In so far as the scientific community ever raises its voice, it is screaming at the top of its lungs for the world to take notice. Divest SPS is our response.

 

2013′s landmark report by Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the authoritative international body on the science of climate change, backed by 193 governments – reinforces the need for swift and sizeable action if we are to limit average global warming to less than the 2 °C guardrail agreed to by nearly every country on Earth.

 

Getting Off The Curve

In particular, to stay below the 2 °C guardrail, mankind’s annual carbon dioxide emissions have to come down, fast. Yet ever since the Industrial Revolution our emissions have rocketed at a constant, unremitting exponential rate, increasing by about 1.8% every year. The most advanced climate models in the world tell us that to avoid 2 °C, these carbon dioxide emissions must peak in the next decade or so and then fall at the same rate that they’ve been rising for two centuries. Getting off the curve will require an energy revolution at least as profound as the one that got us on it.

 

The most advanced climate models in the world tell us that to avoid 2C, our carbon dioxide emissions must peak in the next decade and then fall at the same rate they’ve been rising for two centuries. That’s the ball game.

 

The reason that our carbon dioxide emissions must fall so rapidly is that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide sticks around for hundreds of years. It accumulates, and it’s the cumulative carbon dioxide emissions since the Industrial Revolution that determine the level of warming. This seemingly benign bit of science, internationally recognized by the world’s climate scientists in the latest IPCC report, has game-changing consequences.

 

 

To keep global warming below the 2 °C guardrail, the world needs to set itself an all-time budget on carbon dioxide emissions. We can afford to emit so much carbon dioxide, but after that, no more. Ever. To have at least a 66% chance of meeting the 2 °C target (which we hope you’ll agree is the least you can ask for when you’re talking about the future of our planet), the global budget on carbon dioxide emissions till 2100 is about 1000 billion tonnes (with an uncertainty of roughly 100 billion tonnes). The terrifying math of global warming is that at our current increasing rate of fossil fuel burning we will blow through this budget in about 20 years. And by that point we’ll need to have transitioned to a completely carbon-free renewable energy infrastructure because all of the oil rigs, coal mines and gas wells will have to be shut down to stay within our budget. (Even the International Energy Agency’s idealized scenario for scale-up of carbon capture and storage technology would only extend this budget by about 10%, so even colossal breakthroughs are extremely unlikely to affect our need to get off the curve).

 

 

Unburnable Carbon

Well maybe we’ll have run out of fossil fuels by then anyway? Unfortunately, no. Current fossil fuel reserves (those that we’re at least 90% sure of) amount to at least 2860 Gt and we intend to burn it all. We have three times more fossil fuels than we can afford to burn. Yet last year the top 200 fossil fuel companies spent $674 billion finding and developing more reserves; that’s $6.74 trillion over the next decade in wasted capital developing reserves that are unburnable.

 

We Need An Energy Revolution – And We Can Do It

 

Despite all this doom and gloom, we do have what it takes to dig ourselves out of this hole. But our window of opportunity is almost closed. As one influential climate science paper put it:

“Humanity can solve the carbon and climate problem in the first half of this century simply by scaling up what we already know how to do.”

 

This scale up will need a Herculean energy revolution no less monumental than World War II, the Moon race, the Manhattan Project or the Civil Rights movement. We will need solar and wind farms the size of states and countries. We will need ultra energy-efficient homes and vehicles powered by a state-of-the-art energy grid. We will need an end to fossil fuel subsidies and we will need a price on carbon to drive these transitions. The thing most people don’t realize is that, at least for the next couple of decades, we have most of the technologies needed to do this. Many of them will come from our students. What we’re lacking is political will and a sense of generational mission.

 

 

We conclude that barriers to a 100% conversion to WWS [wind, water and sunlight] power worldwide are primarily social and political, not technological or even economic.

Delucchi & Jacobson,Energy Policy 39, 1170 (2011)

 

 

In conclusion, we find that the effect of global mitigation action delayed by two decades is much more pronounced than the consequences of uncertainty surrounding mitigation technology availability and future energy demands, and renders even the geophysical uncertainties almost irrelevant for the 2 °C objective.

Rogelj, J. et al., Nature 493, 79 (2013)

 

Einstein said, “Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act”.

 

At SPS we know plenty. It’s time to act against climate change. Surely a good start is to stop investing in the fossil fuel industry?

 

 

 

  Sign the Divest SPS Letter!  

 

References

• Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (September 2013).

• Oreskes, N. The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. Science 306, 1686 (2004).

• Dessler, A. E. What We Know About Climate Change. United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Hearing: ‘Review of the President’s Climate Action Plan’ (January 2014).

• United Nations Conference of the Parties Framework Convention on Climate Change,Copenhagen Accord (March 2010).

• Rogelj, J. et al. Emission pathways consistent with a 2 °C global temperature limit. Nature Climate Change 1, 413 (2013).

• Jarvis, A. J., Leedal, D. T., Hewitt, C. N. Climate–society feedbacks and the avoidance of dangerous climate change. Nature Climate Change 2, 668 (2012).

• Harvey, F. World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns. The Guardian(November 2011).

• Stocker, T. F. The Closing Door of Climate Targets. Science 339, 280 (2012).

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• Allen, M. et al. The exit strategy. Nature Climate Change. 3, 57 (2009).

• Hoffert, M. I. et al. Energy implications of future stabilization of atmospheric CO2 content. Nature395, 881 (1998).

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• Clark, D. UN climate change panel: two graphs that tell the real story of the IPCC report. The Guardian (October 2013).

• www.TrillionthTonne.org

• Allen, M. R. et al. Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne.Nature 458, 1163 (2009).

• Meinshausen, M. et al. Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 °C.Nature 459, 1158 (2009).

• What to look for when using carbon budgets? Carbon Tracker Initiative (October 2013).

• Harvey, F. ‘Carbon budget’ talks urgent, warns Lord Stern. The Guardian (September 2013). 

• International Energy Agency, 450 Scenario: Method and Policy Framework (2012).

• Carbon Tracker Initiative, Unburnable Carbon 2013: Wasted capital and stranded assets (2013).

• Burners-Lee, M., Clark, D. The Burning Question, 2013.

• International Energy Agency, North America leads shift in global energy balance, IEA says in latest World Energy Outlook (November 2012).

• A draft of the 2014 IPCC Working Group III report concluded that “…another 15 years of failure to limit carbon emissions could make the problem virtually impossible to solve with current technologies.” see Gillis, J. U.N. Says Lag in Confronting Climate Woes Will Be Costly. NY Times(January 2014).

• Pacala, S., Socolow, R. Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies. Science 305, 968 (2004).

• Walsh, B. What the Public Doesn’t Get About Climate Change. TIME (October 2008).

• Rogelj, J. et al. Probabilistic cost estimates for climate change mitigation. Nature 493, 79 (2013).

• Hope, C., Hope, M. The social cost of CO2 in a low-growth world. Nature Climate Change 3, 722 (2013).

• Abraham, J., Nuccitelli, D. Recessions make climate change costlier, Hope family research finds.The Guardian (July 2013).

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Social Cost of Carbon (2013).

• Knopf, B. et al. Beyond 2020 – Strategies and costs for transforming the European energy system.Climate Change Economics 4, 1, 1340001 (2013).