Governments' actions and climate change

I've been following the proceedings at COP26 closely, with a mounting sense of worry. Research group Climate Action Tracker (CAT) has forecast that the global atmospheric temperature is on track to reach 2.4C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. This is significantly higher than the 1.8C increase forecast by the International Energy Agency (IEA) last week. The IEA's figure was based on the optimistic premise that all the countries present at COP26 would live up to their new commitments that they signed up to in Glasgow, as well as delivering on those previously pledged. Backsliding and outright reneging on deals were not taken into account by the IEA.

A 2.4C rise is dangerous. The UK's Met Office warned in Glasgow yesterday that one billion people will be affected by extreme heat stress if the global temperature rises by just 2.0C. That includes heating to the point that the human body cannot cool itself through sweating, leading to an intense heat overload followed by a failure of the body's thermoregulatory mechanisms. That one billion is likely to want to move physically to somewhere cooler.

CAT’s calculation suggests that the 1.5C cap set at the Paris agreement of 2015 is still a distant goal. The forecast also warned that despite all the new measures agreed in Glasgow at COP26, greenhouse-gas emissions by the end of this decade could be twice as high as required to keep global warming down to 1.5C. This damning forecast was described as “looking through a telescope at an asteroid hurtling towards the Earth” by Greenpeace executive director Jennifer Morgan. 

However, it has to be said that the world's outlook has improved somewhat since the Paris climate summit in 2015. Six years ago, CAT estimated that despite all the policies agreed there, mankind was on a course to warm the planet by 3.6C. That would plunge the planet into an unstoppable cycle of runaway warming.

Britain’s and Canada’s chief scientist advisers said at COP26 yesterday that substantial changes in behaviour are needed to tackle the climate emergency. Sir Patrick Vallance said that behavioural change was already starting to happen, but more was needed. He said he cycled to work, ate less meat and had taken the train up to Glasgow. Sir Patrick told the BBC that the climate crisis was far bigger (“a fifty- to a hundred-year problem”) than coronavirus (“a two-to-four-year problem”) and would kill more people if immediate changes were not made. Canada’s chief scientific adviser, Mona Nemer, said there needs to be a “profound behavioural and cultural change in terms of our relation to the Earth”. 

However, the role of individual behaviour becomes more controversial, as most politicians are wary of imposing restrictions on their electorates’ freedoms to eat beef or to fly. The UK government had published a study proposing taxes on high-carbon food and a reduction in frequent flying, but then withdrew it, saying that it does not plan to dictate consumer behaviour. But will leaving such decisions down to billions of individuals - many of whom are driven solely by short-term selfish motivation - be enough to save the climate? Frankly I doubt it.

I see the governmental measures in the fight against climate change as I do in the fight against Covid-19. Had the world introduced a total lockdown early on, the pandemic might have been halted in its tracks. It wasn't; the virus mutated into faster-spreading variants, leading to successive waves of new cases and deaths that does not want to go away, despite the rapid development of effective vaccines.

Leaving frankly stupid people (those who harm others as well as themselves with their behaviour) to their own devices is dangerous. Authoritarian governments can take measures, and societies with higher scores along the collectivist-individualist axis tending to do better even without authoritarian governments. But liberal governments in individualist societies will end up being forced to take stronger measures if they do so too late. 

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