of the Earth at risk from dangerous climate change – so why should we accept delays for new research programmes to be completed? It’s true that any action on deforestation will address up to 20% of greenhouse gas emissions, but that still leaves 80% of all humanity’s energy coming from fossil fuels that we must stop using or risk our place on Earth. We don’t need more R&D, or cross our fingers for more Innovation.

What we need is a transition plan – a strategy to transition from the use of fossil fuels to the use of renewable energy. Don’t sell me shiny, new energy technologies that don’t yet exist. Replace my power supply with green wind or solar power. But the wind doesn’t always blow, people complain, and the sun sets in the evening, people explain. So is renewable energy unreliable? No, renewable power is already offsetting massive chunks of expenditure on fossil fuels. But how do we bridge the gap and keep the lights on on calm, dark nights? Well, a transition plan would be simple. Keep replacing fossil fuel-fired power generation with renewable electricity generation, and keep replacing fossil fuel-fired power generation backup with low carbon gas backup.

Start with Natural Gas – while we still have it – and transition to Renewable Gas. This would take the cooperation of the large players in the oil, gas, coal, nuclear and engineering industries. What have they had to say about climate change so far? Shell, for example, has kept selling the idea of Carbon Capture and Storage to glue onto the back of fossil fuel-fired power plants. The efficiency of such a strategy is so low, not even the UK Government is ready to throw money at it any more. Yet Shell has gasification plant, which in theory could use biomass as input feedstock to manufacture low carbon gas. So why don’t they do it? And why don’t they publish their strategy to do this?

If Shell, BP and ExxonMobil won’t go public on a transition to Renewable Gas, then maybe it should fall to companies like Siemens Energy, Alstom and General Electric to make low carbon gas to compete with Natural Gas – which has a projected shelf life of between 20 to 35 years – after which depletion of the gas resources, coupled with concerns over carbon dioxide emissions will bar its continued use.

We don’t have time to wait

COP 21 logoI think that if Britain is to improve investment in clean energy, the Government needs to:

  • consent all onshore and offshore wind farms and solar farms to permit accelerating investment;
  • develop a Renewable Gas Obligation (with no subsidy attached) to mandate that all gas suppliers and gas-fired power plants use a certain proportion of low carbon gas;
  • allow for re-nationalisation of gas-fired power plants and gas storage facilities;
  • and bring back a state-funded comprehensive building insulation scheme – including making sure all new buildings are zero carbon.

We don’t have time to wait for big, bold Bill to bumble his way around energy futures. Outside the UN boxing ring, investment in renewable energy technologies has seen some impressive advances, and this flow of actual capital, more than the UN climate talks, gives me cause for hope. If COP21 does not produce a genuine, immediate stimulus to clean energy investment, then the process for me will have been a meaningless waste of time, personal energy and aeroplane emissions.

Find out more

Share

Latin America is being transformed by a vision of post-human rights

This post was contributed by Dr Oscar Guardiola-Rivera of Birkbeck’s School of Law. It originally appeared on The Guardian.

In Latin America, as elsewhere, progressive governments of the centre and left struggle with a seemingly intractable dilemma: should the country exploit its natural resources to the fullest, no matter what the consequences – or consider ethical questions such as the wellbeing of the natural environment and future generations?

Countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil hope to benefit from the commodity boom in global markets, fuelled by demand in China and elsewhere. At the same time their constitutions, as well as the manifestos of progressive political parties, pledge allegiance to a whole new variety of non- and post-human rights – rights of nature, declarations of inter-generational justice, and the recognition of Amerindian cultures.

These cultures are being celebrated in Beyond El Dorado, an exhibition at the British Museum in London. It includes hundreds of gold objects excavated in the early 20th century; and ceramics and stone necklaces from the Museo del Oro in Bogotá – which has one of the best collections of pre-Hispanic gold in the world – and the British Museum’s unique collections.

The British public has responded en masse to the profound spiritual and aesthetic message expressed by the gold objects displayed in the museum. But now it is time to consider the ethical and political implications of that message: not as a relic of the distant past, but because it may contain some of the answers we desperately seek to the most relevant questions of our time. A discussion organised by the Guardian and the British Museum next month aims to do just that with the help of a distinguished panel.

These big questions – climate change, food security, equality – are already being discussed in Latin America thanks to the social movements that are helping to remould politics and political discourse. In these countries both the electoral survival of progressive parties and the continuity of crucial processes of reconciliation and democratisation depend on the support of increasingly active social movements. These often include rural as well as urban campaigners, concerned about the social and environmental devastation caused by global market forces.

In this respect, social movements in the Americas display an attitude that cannot be dismissed simply as backwards or anti-business. They demonstrate a legitimate critical attitude towards the contradictions inherent in processes of globalisation. And rather than withdrawing into some fantasy zone, these movements seek to engage actively with the state and transform the relationship between the state and the people from within.

The concept that explains this interdependence between social movements and progressive parties in government goes by the name of “dual power“: the underpinning of vertical state-citizen relations by horizontal social movements, ready to criticise the decisions of the parties they elect on the basis of a commitment to a progressive agenda. This is how the protests that rocked the politics of countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia last year must be understood: as manifestations of dual power, and expressions of the terms of a new social contract – one that includes nature not only as a reservoir of resources but as an agent of politics and of the wellbeing of society.

As far as these movements are concerned, democracy and ethical politics go hand in hand. They discuss the big questions of our time – climate change, food security, the role of commons, the rights of nature, equality – in a political arena that until recently appeared to offer no alternative to the “one size fits all” view of globalisation and the market.

Crucially, in most Latin American countries such dogmatic views were imposed by sheer force, either military – as in Chile, Brazil, Argentina or Bolivia –or paramilitary, as in Colombia. To most Colombians it is now clear – a matter of indisputable record – that the paramilitary violence that engulfed the country with peculiar intensity during the last decade and a half, with the leading intervention of the United States, was part and parcel of an economic project rather than solely a counter-insurgency exercise.

The model still in place depends on the unbridled extraction of natural resources from parts of the country that have traditionally sustained peasant, indigenous and Afro-Colombian ways of life, and is the result of such violence. Because of this, as far as the social movements are concerned, any peace process worthy of the name must also consider the serious ethical questions posited by climate change science, food security and so on.

According to the information provided by climate science, as well as from anthropology and the humanities, it is no longer possible to keep human history separate from the history of the planet. We have become geological agents, capable of affecting and even destroying nature as a whole. We do this through the very processes that we considered to be at the heart of freedom in the 20th century – chief among them free trade. What we need now is a new politics, not only a politics of freedom, but one of post-human rights and cosmopolitics.

Share

Thoughts on the recent UN climate meeting in Poland

This post was contributed by Marit Marsh Stromberg,  a PhD student from Birkbeck’s Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies. Her scholarship is funded by Good Energy – a renewable energy company.

One might have hoped for strong words and swift implementation from world leaders following the latest round of international climate change talks. The evidence and reality point towards the need for action. Firstly, the high likelihood that temperature rise has been caused by humans was emphasised in the Fifth Assessment Report on climate change, which was released recently by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Secondly, typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines earlier this month, has killed more than 5,000 people. Despite these facts, there was no new strongly-phrased climate agreement at the Warsaw Climate Change Conference from 11-22 November.

As usual, things move slowly and are more complex than that.

The gathering of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in the Polish capital, also known as Conference of the Parties (COP) 19, was part of a series of conferences to create a new Kyoto protocol ready to be signed in Paris in 2015. This time the hope is to get every country on board as the last treaty didn’t include major players like the US and China.

The host of the conference, Poland, has been criticised by environmental groups for hosting, at the same time, the Coal and Climate Summit (18-19 November) with the World Coal Association. While this choice to host climate change talks and a coal industry meeting simultaneously could be seen as hypocritical, I say it was a good choice. If it was not held in Poland, that coal conference would have taken place in some other country. The coincidence of the apparently mutually exclusive conferences taking place at the same time sheds lights on the current status of things: while governments all over the world may invest in renewable energies and energy efficiency measures, at the same time they allow business-as-usual in the fossil fuel sector; while the Arctic is melting, new fossil fuel extraction opportunities are revealed and explored. I am sure it is not only Poland that could be accused of hypocrisy and caught red-handed.

Now, how about the outcome of the UN climate conference? It has been reported as limited, but some small steps are still considered to have been made. As one-fifth of the CO2 emissions are related to deforestation the creation of a fund helping developing countries to keep their forests is considered as one of the more substantial outcomes. Another step forward have been the decisions taken regarding the compensation of loss and damage in relation to climate change for developing countries.

As regards the important question of assigning specific CO2 emission reduction targets, it was decided that countries should be able to present their proposed contributions (the exact word was a result of some longer negotiations and chosen instead of commitments) in early 2015 to allow time for the combined efforts to be evaluated before the final meeting later the same year.

The phrasing can apparently now be interpreted in two ways. Firstly, from the perspective of some developed nations (e.g. the US) it is clear that all countries need to make some actual reduction commitments, resting on the the argument that it is necessary that we target those countries that will be emitting the most in the future. Secondly, from the perspective of some developing nations (e.g. China, India) it is clear that developed countries need to take more action since they have the historical responsibility for the current state of affairs. I appreciate both arguments: the current emission trends need to be addressed, but we can’t forget the socioeconomic divisions that exists between (and within) countries and how history brought us here in the first place.

While the world leaders and the UN now have the delicate task of trying to reach a far-reaching and shared platform by the end of 2015, I will continue my own journey in a field related to climate change. This autumn I have started a PhD in Geography at Birkbeck. I will be looking into the characteristics of spatial and temporal variability of intermittent renewable energies, such as wind and solar energy, in the UK and how these characteristics can be used for finding a suitable renewable energy mix for a future reliable and greener electric power system. My studies are funded by Good Energy – a renewable energy company.

I will update you on my progress via a termly blog on these pages. I can’t wait to contribute to research to help reduce CO2  emissions. After all, time is running out.

Share

UN World Environment Day

This post was contributed by Dr Becky Briant, from Birkbeck’s Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies.

A journey of discovery

When I set up the MSc in Climate Change Management at Birkbeck in 2009, I thought I knew about climate change, having studied it since I was an undergraduate student in Cambridge. What I wasn’t prepared for was how little I actually did know. I didn’t know how much change had already happened (particularly in the Arctic and high mountain regions), and I didn’t realise just how little time we have left to make the sort of changes in our carbon emissions that our societies will be able to adjust to relatively easily. So, it was fascinating to watch a similar journey of discovery played out in the Birkbeck Cinema in Gordon Square last Thursday.

Thin Ice

The Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies (GEDS) organised a screening of the new film Thin Ice for UN World Environment Day. This film follows the geologist and amateur filmmaker Simon Lamb on a voyage of discovery to find out how reliable the science around human-induced climate change is. As a geologist, you might think that he too ‘knew’ about climate change, yet the film showed that there was so much more to know. Footage followed scientists in their ‘daily lives’, collecting data and analysing it, including shadowing scientists at the New Zealand Scott Antarctic Base. It looked at daily climate measurements and how atmospheric chemistry (including carbon dioxide) is measured at the present day. He also talked to physicists who explained the greenhouse effect and modellers about how robust their models are. What I found most fascinating however, was his interview with Phil Jones of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The interview was recorded before the events of ‘Climategate’ and to me clearly showed what the independent review later stated, that the CRU undertakes robust research on instrumental temperature records, and that the trend shows the temperatures are clearly increasing, as shown below. This trend is clearly seen also in many other instrumental temperature datasets.

Graph shows globally averaged Earth surface temperature (combined land and sea) based on instrumental datasets and produced by the Met Office’s Hadley Centre and the CRU in Norwich for 1850-2006. Source: Houghton (2009) Figure 4.1a based on FAQ3.1, Figure 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report from Working Group 1 (2007).

So, what should we do?

Following the film showing, there was a spirited discussion between ‘Thin Ice’ filmmaker David Sington, Antarctic scientist Colin Summerhayes and me (Dr Becky Briant) about how this problem can be tackled. The science is clear, despite vocal sceptics working hard to hijack the debate, but the politics are much more complex. This seems to be particularly since the pace of change is slow enough, at least in temperate regions, that urgent action seems like it can be put off. Debate was particularly lively around Colin’s assertion that scientists might come across as too alarmist to try and counter the sceptics and harm our own case. This was not a popular position and I was particularly struck by a student on one of the GEDS undergraduate programmes who is from Peru where she stated that mountain glaciers are melting, water supplies are threatened and no-one doubts the reality of human-induced climate change. Overall, much food for thought, and continued discussion over drinks outside the cinema.

Share