No, it does not! Either as . . .
. . . tragedy or farce!
History does not repeat itself, history is not cyclic, but there is a tendency, all too human, to sleepwalk backwards into the future, looking in the rear-view mirror instead of looking ahead.
And ways of seeing the present as echoes of the past is an easy option. Nevertheless the notion persists that:
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce
This oft misquoted observation by Karl Marx originates in Karl Marx's essay The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (German: Der 18te Brumaire des Louis Napoleon) written by Karl Marx between December 1851 and March 1852.
The essay was originally published in 1852 in Die Revolution, a German monthly magazine published in New York City and established by Joseph Weydemeyer. Later English editions, such as an 1869 Hamburg edition, were entitled The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. The essay discusses the French coup of 1851 in which Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte assumed dictatorial powers. It shows Marx in his form as a social and political historian, treating actual historical events from the viewpoint of his materialist conception of history.
The title refers to the Coup of 18 Brumaire in which Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in revolutionary France (9 November 1799, or 18 Brumaire Year VIII in the French Republican Calendar), in order to contrast it with the coup of 1851.
This contrast of the two Napoleons is the source of one of Marx's most quoted and misquoted statements, that historical entities appear twice, "the first as tragedy, then as farce", referring respectively to Napoleon I and to his nephew Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III):
"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."
However, while there is no source in Hegel's writings, lectures, or letters of this sentiment, there is a letter to Marx of 3 December 1851, that his friend and supporter, Friedrich Engels wrote from Manchester:
". . . it really seems as though old Hegel, in the guise of the World Spirit, were directing history from the grave and, with the greatest conscientiousness, causing everything to be re-enacted twice over, once as grand tragedy and the second time as rotten farce, . . ."
Identifying contemporary moments of crisis as somehow echoing the past is, when all is said and done, serves a rhetorical purpose, rather than a historical analysis.
“Today, we face our own 1945 moment,” the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said as he opened the UN’s 75th general assembly.
Julian Borger reporting for the Guardian (Tue 22 Sep 2020) on the United Nations general assembly under the headline and subheading:
'Our 1945 moment': UN faces fears of a 'great fracture' at general assembly
Amid pre-recorded speeches, secretary-general issues warning over US-China rivalry at an unprecedented moment
Julian Borger writes:“Today, we face our own 1945 moment,” the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said as he opened the UN’s 75th general assembly, to a thinly populated chamber of socially distanced diplomats.
Guterres meant the historical reference as a call to action inspired by the generation who had survived the second world war and sought to build a new world. A similarly concerted effort, he said, would be needed to defeat Covid and the pandemics that may follow, and the climate emergency.
But the veteran Portuguese politician acknowledged that 1945 was also the starting point of the cold war, and he warned about a new standoff, with the rapidly escalating US-China rivalry taking the world in “a very dangerous direction”.
“Our world cannot afford a future where the two largest economies split the globe in a great fracture – each with its own trade and financial rules and internet and artificial intelligence capacities,” Guterres said.
The new cold war was apparent at the opening of this year’s UN general debate, with the leaders of major powers sniping at each other in their pre-recorded video messages. In fact, it felt very like the old cold war.
It was not the winners in the battle against coronavirus who had pride of place on the opening day of speeches. Otherwise New Zealand, South Korea and Germany would open the proceedings.
Instead it was the victors of the second world war, who established control of the new UN in the wreckage of 1945 and have not released their grip since, who set the tone.
Four of the five permanent members of the UN security council, who hammered their veto-wielding power into granite 75 years ago, spoke in the opening session.
Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin presented their widely divergent views of the world within the first 90 minutes. Emmanuel Macron berated both the US and China for the diplomatic impasse at the UN, in a speech that, at 48 minutes, was more than three times longer than the official limit. Boris Johnson, representing the fifth member of the permanent five, had been given a speaking slot on Saturday, near the end of the general debate, a harsh measure of the UK’s ebbing influence.
It was a long way from the first UN general assembly, held in the Methodist Central Hall in London, the embodiment of hope of better times amid the rubble of the blitz. Three-quarters of a century later, the permanent home of the UN in New York was unusually quiet and its reservoir of hope was running low.
In other years, midtown Manhattan ground to a halt to allow presidents, prime ministers and their entourages to criss-cross its grid on their way to brief hotel room summits. This year the traffic flowed easily. The world’s leaders were present only in their pre-recorded messages played on two giant screens in the general assembly hall.
Guterres was one of only two speakers to deliver their speeches in person (the other being Volkan Bozkır, a Turkish diplomat serving as the president of the general assembly). Facing the hall, where each country was represented by just one or two diplomats, sitting well apart, he delivered a pugnacious call to action in desperate times.
“People are hurting. Our planet is burning,” the former prime minister said. “We must be guided by science and tethered to reality. Populism and nationalism have failed. Those approaches to contain the virus have often made things manifestly worse.”
There was no doubt who Guterres was talking about. The first two world leaders to speak were Jair Bolsonaro and Trump, neither of whom has been accused of being “tethered to reality” in the present crisis.
In their speeches, both claimed to have made astounding progress against both the coronavirus and the climate emergency, though both have repeatedly told their own people that neither is a serious problem. Both have overseen catastrophic responses to the pandemic (the US death toll was confirmed as passing 200,000 virtually as Trump’s video message was being played) and large areas of their countries have gone up in smoke.
Trump’s speech was a barnstorming seven minutes, less than half than the time he was allotted, and in a tone just short of yelling, and at about twice his normal speed.
The International Crisis Group’s chief UN analyst, Richard Gowan, suggested he looked like “a man who suddenly realised on starting his speech that he urgently needed a pee”.
An alternative explanation was that he was speaking fast so his speech could be repackaged as a campaign video – which it was within minutes by the Republican party.
Most of Trump’s seven minutes were dedicated to a ferocious attack on Beijing, and its responsibility for releasing the “China virus” on the world. Amid the litany of complaints aimed at China, however, Trump made no mention of the mass incarceration of the country’s Muslims and the suppression of democracy in Hong Kong.
The president’s bluster left space for Xi and Putin to act like the grown-up super powers in the room, with reassuringly turgid speeches urging peace and multilateralism.
Xi made news, declaring that China’s carbon dioxide emissions would peak by 2030 and the country would reach carbon neutrality by 2060. And he displayed munificence, donating $100m to UN funds.
In his video message, Putin offered free vaccinations to UN staff, claiming his country’s Covid vaccine was “reliable, safe and effective”. Coming from a former KGB officer widely believed to have approved the use of polonium-210 and novichok nerve agent against his enemies, the offer of free injections had a sinister resonance.
It was a reminder that, despite the withdrawal of Trump’s America from global leadership on the UN stage, the understudies for the role at this point in history have very limited appeal of their own.
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor and Julian Borger of the Guardian (Tue 22 Sep 2020) offer their analysis as:
Trump attacks China over Covid 'plague' as Xi urges collaboration in virus fight
- US president uses speech to denounce China, UN and WHO
- Beijing has ‘no intention to fight a cold war’ – Chinese leader
They write:
Donald Trump and Xi Jinping offered starkly contrasting responses to the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday, with the US president blaming Beijing for unleashing a “plague” on the world – and his Chinese counterpart casting the fight against the virus as an opportunity for international cooperation.
In his recorded video address to the annual UN general assembly, Trump unleashed a rhetorical assault on China which seemed pitched at a domestic audience.
Speaking as the US death toll from Covid-19 passed 200,000, Trump promised a “bright future” but said the world “must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague on to the world: China.”
Trump also took the opportunity to attack the World Health Organization – falsely describing it as “virtually controlled by China” – and again incorrectly claiming that the international body had said there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
The UN general assembly has itself been remade by the pandemic, reduced to a virtual event for the first time in its 75-year history, but sharp differences over the international response to coronavirus – and the contrasting world orders being offered by China and the US – were on clear display.
Trump promised to distribute a vaccine and said, “We will defeat the virus, and we will end the pandemic” and enter a new era of prosperity, cooperation and peace.
The US president also reprised his criticism of the UN, arguing that it should focus on what he described as “the real problems of the world” such as “terrorism, the oppression of women, forced labor, drug trafficking, human and sex trafficking, religious persecution, and the ethnic cleansing of religious minorities”.
China’s UN ambassador Zhang Jun immediately hit back, saying: “The world is at a crossroads. At this moment, the world needs more solidarity and cooperation, but not confrontation.”
That message of co-operation was repeated throughout Xi’s speech, in which the Chinese leader posed as the UN’s friend and offered extra cash to find a Covid vaccine, vowing Beijing has “no intention to fight either a cold war or a hot one with any country”.
Xi said: “We will continue to narrow differences and resolve disputes with others through dialogue and negotiation. We will not seek to develop only ourselves or engage in zero sum game. Unilateralism is dead.”
Echoing the sentiments of the UN secretary general António Guterres, Xi called for a global response to the epidemic, co-ordinated by the WHO – from which Trump has withdrawn and his presidential rival Joe Biden has promised to rejoin.
In another implicit rebuke to the US, Xi sought to portray China as the country embracing modernity.
He said: “Burying one’s head in the sand like an ostrich in the face of economic globalization, or trying to fight it with Don Quixote’s lance, goes against the trend of history. Let this be clear: the world will never return to isolation.”
Trump tried to broaden his attack on China’s handling beyond Covid by condemning China’s carbon emissions record as well as its dumping of plastic.
He said: “Those who attack America’s exceptional environmental record while ignoring China’s rampant pollution are not interested in the environment. They only want to punish America. And I will not stand for it.” He made no mention of China’s human rights record.
But Xi seemed prepared for Trump’s unlikely line of attack, saying China was on course to reach zero carbon emissions by 2060. He added China would achieve a peak in carbon dioxide emissions before 2030.
The Chinese leader also signalled his intention to boost China’s commitments under the Paris climate agreement – from which Trump has withdrawn.
When his turn came, Emmanuel Macron berated both superpowers for the paralysis of the UN security council in the face of the pandemic and the climate emergency.
In a 48-minute speech – more than three times his allotted time – the French president said the council’s members “haven’t been able to come together as we would have wished because two of them have preferred a display of their rivalry to collective efficiency”.
Macron also rejected the US claim to have revived UN sanctions on Iran, saying the Trump administration’s policy of “maximum pressure” had failed.
In his own speech, the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, relished the fact that the US won the support of only the Dominican Republic on the 15-member security council for its effort to “snap back” UN sanctions.
“This is a victory not just for Iran but for the global community,” Rouhani said. “The United States can impose neither negotiations nor war on us.”
In his opening address, Guterres tried to galvanise the 193-member assembly to acknowledge the world was at a 1945 moment, requiring unprecedented co-operation to prevent the world splitting into two competing empires.
Warning that “we are moving in a very dangerous direction,” Guterres said: “Our world cannot afford a future where the two largest economies split the globe in a great fracture. A technological and economic divide risks inevitably turning into a geo-strategic and military divide. We must avoid this at all costs.”
But he also nailed his political colours to the mast, saying the populists and nationalists had failed to tackle Coronavirus, and again urged world leaders to follow the science, and to recognise that the coronavirus was only a dress rehearsal for the challenges ahead.
Guterres won support from the Russian president Vladimir Putin, who proposed a high-level conference to spread research on a coronavirus vaccine and called for the WHO to be given greater powers.
The first leader to speak was Jair Bolsonaro, who used the occasion to deny that he had mishandled his country’s coronavirus crisis, and to claim that Brazil had been wrongly portrayed as an environmental villain.
Even as fires continue to rage in the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetlands, Bolsonaro claimed Brazil had been the victim of a “misinformation campaign”.
Brazil has seen more than 137,200 coronavirus deaths – second only to the US – and Bolsonaro has faced accusations of catastrophically mismanaging the crisis by dismissing its severity and undermining containment measures.
In a speech which also seemed directed more to a domestic audience, Bolsonaro once more questioned the need for lockdown measures, and blamed the press for “politicizing” the disease, which has infected 4.6 million Brazilians.
China trumps Trump on the climate crisis
China pledges to become carbon neutral before 2060
Unexpectedly forthright pledge will boost UN efforts to galvanise action on climate crisis
Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent for the Guardian reports on Xi Jinping's pledge for China to become carbon neutral before 2060 (Tue 22 Sep 2020) made at the UN general assembly session. Fiona Harvey writes:
China will reach carbon neutrality before 2060 and ensure its greenhouse gas emissions peak in the next decade, Xi Jinping has told the UN general assembly.
“China will scale up its intended nationally determined contributions [under the Paris climate agreement] by adopting more vigorous policies and measures,” the Chinese president said, calling for a “green recovery” from the coronavirus pandemic.
The unexpectedly forthright commitment will give fresh impetus to the UN’s efforts to galvanise action on the climate crisis, which has been flagging as the coronavirus has wreaked havoc on the world’s societies and economies this year.
“Xi’s commitment to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060 is a gamechanger,” said Thom Woodroofe, a former climate diplomat and senior adviser at the Asia Society. “For the first time ever there is now a clear long-term trajectory for decarbonisation in China.”
China is the world’s biggest emitter, and had previously committed only to aim for peak emissions in about 2030. Its response to the coronavirus crisis has included plans to build new coal-fired power stations. But last week the country held an online summit with the EU, amid signals Beijing would take a stronger climate stance.
Last week, the EU also came forward with strengthened commitments under the Paris agreement, pledging to cut emissions by 55% by 2030. China’s pledge to bring forward a strengthened national plan is a major boost to the prospects for next year’s vital UN climate summit. Called Cop26 and to be hosted by the UK, the summit has been delayed by a year to November 2021.
Cop26 is viewed as one of the last chances to put the world on track to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement, to hold global heating to well below 2C, regarded as the limit of safety. Current commitments under the accord would lead to a disastrous 3C rise.
Every nation is supposed to come forward this year with a strengthened national plan to make Cop26 a success. But until recently, it was mostly only smaller countries that had done so, covering a minority of global emissions. With China and the EU now publicly committed to bringing forward new plans, two of the world’s three biggest emitters are now pledging strong action at Cop26.
The biggest player now missing from the stage is the US, which under Donald Trump is scheduled to withdraw from the Paris accord on 4 November, the day after the presidential election. He used his UN general assembly speech, just before Xi spoke, to criticise the accord and attack China as the world’s biggest emitter. If he wins a second term, other nations have vowed to press on without the US, though that will be difficult.
Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, has vowed to rejoin the Paris agreement and to set the US on course for a low-emissions future.
Policy experts and green campaigners hailed China’s move as a major step forward. Laurence Tubiana, the French diplomat who was key in crafting the Paris accord, now chief of the European Climate Foundation, said: “Xi Jinping’s commitment to peak emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060 is very welcome. The leadership from Beijing, Brussels and capitals across the developing world should give us all confidence as we prepare for Cop26 next year.”
Li Shuo, a senior climate and energy policy officer at Greenpeace East Asia, said: “Xi’s pledge will need to be backed up with more details and concrete implementation. By how much earlier can China peak its emissions? How to reconcile carbon neutrality with China’s ongoing coal expansion? These are hard questions that demand a better response from Beijing.
“But [the commitment] will certainly help turn a challenging year for the environment around and mark it as the beginning of a reinvigorated round of global climate efforts.”
To hold the world within the 2C threshold, according to scientific estimates, emissions must start to fall drastically this decade and the world must be in effect carbon neutral – with no more carbon emitted than can be removed from the atmosphere – by about the mid-century point. This is usually interpreted as rich countries reaching net zero emissions by 2050, and developing countries in the following decade.
Richard Baron, the executive director of the 2050 Pathways Platform, an NGO, said: “[China’s] carbon neutrality goal is absolutely feasible both technically and economically. With China and the EU both setting stronger targets, the picture for how the world can meet the long-term goals of the Paris agreement just got much clearer.”
China’s commitment comes after intense diplomatic engagement from the EU and the UN. The EU held a virtual meeting with China last week, and the UN secretary general, António Guterres, who spoke out strongly to encourage China over the summer, is making climate a focus of this year’s UN general assembly, alongside the Covid-19 pandemic.
It will also put pressure on the Cop26 host nation. The UK, though holding the presidency, has not yet committed to producing a new nationally determined contribution (NDC) under the Paris agreement this year, which is the official deadline. Boris Johnson is expected to use the UN general assembly to showcase Britain’s Cop26 presidency and unveil plans to end UK development aid funding for fossil fuels overseas.
Meanwhile . . .
Fiona Harvey, Environment correspondent for the Guardian reports on the dismay prompted by an all-male line up on the UK team to represent the UK at Cop 26 (Mon 21 Sep 2020). She writes:
The UK is fielding an all-male team to host a vital UN climate summit next year, flouting international norms and angering activists and observers, who say the lack of gender balance imperils progress on key issues.
All of the politicians who will host the Cop26 talks for the UK in Glasgow are men, from the business secretary Alok Sharma, who will act as president of the summit, to his team of climate and energy ministers – Lord Callanan, Zac Goldsmith and Kwasi Kwarteng – who have represented the UK in recent online meetings.
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, will also take prominent roles in the conference, set for November 2021 after it was postponed due to the Covid-19 crisis. At Cop26, countries must come up with strengthened commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions, if the goals of the landmark Paris agreement of 2015 are to be fulfilled.
The former governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney leads on finance issues as UN envoy, and Nigel Topping, the government’s high-level climate action champion, is charged with bringing businesses onboard.
The leading negotiators and civil servants also form an all-male lineup, including the chair of the talks, Peter Hill, the lead negotiator, Archie Young, the envoy John Murton, and the Foreign Office official Nick Bridge.
Women are represented at a more junior level, working on some subsections of the negotiations, and among the scores of UK ambassadors and climate crisis attaches in embassies charged with liaising with foreign capitals ahead of the talks in November 2021. A government spokesperson said: “The UK is committed to championing diversity and inclusivity throughout our COP26 presidency, and our network of leaders, diplomatic representatives and expert voices reflect this in all of their work.”
The UK team was to have been led by the former Conservative MP and energy minister Claire O’Neill until she was abruptly sacked in February, days before the formal launch of the UK’s Cop26 presidency.
The absence of women in the top team was sharply criticised by leading figures and activists. Carolyn Fairbairn, the director general of the UK’s CBI employers’ organisation, said: “If ever there was a moment for real diversity in our leadership, this is it. So many communities are affected by [the climate crisis]. We need a team of all talents, and that must be diverse in all respects.”
The former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, twice a UN envoy on climate issues, said: “This diminishes the impact [the UK will have]. Gender divisions in climate are very significant. Having women in leadership is important to ensure these issues are enthusiastically taken up.”
Women in developing countries are among those worst and most immediately hit by climate breakdown, as they have fewer resources and fewer formal rights. A report this year by the IUCN found the climate crisis was fuelling violence against women around the world.
Muna Suleiman, a climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “Women and children are 14 times more likely than men to suffer direct impacts of natural disasters and climate breakdown, yet are regularly shut out of the decision-making that’s supposed to change things. The UK needs to resolve this as it hosts the UN climate talks next year, but it’s already treading familiar ground as an old boys’ club where women are left off the top table.”
At the Cop26 talks, the only woman at the top table is likely to be the UN’s climate chief, Patricia Espinosa, with the outgoing president of last year’s talks, Chile’s environment minister Carolina Schmidt, playing a minor role. Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, will welcome world leaders to the talks, but has no formal standing in the negotiations.
A spokesperson for Sturgeon said: “Women and girls around the world are on the frontline of the fight for climate justice, and the UK government’s implicit failure to acknowledge that speaks volumes about its own attitudes, although it is perhaps not surprising coming from a government which has made clear its intent to flout diplomatic and legal norms and to break international law.”
Youth activists in the Fridays for Future movement, prompted by Greta Thunberg’s school strikes, voiced their anger to the Guardian. “If women are not involved in planning nor decision-making, how likely is it that their interest will be represented?” said Pauline Owiti, of Kenya. “Effective climate action should bring everyone to the table while recognising the value of their knowledge and their potential as agents of change.”
Mitzi Tan, a youth climate striker in the Philippines, said: “I’m disappointed but I won’t say I’m surprised. Cop has never been a space where they listen to the people who are actually experiencing the impacts of the climate crisis. That’s why we keep yelling and striking on the streets.”
Aoife Mercedes Rodriguez-Uruchurtu, a 16-year-old activist from the UK, added: “Once again, we face the consequences of a society ruled by capitalist oligarchs and once again we, in particular women, are silenced.”
The UK already faces an uphill struggle at the talks, which were originally set for November this year. No formal negotiations have yet taken place, as the coronavirus crisis has put an end to face-to-face meetings on the many outstanding issues. The UK’s status as host has been damaged in the view of some observers by the government’s intention to break international law in the row over the EU withdrawal agreement. Several prominent veterans of the talks told the Guardian the UK’s decision to renege on an international treaty would be exploited by countries at the climate talks who are hostile to the Paris accord.
Previous UN climate talks have been notable for the decisive roles played by women. The chief French official and architect of the Paris agreement, signed in 2015, was Laurence Tubiana, working with the UN’s then climate chief, Christiana Figueres. The Copenhagen summit of 2009 was headed by Denmark’s environment minister Connie Hedegaard, who went on to lead the EU in subsequent talks as climate change commissioner, including a dramatic showdown in Durban in 2011 when three “lionesses” – Hedegaard, Figueres and South Africa’s foreign minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane – kept alive hopes of an international agreement against determined opposition.
Q. How much time have we got?
A. Ten years!
A reminder on the targets and the timescale . . .
We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN
Urgent changes needed to cut risk of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty, says IPCC
The first Re:LODE Radio post of 2020 included a link to this story by Jonathan Watts, published in the Guardian in October 2018, nearly two years ago. So, according to this scenario, we have ten years to sort things. The political will of the two nations responsible for the most carbon emissions are China and the US. This week has seen the leadership in China make a significant pledge to reduce carbon emissions, but is itgoing to be enough to mitigate a climate crisis? If Donald Trump wins in the upcoming US presidential election he will see to it that the US exits the Paris agreement.
Jonathan Watts story (Mon 8 Oct 2020) is worth another look in this post as a reminder, and in the context of the ongoing UN general assembly, and acknowledging that the challenge the UN has already accepted in attempting to mitigate the effects of global heating, has to be resolved and acted upon at the Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021. By then it will be the case that there will be just nine years left for radical action to prevent irreversible climate change.
Jonathan Watts writes:
The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday say urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target, which they say is affordable and feasible although it lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C.
The half-degree difference could also prevent corals from being completely eradicated and ease pressure on the Arctic, according to the 1.5C study, which was launched after approval at a final plenary of all 195 countries in Incheon in South Korea that saw delegates hugging one another, with some in tears.
“It’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now,” said Debra Roberts, a co-chair of the working group on impacts. “This is the largest clarion bell from the science community and I hope it mobilises people and dents the mood of complacency.”
Policymakers commissioned the report at the Paris climate talks in 2016, but since then the gap between science and politics has widened. Donald Trump has promised to withdraw the US – the world’s biggest source of historical emissions – from the accord. The first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday put Jair Bolsonaro into a strong position to carry out his threat to do the same and also open the Amazon rainforest to agribusiness.
The world is currently 1C warmer than preindustrial levels. Following devastating hurricanes in the US, record droughts in Cape Town and forest fires in the Arctic, the IPCC makes clear that climate change is already happening, upgraded its risk warning from previous reports, and warned that every fraction of additional warming would worsen the impact.
Scientists who reviewed the 6,000 works referenced in the report, said the change caused by just half a degree came as a revelation. “We can see there is a difference and it’s substantial,” Roberts said.
At 1.5C the proportion of the global population exposed to water stress could be 50% lower than at 2C, it notes. Food scarcity would be less of a problem and hundreds of millions fewer people, particularly in poor countries, would be at risk of climate-related poverty.
At 2C extremely hot days, such as those experienced in the northern hemisphere this summer, would become more severe and common, increasing heat-related deaths and causing more forest fires.
But the greatest difference would be to nature. Insects, which are vital for pollination of crops, and plants are almost twice as likely to lose half their habitat at 2C compared with 1.5C. Corals would be 99% lost at the higher of the two temperatures, but more than 10% have a chance of surviving if the lower target is reached.
Sea-level rise would affect 10 million more people by 2100 if the half-degree extra warming brought a forecast 10cm additional pressure on coastlines. The number affected would increase substantially in the following centuries due to locked-in ice melt.
Oceans are already suffering from elevated acidity and lower levels of oxygen as a result of climate change. One model shows marine fisheries would lose 3m tonnes at 2C, twice the decline at 1.5C.
Sea ice-free summers in the Arctic, which is warming two to three times faster than the world average, would come once every 100 years at 1.5C, but every 10 years with half a degree more of global warming.
Time and carbon budgets are running out. By mid-century, a shift to the lower goal would require a supercharged roll-back of emissions sources that have built up over the past 250 years.
The IPCC maps out four pathways to achieve 1.5C, with different combinations of land use and technological change. Reforestation is essential to all of them as are shifts to electric transport systems and greater adoption of carbon capture technology.
Carbon pollution would have to be cut by 45% by 2030 – compared with a 20% cut under the 2C pathway – and come down to zero by 2050, compared with 2075 for 2C. This would require carbon prices that are three to four times higher than for a 2C target. But the costs of doing nothing would be far higher.
“We have presented governments with pretty hard choices. We have pointed out the enormous benefits of keeping to 1.5C, and also the unprecedented shift in energy systems and transport that would be needed to achieve that,” said Jim Skea, a co-chair of the working group on mitigation. “We show it can be done within laws of physics and chemistry. Then the final tick box is political will. We cannot answer that. Only our audience can – and that is the governments that receive it.”
He said the main finding of his group was the need for urgency. Although unexpectedly good progress has been made in the adoption of renewable energy, deforestation for agriculture was turning a natural carbon sink into a source of emissions. Carbon capture and storage projects, which are essential for reducing emissions in the concrete and waste disposal industries, have also ground to a halt.
Reversing these trends is essential if the world has any chance of reaching 1.5C without relying on the untried technology of solar radiation modification and other forms of geo-engineering, which could have negative consequences.
A nearly ice-free Northwest Passage in the Arctic in August 2016
In the run-up to the final week of negotiations, there were fears the text of the report would be watered down by the US, Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries that are reluctant to consider more ambitious cuts. The authors said nothing of substance was cut from a text.
Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, said the final document was “incredibly conservative” because it did not mention the likely rise in climate-driven refugees or the danger of tipping points that could push the world on to an irreversible path of extreme warming.
The report will be presented to governments at the UN climate conference in Poland at the end of this year.
But analysts say there is much work to be done, with even pro-Paris deal nations involved in fossil fuel extraction that runs against the spirit of their commitments.
Britain is pushing ahead with gas fracking, Norway with oil exploration in the Arctic, and the German government wants to tear down Hambach forest to dig for coal.
At the current level of commitments, the world is on course for a disastrous 3C of warming. The report authors are refusing to accept defeat, believing the increasingly visible damage caused by climate change will shift opinion their way.
“I hope this can change the world,” said Jiang Kejun of China’s semi-governmental Energy Research Institute, who is one of the authors. “Two years ago, even I didn’t believe 1.5C was possible but when I look at the options I have confidence it can be done. I want to use this report to do something big in China.”
The timing was good, he said, because the Chinese government was drawing up a long-term plan for 2050 and there was more awareness among the population about the problem of rising temperatures. “People in Beijing have never experienced so many hot days as this summer. It’s made them talk more about climate change.”
Regardless of the US and Brazil, he said, China, Europe and major cities could push ahead. “We can set an example and show what can be done. This is more about technology than politics.”
James Hansen, the former Nasa scientist who helped raised the alarm about climate change, said both 1.5C and 2C would take humanity into uncharted and dangerous territory because they were both well above the Holocene-era range in which human civilisation developed. But he said there was a huge difference between the two: “1.5C gives young people and the next generation a fighting chance of getting back to the Holocene or close to it. That is probably necessary if we want to keep shorelines where they are and preserve our coastal cities.”
Johan Rockström, a co-author of the recent Hothouse Earth report, said scientists never previously discussed 1.5C, which was initially seen as a political concession to small island states. But he said opinion had shifted in the past few years along with growing evidence of climate instability and the approach of tipping points that might push the world off a course that could be controlled by emissions reductions.
“Climate change is occurring earlier and more rapidly than expected. Even at the current level of 1C warming, it is painful,” he told the Guardian.
“This report is really important. It has a scientific robustness that shows 1.5C is not just a political concession. There is a growing recognition that 2C is dangerous.”
On this same day in 2018 Nicholas Stern (Mon 8 Oct 2018) set out the salient points of the report, and a warning, in this article for the Guardian Journal. Nicholas Stern is IG Patel professor of economics and government and chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He authored the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change for the UK government
We must reduce greenhouse emissions to net zero or face more floods
The image above is a heat map showing how temperatures are soaring across the planet. Nicholas Stern writes:
The authoritative new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sets the world a clear target: we must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to net zero by the middle of this century to have a reasonable chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C.
Every government should read this report and recognise the clear choice we now have.
Accelerate the transition to clean and sustainable growth or suffer the mounting damage from sea level rise, floods and droughts that will severely hinder efforts to tackle poverty, raise living standards and improve prosperity.
The report, prepared by leading researchers from around the world, warns that the world has already warmed by about 1C since the middle of the 19th century, and could reach 1.5C at the current rate of warming before the middle of this century.
Human activities are currently emitting about 42bn tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, and at that rate the carbon budget – allowing us a 50-50 chance of keeping warming to 1.5C – would be exhausted within 20 years.
Even 1.5C of warming would have brutal consequences, according to the report. Poor people, in particular, would suffer as the threat of food and water shortages increase in some parts of the world.
But the report makes clear that allowing warming to reach 2C would create risks that any reasonable person would regard as deeply dangerous.
One of the report’s most stark statements is that “limiting global warming to 1.5C, compared with 2C, could reduce the number of people both exposed to climate-related risks and susceptible to poverty by up to several hundred million by 2050”.
However, the report also makes clear that the target of halting global warming at 1.5C could still be technically feasible, particularly if there is a strong and immediate response from governments.
The report recognises that the collective pledges by governments that were submitted before the Paris agreement was reached in 2015 are consistent with warming of 3C by the end of the century. By contrast, a path that would prevent a rise of much more than 1.5C would require annual emissions to fall by about 50% between now and 2030, and reach net zero by 2050.
We have to achieve these emissions reductions over a period when the world’s economy will experience a radical transformation. Global infrastructure will have more than doubled between 2015 and 2030. The global economy will have doubled within two decades or so if it continues to grow at about 3% each year on average. And the population living in cities, where most emissions occur, will likely double in the next four decades.
Hence the next 10 years will be absolutely crucial in determining what kind of world will exist in the decades beyond. If we act decisively, and innovate and invest wisely, we could both avoid the worst impacts of climate change and successfully achieve the sustainable development goals, as the IPCC report emphasises. If we do not, we face a world in which it will become increasingly difficult for us and future generations to thrive.
But we will also need greater international cooperation. The IPCC report is clear that we may not be able to limit warming to 1.5C without the need later in the century to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Although we can do this by expanding forests and other vegetation, we must also explore other options, including the development of carbon capture and storage.
While many green campaigners are opposed to this technology because they fear it could undermine the pressure on the fossil-fuel industry, we cannot afford to close it off as an option. A collective international effort is needed to speed up research, development and deployment of this area.
While it is clear that it is still technically feasible to limit warming to 1.5C, we will not succeed without strong political will and leadership. Governments should recognise both the great peril we face from poor choices or hesitation, and the enormous opportunity on offer from the rapid transition to a clean and sustainable economy.
Governments, companies and communities should embrace this transition: it is the growth story of the 21st century. Cities must be planned so that we can live, breathe and move freely in them. And we must reverse the degradation of our land, soils and forests so that they are more productive and absorb more carbon dioxide. All of this is both possible and extremely attractive, as the most recent report from the New Climate Economy, published last month, spells out.
We will see in the next two years whether governments have understood the message of this IPCC report as they revise their nationally determined contributions to the Paris agreement.
We have in our grasp the opportunity to choose a safer and more prosperous future.
Nicholas Stern ended his piece with the sentence above, in bold and italicised. This opportunity, set out two years ago, mustn't be forgotten, avoided or dismissed. The upcoming re-scheduled Cop26, in Glasgow due to take place in November 2021, is the forum where everyone will see whether governments have understood the implications of this 2018 IPCC report.
In the middle of a global pandemic, with Covid-19 fatalities approaching a million world-wide, the temptation is for politicians to make promises, but not to follow through. In the short term, and the news cycle, allows the political classes plenty of wiggle room when it comes to delivery. And delivery itself, is bound to be problematic, especially for those leaders interested in popularity over taking a difficult path.
Only an informed and critical political constituency may lead to the pathways of accountability . . .
. . . and the political will!
Or, a new cold war will lead, inevitably, to global heating and, as Jamala sings, . . .
. . . history repeating
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