We must respond to climate change today
Jacqueline M. McGlade is director of the European Environment Agency. She is a leading marine biologist and environmental informatics professor of the University of London.
Edited by Niels Boel
The climate is changing – faster than ever. Since the beginning of time, Earth’s climate has been changing. From warm periods to cold, life has had to adapt and evolve. But now human activities are having an effect on the dynamics of the planet itself. And most alarmingly the pace of change has dramatically altered, threatening to push many plant and animal species towards extinction.
By burning fossil fuels we have added to the natural emissions of greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. As a result, the concentration of such gases in the atmosphere is well above the level of any point in the last 800,000 years. Inevitably, temperatures are now rising too.
In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its latest scientific report, showing that the global average temperature increased over the past century by 0.74 °C. In the Arctic, the average temperature over land has increased by up to 5 °C over the same period and there is now a strong chance that the North Pole will be ice free in the summer in the next two to three decades.
Glaciers are melting more rapidly than expected, accelerating the rise of sea levels and increasing melt water floods and unseasonal water shortages in some of the most densely populated parts of the world.
It’s also clear that even if we could stop human-related emissions tomorrow, the massive amount of greenhouse gases that we’ve already pumped into the atmosphere will cause further warming of between a half and one degree.
We can already see what a one degree centigrade rise in global temperature above pre-industrial levels looks like. And we can anticipate what a two degree increase in temperature would bring: changes in the way that plants grow, where animals migrate and the way the ecosystems function.
But a world with a three degree temperature rise could look very different. Increased floods, storms and droughts would severely impact the way that we live – our access to water and food, and the security of our energy supplies.
By the time we get to a 4 °C increase, the rise in temperatures could destroy the very fabric of our societies. Some areas that are currently habitable might be unable to support human societies, let alone accommodate the numbers that we anticipate on the planet in the next 20 to 30 years.
And we don’t even want to talk about a world where average temperatures rise by five degrees or more.
The explosion of modern life has been built around seemingly unlimited supplies of coal, oil and gas, powering industries to meet relentlessly growing demand. The assumption all along has been that our natural environment has the capacity to provide endless supplies of fuels and accommodate ever more by-products of energy generation.
In reality, of course, burning fossil fuels to drive our economies has generated the greenhouse gas emissions that are now causing global warming.
Producing and consuming energy accounts for 70 percent of mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions. And half of these emissions are generated by China, the USA and European Union countries.
Energy demand in emerging economies, which include China, India, Brazil and Indonesia, is expected to grow rapidly, perhaps doubling in the next few decades.
If we choose to continue burning fossil fuels until supplies are exhausted, we will simply increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and experience even more global warming.
Energy efficiency
But there is an alternative. Shifting to a new paradigm of energy generation and use, based on renewable sources and energy efficiency, would allow us to avoid many of the problems of a warmer world.
Currently, both industries and households waste a great deal of the energy they produce. In the fight against climate change, this is an obvious place to start because greater energy efficiency doesn’t just cut greenhouse gas emissions – it actually saves us money. The International Energy Agency, for example, estimates that every $1 spent on energy saving measures avoids more than $2 investing in producing energy.
Small actions in individual households, such as shifting to more efficient household appliances, can have a huge effect when aggregated across the whole of society.
It’s estimated, for instance, that the ban on incandescent light bulbs in the European Union, which comes into effect in coming years, will produce financial savings of €5-10 billion each year and an energy savings equivalent to Romania’s annual electricity consumption.
Similarly, many places in the US have local bans on drying clothes outside on lines, which compels people to use electric dryers. The energy needs of these dryers are estimated to be equivalent to that produced by 15 nuclear power stations.
So actions to decrease energy demand are obviously crucial because they have an immediate effect on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. But this is just one part of the puzzle. We will still need to generate significant amounts of energy, not least because demand in the developing world is expected to rise rapidly. In meeting this demand, we must shift away from our dependence on fossil fuels and focus instead on renewables.
The EU is halfway to its goal of meeting 20 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources, such as wind and solar power, by 2020, but there is huge variation in the accomplishments of individual countries. The frontrunner, Sweden, already generates more than 40 percent of its energy from renewables – an example of what can be achieved with the right ambition and policies.
A broad perspective on costs and benefits
To keep climate change within manageable limits, we need to limit the average temperature change to two degrees or less. In practice, that means that by 2050 we will need to have cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent compared to 1990 levels. For industrialised countries, whose per capita greenhouse gas emissions still hugely exceed those elsewhere, the reduction will need to be more like 80 percent.
Energy efficiency and renewable energy obviously both have a crucial role to play. It’s important to stress, however, that there are different possibilities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and we shouldn’t just focus on identifying the cheapest approaches without considering their full impact. Doing most with our scarce resources demands that we avoid solutions to one problem that create new problems elsewhere.
The benefits of some renewable energy sources, for example, can be offset by the pollution they cause or their impact on water resources. Some measures to combat air pollution will help reduce global warming, some will exacerbate it.
Rather than generating externalised costs, we need to target measures that produce ‘win-wins’ wherever possible.
Achieving the needed changes in the ways we generate and use energy will obviously require efforts from across society. The decisions of businesses and consumers are ultimately going to determine the fate of our environment. But governments have a particularly important role in creating the incentives that guide those decisions.
A crucial element here is the price signals that we all face as producers or consumers. In market economies, we rely on prices to guide our purchasing decisions. All too often, however, market prices present a distorted image of the costs of production — excluding, for instance, costs imposed on society today or in the future as a result of pollution, climate change and so on.
Right now, fossil fuel prices often reflect the cost of extraction and distribution but fall far short of representing the full burden on the environment. Correcting these deficiencies using mechanisms such as green taxation would significantly increase the incentive for firms and individuals to invest in efficiency and renewable energy.
The challenge is considerable and will require efforts from all sectors and all countries. It’s crucial, though, that we don’t delay action while we debate the allocation of responsibilities because doing so will only make the goal harder to achieve.
IEA reckons that every year we delay shifting to low-carbon energy will add an extra $500 billion to the total cost of achieving the two degree target. A few years of delay could make the target unreachable.
Quite clearly, therefore, the costs of delay far exceed those of action. So the message is simple: we need to act now.
