Beyond Magical Thinking: Time to Get Real on Climate Change

In Paris, about 50,000 people flew to the French capital to attend yet another conference at which they were to strike, we were assured, a “landmark” — and also “ambitious” and “unprecedented” — agreement. Yet the Paris Agreement did not codify any specific reduction targets by the world’s largest emitters. And even if all voluntary non-binding pledges were honored (something utterly improbable), the Paris accord would still result in a 50 percent increase of emissions by 2030.

The data are clear: Between 1989 and 2019, we increased global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by about 67 percent. Affluent countries like the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and those in the European Union — whose per capita energy use was very high three decades ago — did reduce their emissions, but only by about 4 percent. Meanwhile, Indian greenhouse gas emissions increased 4.3 times, and Chinese emissions rose about 4.8 times. Atmospheric CO2 levels, which for centuries fluctuated narrowly at close to 270 parts per million (ppm), rose in the summer of 2020 to above 420 ppm, more than a 50 percent increase over the late 18^th-century level.

The problem is that rather than take a clear-eyed look at the enormous challenges of phasing out the fossil fuels that are the basis of modern industrial economies, we have ricocheted between catastrophism on one hand and the magical thinking of “techno-optimism” on the other.

In recent decades we have multiplied our reliance on the combustion of fossil fuels, resulting in a dependence that will not be severed easily, or inexpensively. How rapidly we can change this remains unclear. Add to this all other environmental worries, and you must conclude that the key existential question — can humanity realize its aspirations within the safe boundaries of our biosphere? — has no easy answers. But it is imperative that we understand the facts of the matter. Only then can we tackle the problem effectively.

The best examples of these omissions and commissions are the indefensibly inadequate building codes in cold-climate countries, which lead to an exorbitant waste of energy, and the worldwide adoption of SUVs. SUV ownership began to rise in the U.S. during the late 1980s and eventually diffused globally. By 2020 the average SUV emitted annually about 25 percent more CO2 than a standard car. Multiply that by the 250 million SUVs on the road worldwide in 2020, and you will see how the global embrace of these machines has wiped out, many times over, any decarbonization gains resulting from the slowly spreading ownership (just 10 million worldwide in 2020) of electric vehicles.

For those who ignore the energetic and material imperatives of our world, those who prefer mantras of green solutions to understanding how we have come to this point, the prescription is easy: just decarbonize — switch from burning fossil carbon to converting inexhaustible flows of renewable energies. But we are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life, and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years.

Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat, or as a result of extraordinarily rapid transformations relying on near-miraculous technical advances. To give just a single key comparison, in 2020 the average annual per capita energy supply of about 40 percent of the world’s population (3.1 billion people, which includes nearly all people in sub-Saharan Africa) was no higher than the rate achieved in both Germany and France in 1860. In order to approach the threshold of a dignified standard of living, those 3.1 billion people will need at least to double — but preferably triple — their per-capita energy use, and in doing so multiply their electricity supply, boost their food production, and build essential infrastructures. Inevitably, these demands will subject the biosphere to further degradation.