Now What? Making Sense of the Latest IPCC Report

This Week’s Reason for Hope!

China committed last Sept it will be carbon neutral by 2060

They just announced ambitious tree planting campaign to help meet climate targets

• Planning to plant ~ 14K square miles/year of trees starting 2021 through 2025
• That's an area larger than the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts combined, each year
• Also part of China's strategy to halt desertification

Source - China to step up tree planting campaign to help reach net zero | Reuters

Intro

Latest report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in early August 

• Climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying
• Part of 6th assessment cycle done by IPCC
• First assessment began back in 1988
• Forecasts have improved

UN climate meetings in Glasgow in 31Oct - 12Nov HOME - UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) at the SEC – Glasgow 2021 (ukcop26.org)

• Goals – set plan to stay within 1.5 degrees warming, help countries adapt, honor commitment to provide $100B / year, work together
• Critical chance to put us on right trajectory
• As world’s biggest economy, U.S. has chance to pressure other countries

Why 1.5° Celsius Target is Important

 Tipping point of sorts - impacts much worse with 2 degrees warming

• More severe weather events
• Less species loss and extinction
• Lower sea level rise

Reaching 1.5 degrees means rapid cuts

• 45% by 2030
• Net zero by 2050 or earlier

Source - Global Warming of 1.5 ºC — (ipcc.ch)

Takeaways from Latest Report

 Humans are causing warming

• No further doubt

Confidence in models has improved

• Earlier models were less accurate Von Walden: The IPCC Assessment Reports: How Good Have Climate Forcasts Been? | TED Talk

Five scenarios modeled

• Each scenario looks at different global responses to emissions
• Temperatures will continue to increase until 2050 in all scenarios
• In lowest emission scenario, temperatures starts to fall after mid-century

Rapid emission cuts and net zero by 2050 to avoid worst impacts

• Each additional increase in temperature results in increased frequency/severity of events like heat waves, droughts, heavy rains, tropical cyclones
• Certain elements of warming like sea level rise / reduction in ice sheets will take 100s to 1000s of yrs to reverse

Good news - we still control our destiny

Source – AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis — IPCC

Current Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Outlook

Top five emitting countries/regions: China – 24.3%, U.S. – 13.4%, E.U. – 9.1%, India – 6.3%, Russia – 4.9%

Top five together add up ~ 60%

China, U.S. and E.U. together are almost half of global emissions

As largest emitter, China is critical to addressing climate change

• However, per capita, U.S. is double China
• U.S. has also emitted more historically

Source - Global Emissions | Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (c2es.org)

Note – each countries share of CO2 emissions is slightly different than its share of GHG emissions which includes CO2 and non-CO2 sources

By sector: Electricity - 25%, Land Use (agriculture, forestry, etc) – 24%, Industry - 21%, Transportation - 14%, Buildings – 6%, Other - 10% (fossil fuel extraction, refining, etc) Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data | US EPA

Transitioning to renewables and electric vehicles would reduce emissions over 40% (including reduction in emissions do to less fossil fuel extraction / refining)

Changing certain land use practices have dual benefit Carbon Factsheet.indd (usda.gov)

• Reduces what’s emitted
• Sequesters more CO2 in soil

What’s the solution?

While we can each make personal changes, government action is the only way to get us there

U.S. needs to lead with actual policy changes

•  While our standing on climate isn’t what it used to be, we’re still world's largest economy

No single solution, but carbon price and a border adjustment are two critical steps Columbia | SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy | Leading Economists Offer 5 Carbon Tax Recommendations: 3 1/2 are Basic Principles of Economics

• Carbon tax is solution economists prefer
• Ideally, tax revenue would be returned to households as dividend to help them adjust to rising cost of goods
• Border adjustments would push China and others to curb emissions faster and avoids carbon leakage
• Could be part of infrastructure package

U.S. has accountability as world’s biggest consumer of resources - Use It and Lose It: The Outsize Effect of U.S. Consumption on the Environment - Scientific American