Climate panic

 From The Economist

The ground under the German town of Erftstadt is torn apart like tissue paper by flood waters; Lytton in British Columbia is burned from the map just a day after setting a freakishly high temperature record; cars float like dead fish through the streets-turned-canals in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou. All the world feels at risk, and most of it is. Six years ago, in Paris, the countries of the world committed themselves to avoiding the worst of climate change by eliminating net greenhouse-gas emissions quickly enough to hold the temperature rise below 2°C. Their progress towards that end remains woefully inadequate. But even if their efforts increased dramatically enough to meet the 2°C goal, it would not stop forests from burning today; prairies would still dry out tomorrow, rivers break their banks and mountain glaciers disappear. And even if everyone manages to honour their pledges, there is still a risk that temperatures could eventually rise by 3°C above pre-industrial levels.

What happens when climate panic occurs?  I feel that that isn't far away.

Well, for a start, net-zero by 2050 will be unceremoniously dumped, and the net-zero target will be brought forward by at least a decade.  The world would go on a war footing to cut emissions.  

Just how fast could we cut emissions?  To cut emissions by 50% by 2030 would require that emissions would have to fall by a cumulative 7.5% per annum.  Could we do that without a catastrophic collapse in economic activity?  Well, in a word, yes.  

Roughly 30% of the world's emissions come from baseload electricity and another 12% from variable electricity (gas peaking).  Wind and solar are already cheaper than coal and (in gas-importing countries) than gas too.   We can take the grid to 85% wind and solar with 4 hours of storage.   The remainder could be supplied by nuclear, hydro, biomass, wave power or green gas (hydrogen or green ammonia or green methane, produced from surplus renewable electricity).  And climate panic may well reduce public hostility to nuclear power.  Existing nuclear generators will prolly be allowed to continue.  SMRs (small modular reactors) may be built, though they're unlikely to be ready in time.

Another 16% of global emissions come from road transport.  Governments could simply ban the sale of new internal combustion engine cars, lorries and buses, and they probably will, not from 2030 or 2035 bur from 2025 or earlier.  They will set stringent annual targets to get to this point, or they will introduce big subsidies for EVs, or both.  With climate panic, a slow recasting of our economies will be ditched in favour of a very rapid adjustment.  With an average life of 10 years, it will take 10 years for the whole fleet to transition to plug-ins, so that process will have to be accelerated.  There will be 'cash for clunkers' programs, designed to take aging petrol cars and trucks off the roads.  Petrol (gasoline) will be taxed more heavily.  ICEV licence fees will be upped.

And governments will be looking at every source of emissions.  Iron and steel will have to switch to making steel with green hydrogen or methane.  Air travel will be taxed heavily unless it's electric or fuelled by carbon-neutral jetfuel.  

All land clearing and forest burning would have to stop immediately.  The world would have to apply sanctions in the form of diplomatic pressure and import tariffs and bans to the countries  where this is worst: Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Borneo.  And don't think we won't.  As climate panic builds, the pressure to conform will be irresistible.

Agriculture won't be given a free pass any more, either.  Cows will be fed seaweed, to cut emissions.  Governments may even become frightened enough to tax meat. 

But above all, the world needs a carbon tax and an end to fossil fuel subsidies.  The EU's border carbon tax will be a powerful goad for the rest of the world to introduce their own carbon taxes.  Climate panic will remove any opposition to their spread.  Climate free-loaders will get short shrift.

Together, these measures could cut emissions by 90%.   Most of that could happen in the first 10 years.  And these measures, rapidly effected, would in fact limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees  above pre-industrial levels.

The world has been repeatedly warned.  The warnings have been brushed off or ignored.  Instead of a gradual adjustment over decades, starting decades ago, we have phaffed and dithered and allowed ourselves to be lied to by oil and coal companies.  And now a modest  1 or 2% a year decline will not do.  We will need a 15% per annum decline to cut emissions by 90% by 2035, to prevent temperatures rising by more than 1.5 degrees.  

As the Economist says: 'There will be nowhere safe.'  And the public is beginning to realise this, and is both frightened and angry.  Expect serious steps to cut emissions.