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Welcome to episode 17 of the Spartan Spirit season three titled Rescuing Reason, where we examine topical political and socioeconomic issues affecting Western liberal democracies, particularly Australia, Canada, and the USA.
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And today we're on the second episode of a three-part series on carbon and its relationship to climate change.
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I'm your host, Bill Carolakis.
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I'm a retired senior Air Force officer.
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I use history and research to baseline the topics on rescuing reason, and I'll be offering you a Spartan perspective about those topics.
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In other words, taking a pragmatic view that values the nation and broader Western society over individual interests.
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A few months ago, COP thirty concluded, and Australia is leading the agenda for COP thirty-one, and that means conference of the parties.
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So this is about the right time for Australians and its close allies like Canada and the US to consider what approach Australia should be taking at COP thirty-one.
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And that's why we're talking about climate change today.
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In the last episode, we covered much of the climate change terminology like COP, climate change, global warming, carbon, and carbonization of the atmosphere.
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We also briefly mentioned some dire consequences of continuing to pollute the Earth with ever increasing carbon emissions.
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Today we'll take the next step and consider all of this through a risk lens.
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In other words, how do you manage large scale risks like these?
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And by necessity, we'll take a deeper look at the predictions climate scientists are making, and we'll talk about the United Nations Carbon Emissions Program and the Global Political Response, which is framed around the agenda of the Conference of the Parties, better known by its acronym COP.
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I'll start by giving you an analogy to help paint the picture of how we might approach climate change through a risk management lens.
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My background is in aviation.
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The aviation industry is one of those no fail industries where we don't have a lot of tolerance for getting it wrong, largely because when you get it wrong, airplanes crash and people die.
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I was an accountable authority in the Air Force for aircraft operations, and the choices I faced were something like this.
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We have to fly airplanes, we have to do risky things with them, like fly in bad weather, fly low to the ground, fly in emergency situations where taking a risk was necessary, and that includes in combat environments.
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In other words, we flew despite knowing that a catastrophic outcome was possible.
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Now we mitigated those risks by doing things to prevent the accident, say like training or making sure the aircraft was in good condition.
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And we also did things like helping people survive in the event that things went badly, so for example, giving them survival training or providing emergency food and equipment to be used in case of a crash, and training them how to deal with problems as they occurred.
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And it was through this mechanism that we accepted the risk of flying dangerous missions.
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So now let's put that in terms of the global warming crisis.
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Our airplane is planet Earth.
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You and I are the pilots and copilots of this big ball, and we have a lot of things happening, such as economies to manage, standards of living that people care about, having to feed people, living conditions, migration, conserving the flora and fauna all around us, and of course the health of the eight billion passengers we have on our planet.
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We have no choice but to continue flying this planet and to continue doing most of these things because that's what most people want.
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But we have to ask ourselves, what can we adjust to help us avoid a terrible crash?
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And here we have Professor Tim Palmer of Oxford University talking about climate change through a risk-taking lens and the consequent mitigations that we might consider.
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Do we have enough evidence to make a decision about cutting our carbon emissions?
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You know, it's like every decision you make in life, you don't necessarily have to know exactly what's going to happen to make that decision.
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You have to know the threat that you're facing and whether the decision is justified given that threat.
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Now, the one thing that, you know, climate models are have been quite uh unequivocal about is actually that if we continue to emit uh CO2 as we are doing now, then by 2100, you know, the most likely amount of global warming might be three or four degrees.
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We know from these ensembles of integrations that there is a tail which goes out to more than that.
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It could go out to six or seven or even more than that degrees.
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Now, for anyone who knows their climatology, that really is catastrophic.
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So the politicians in principle have that, have enough information to make that decision.
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So the fact there is this threat, this risk, not only of very undesirable levels of climate change, but actually catastrophic levels of climate change, the risk is quite clear.
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And the only way to reduce that risk is to reduce our emissions.
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Even if we cut our emissions to zero tomorrow, we've already put into the climate system a certain amount of climate change that will continue.
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Now we're not going to cut our emissions tomorrow, we're going to carry on for sure for many decades to come.
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And so we are faced with a changing climate, and we are faced with decisions on how to make society more resilient to that changing climate.
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And I think nowhere is that more important than in the developing world, who, after all, have had absolutely nothing to do with this problem.
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I mean, they have not caused it in the most minute way.
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Um, but in a way, they're suffer they they're likely to suffer the most, either from extreme levels of drought, to these really occasional but exceptionally damaging storms, or to levels of periods where temperatures and humidities could get so high collectively that the human body can no longer lose heat by sweating or any other means.
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So then that becomes an existential threat.
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That puts very much the onus of climate change at the regional level, not just on the global mean temperature.
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You know, my end view is that this is a little bit like the famous Marshall Plan for bailing out Europe after the Second World War, where the US pumped large amounts of money into stimulating the European economy, not particularly for an altruistic reason, but because they feared the spread of communism and they wanted to stop that.
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Now, you could very much view the whole uh investment in climate adaptation in the developing world could similarly be viewed at a very self-interested level in the sense that we're already seeing migration in Europe from Africa and the Middle East, in the United States from Central America and South America.
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And there are certainly aspects of climate change in the reasons why people are migrating.
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Now, this is potentially nothing compared to what it could be like later in this century.
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And so I think a kind of modern-day Marshall Plan by the developed world to try to make life just more bearable, like the Marshall Plan to stop communism, this would be to try to keep people in place and say, actually, you know, living where you are is not so bad.
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But if it becomes unbearable, then the trickle of migration that we're seeing now will become of torrent.
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We don't yet have a good and I would say reliable picture of how these extremes of climate at the regional level are changing.
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And whether, for example, these tipping points, as they're called colloquially, but these kind of sudden, rapid changes in climate which cannot be reversed.
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I mean, that's the key point about tipping point.
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You can't reverse it.
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Once it's flipped into this new state, it's irreversible.
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This actually has a kind of a feedback into this question of emissions reduction, because there's certainly a body of political thought which says, well, cutting our carbon emissions today is really, really difficult for various political reasons.
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But we don't have to worry, because in 50 years' time, we'll have developed the technology which will enable us to suck the CO2 out.
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You know, we'll we'll suck it out of the atmosphere and dump it underground.
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And so we don't have to be too kind of aggressive in our emissions cuts today, because that will be a technology that will be there in the future, which will help us.
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Now, the point about that is if in that period before the technology has been developed, if it ever can be developed, which is a major question mark, I would say, if we have undergone these tipping points, for example, in Greenland ice or some of the biosphere, or indeed ocean, some of ocean dynamics might potentially have that capability, then you've gone to a state that you can't reverse.
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So sucking the CO2 out of the air once the tipping points happened, won't do any good at all.
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You're not going to recover back to where you were.
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And they haven't quite looked after migration and the health of all the passengers on our big planet.
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One of the problems you and I face now that we've taken over flying planet Earth is that it looks like we might have a crash landing at the next airport if we even make it to the next airport.
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And that being the one that we land at in the next twenty ish years.
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How bad this crash landing becomes depends on the actions we take now to repair damage systems, the engines or whatever, and how we manage the passengers and what they do in support of that.
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In this analogy, if we do nothing about global heating, the engineers are telling us that the aircraft or the planets might become so unstable as to result in a situation where we can no longer live the way we do and that many people will die in this crash or find themselves in unlivable conditions.
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Much like I did as an accountable authority for real life aircraft, you and I have to consider what we should do and what risks we should or shouldn't take.
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So in simple terms, we could just keep flying the planet as we are and accept that we might have a bad landing and kill a lot of people.
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That's kind of the approach Donald Trump is taking.
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We could slow down a bit and cut down the risk of a bad crash, and that might work.
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It might not, we don't know for sure.
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Or we could look at the safest way to land the airplane right now and to minimize the chance of a crash landing that kills a lot of people.
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And this is what some environmentalists are saying, and they're saying we need to cut all emissions right now down to net zero, and to do that within the next ten years.
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But what we do know is that even if we do that, we're probably still going to have a rough landing and that some people are gonna die as a consequence of how the planet has been managed to date.
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Well, fortunately, we have a lot of advisors who can help us make this decision.
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In non-make-believe terms, our governments and industry leaders have choices to make about the risks we are facing and how to go about reducing the risk of a catastrophe.
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When you are making decisions that are inherently risky, it's good to understand how you got to where you are.
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So let's start by considering what global decisions have been made in the modern era.
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And we're going to start by going all the way back to 1992.
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The UN Framework Convention on the Climate Change, or UNF Triple C, was adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit, and it was one of the first international treaties on global warming.
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It stipulated that parties should meet regularly to address climate change, and these meetings now occur at the Conference of Parties or COP meetings, like the ones I mentioned at the beginning of this series on climate change.
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At COP three, held in 1997 at Kyoto, Japan, the Kyoto Protocol was adopted, and it sought to regulate greenhouse gas reductions for a limited set of countries from 2008 to 2012.
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The protocol was extended until 2020 with the Doha Agreement in 2012, but it had a legally binding nature to it and it was not adopted by the entire global community, notably the US did not adopt it.
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The consequence was that it failed, resulting in the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, which was not legally binding and did not get adopted universally.
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Basically, the Copenhagen Accord was seen as a global failure.
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But it did lay the framework for the Paris Agreement, which came out of COP twenty one in late twenty fifteen.
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The Paris Agreement was adopted by the one hundred and ninety-five participating member states.
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In the agreement, the members promised to reduce their carbon output as soon as possible and to do their best to keep global warming to well below two degrees Celsius, which is three point six degrees Fahrenheit.
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This led to much euphoria, as we can hear from President Obama at the time.
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But make no mistake, this agreement will help delay or avoid some of the worst consequences of climate change.
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It will help other nations ratchet down their dangerous carbon emissions over time and set bolder targets as technology advances, all under a strong system of transparency that allows each nation to evaluate the progress of all other nations.
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And by sending a signal that this is going to be our future, a clean energy future, it opens up the floodgates for businesses and scientists and engineers to unleash high-tech, low-carbon investment and innovation at a scale that we've never seen before.
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So this gives us the best possible shot to save the one planet we've got.
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So that was 2015.
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But now let's fast track to COP 30, the one held in late 2025.
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And here we have Julie Siegel, who is a senior manager in the Canadian government's environmental defense department, giving us an example of how the Paris Agreement is going today.
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This COP had been defined by the President of Brazil as a COP of open and a COP of truth and accountability, recognizing we're way off track from keeping global temperature rises to safe levels.
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And that is because of what every country is doing at home domestically.
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It's very important to think about the homework that we have following a COP, which is delivering domestic climate policies to reduce emissions at home.
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A clear example for us to look at would of course be Canada, where there's been, rather than funding for climate action, increases in subsidies for oil gas, which are the leading causes of the climate crisis.
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So we are not on track to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030 and to net zero by 2050, which is what was agreed upon at the Paris Agreement 10 years ago.
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This is a good point at which to consider what those mitigation strategies were that were put in place between the Paris Accord and today.
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So to start off with, we need to look at the target they set in Paris, and that was trying to keep temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius or at the very least below 2 degrees Celsius.
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The science here isn't black and white, but it's fairly certain.
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To limit the temperature rise to 1.5, the IPCC says we need to get CO2 emissions down to zero.
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None, not any, by the year 2050, which would be a 35 billion ton reduction in output.
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Alternatively, the United Nations Environments Program says we would need to reduce outputs by 30 billion tons.
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So let's call it 30 billion tons to keep the math simple.
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Anything less than that will lead to a rise of greater than 1.5 Celsius, which we don't want.
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We aren't going to debate the science behind that reduction figure, but most researchers agree with the figure of around 30 billion tons to stay below 1.5 Celsius.
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And many would say that it should be more than that.
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In other words, we need to take carbon out of the atmosphere to get the temperature down.
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The following is drawn from the UN's 2022 emissions gap report and the UN's six-sector solution to climate change, both of which are available online.
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And although these are now about three years old, the data is still relevant and not too far off the mark.
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The UN's plan calls for reductions in six sectors.
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We'll look at each and also what's actually being done in each of these.
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First, save six billion tons of emissions by creating more carbon plant material.
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So one of the proposals is to plant 350 million hectares of trees.
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That's almost 900 million acres.
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And at 100 trees per acre, that's 90 billion trees.
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And at the same time, we would need to get to zero net deforestation by 2030, which means planting as many trees as we cut down each year.
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Right now, we cut down about 15 billion trees a year.
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Well, what are we doing about this?
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The UN webpage says that 200 million hectares of land has been committed for reforestation by a variety of nations.
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But has it really?
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If you look at which countries have committed and how much, you'll see that poor nations, particularly in Africa, have committed a significant bulk of this, and that some of that is just not realistic.
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For example, Ethiopia and Sudan have combined for thirty million hectares.
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Of what?
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Desert?
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As far as planting goes, we plant somewhere between two to five billion trees a year.
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And that's well short of the required fifteen billion.
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In other words, we've not met our targets in this area.
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In fact, in this sector of the plan, we're going backwards.
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If you go out and plant ten trees, then you'll have done your bit for this plan.
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Oh, and by the way, then you have to plant two more trees every year thereafter.
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And don't go cutting any down.
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Let's move on to point number two.
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Save six billion tons by reducing wasted foods.
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This one caught me by surprise.
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According to the United Nations, we throw out 1.3 billion tons of food every year, and then it rots and turns into CO2.
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Unfortunately, the UN website on what's being done is surprisingly sparse.
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The fact is, our economies are just not geared up to be efficient in terms of redistributing that food.
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It costs money and energy to do that smarter.
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The solution here is to educate people like you to make sure that you are buying only what you need.
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There are education programs out there, plenty of them, but I must confess I'd never seen one until I read about it while doing this research.
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Bottom line, we're not meeting this target either.
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Your job is to make sure you don't buy food that you will likely throw out, and eat your leftovers.
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Third point, save six billion tons by building better infrastructure.
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That means energy efficient buildings and infrastructure.
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For example, make sure your buildings are insulated.
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Use solar panels to power city lights, etc.
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etc.
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There are a million options here.
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So what's actually being done?
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Well, according to a Deloitte report, admittedly a couple of years old now, and is called InfraCompass 2020, not much is being done.
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Many governments have set up agencies to manage this, but tax reforms, investment, and action are all lagging.
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I can tell you I'm recording this in my rural home in Australia, which has single-pane windows and almost no insulation.
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Like the majority of homes in Australia, and pretty much most of the houses around me and in many other parts of Australia have smoke pouring out of their chimneys as they burn wood to stay warm in winter, largely because electricity prices are so high.
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Until governments get serious about fixing infrastructure and incentivizing people and companies to build with green technology, we're not going to meet this target either.
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But I have some hope that we can change our ways here and get onto this one.
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Point number four, save 5.5 billion tons through more efficient industry.
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This is all about imposing tougher environmental standards on industry.
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For example, using less polluting methods of producing products or providing services or managing CO2 producing waste.
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It's also about carbon pricing.
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There's some movement here, but nothing.
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Nowhere near what's needed.
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For example, the UN's plan calls for cement and steel production to reduce carbon emissions by 40% and 30% respectively by 2030.
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Yet, both of these sectors are actually increasing their CO2 emissions due to rising demand and not making enough progress on finding greener ways to produce these products.
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Interestingly, cement manufacturing produces almost a ton of CO2 for every ton of cement made.
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What a statistic.
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There's a lot of cement being made, which means there's a lot of cement-derived CO2 going up into the atmosphere.
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And a quick note on carbon pricing.
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This is a policy that requires carbon emitters to purchase credits for every ton of CO2 they emit.
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This supposedly incentivizes companies to go green, thereby making them more competitive in selling their products versus companies that don't go green.
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The Australian National University analyzed the impact of this policy and found that countries with a carbon pricing system have indeed reduced emissions relative to other countries.
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But interestingly, they were still increasing their outputs just not as much as the other countries.
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Bottom line, we're making some ground in this area, but nowhere near enough to make that target.
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The fifth point, 4.5 billion tons from the transport sector.
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So here we're talking about electric cars, which hopefully you're very familiar with.
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It also means choosing to ship products by rail instead of trucks, and it means traveling less or by more efficient means when able.
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We all know that electric vehicles are all the rage, but how are we going with actual reductions?
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Cars are the easy target here, they account for 40% of the transport emissions, and electric vehicle production is on the rise.
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Trucks account for 25%, aviation 10%, and ships 10%.
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But not much is happening to electrify those things.
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It's going to be a long time before we get ships or the aviation sector off of carbon fuels, and trucks are going to be difficult too.
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We all know the challenges involved here.
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Basically, we're going to have to figure out how to convert trucks to electric and how to make sure that everyone converts to electric cars.
00:24:25.200 --> 00:24:31.519
Then, of course, we'll have to produce more electricity to charge everything, but that's another challenge down the track.
00:24:31.680 --> 00:24:34.400
I reckon we'll eventually achieve this target.
00:24:34.640 --> 00:24:39.359
And the last one, 8 billion tons from energy production.
00:24:39.440 --> 00:24:42.240
In other words, we're talking about producing electricity.
00:24:42.480 --> 00:24:50.480
So this is quite the jigsaw puzzle, but to succinctly capture the current state of play, here is Nina Sega of Cambridge University.
00:24:51.039 --> 00:25:01.039
If we are to stay within the safe operating space for ourselves and for our planet, we really do need to limit the warming to one and a half degrees.
00:25:01.200 --> 00:25:11.279
And what that means is reducing and stop using all fossil fuels and rapidly increasing investment in renewable low carbon energies like wind and solar today.
00:25:11.440 --> 00:25:17.039
What that means is cutting greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half by 2030.
00:25:17.279 --> 00:25:21.359
And it's not only about the money element, it's not only about the cost.
00:25:21.519 --> 00:25:29.920
Actually, if you look at the health and the well-being benefits, the pollution reductions of stopping to use fossil fuels, they're huge.
00:25:30.079 --> 00:25:35.519
And they're actually over, much over than what the mitigation will cost.
00:25:36.240 --> 00:25:46.960
Now you're probably wondering, okay, we have targets, and we need to cut about 30 billion tons of emissions per year, which is about half of all the greenhouse gases going up into the atmosphere every year.
00:25:47.119 --> 00:25:52.480
And we need to do that permanently, by the way, and it needs to be done in the next five years.
00:25:52.720 --> 00:25:56.640
So it's not looking too good on achieving that target.
00:25:56.880 --> 00:26:00.720
And we then have to ask ourselves, so what's everyone doing?
00:26:00.960 --> 00:26:08.240
And this is where I introduce you to the term nationally determined contribution, or NDC for short.
00:26:08.480 --> 00:26:12.319
Basically, that means a national plan to combat climate change.
00:26:12.559 --> 00:26:18.079
Here's Doug Specht of the University of Westminster explaining what NDCs are.
00:26:18.559 --> 00:26:26.160
NDCs to nationally determined contributions are at the heart of the Paris Agreement, a global effort to combat climate change.
00:26:26.319 --> 00:26:31.599
At their simplest, NDCs are individual climate action plans created by each country.
00:26:31.759 --> 00:26:37.920
These plans outline how a country will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate impacts.
00:26:38.160 --> 00:26:39.920
It's not a one-size fits-all.
00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:44.720
Each nation sets its own goals based on its unique circumstances and capabilities.
00:26:45.039 --> 00:26:51.759
NDCs are updated every five years, encouraging countries to gradually increase their climate ambitions over time.
00:26:52.240 --> 00:27:03.119
NDCs cover various aspects, including specific emission reduction targets, adaptation strategies, implementation plans, and sometimes requests for support.
00:27:03.359 --> 00:27:12.400
Together, these plans aim to keep global warming well below two degrees Celsius, and ideally limiting it to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
00:27:12.720 --> 00:27:15.680
NDCs reflect our collective responsibility.
00:27:15.839 --> 00:27:19.839
They show how each nation contributes to the global fight against climate change.
00:27:20.079 --> 00:27:25.119
By setting clear targets and strategies, NDCs aim to drive real action.
00:27:25.279 --> 00:27:29.839
They guide policies, attract investment, and inspire innovation in clean technologies.
00:27:30.079 --> 00:27:34.240
However, it's important to understand that NDCs have their limitations.
00:27:34.559 --> 00:27:38.079
Current NDCs fall short of the Paris Agreement's goals.
00:27:38.319 --> 00:27:45.200
If implemented, they would only limit warning to 2.4 to 2.6 degrees, far below the 1.5 target.
00:27:45.440 --> 00:27:49.680
There's also a significant gap between NDC targets and actual implementation.
00:27:49.839 --> 00:27:53.440
Many countries struggle to turn their plans into a reality.
00:27:53.759 --> 00:27:58.799
NDCs vary widely in scope and detail, making it hard to compare efforts.
00:27:59.039 --> 00:28:01.759
Some lack clear targets or financing plans.
00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:05.839
And often NDCs aren't well integrated with national development policies.
00:28:05.920 --> 00:28:11.519
And some contain conditional elements, meaning they will only take action if they receive external support.
00:28:11.680 --> 00:28:15.920
This creates accountability challenges and reduces their overall effectiveness.
00:28:16.160 --> 00:28:21.519
Addressing these limitations is crucial for NDCs to truly drive global climate action.
00:28:21.680 --> 00:28:27.200
We need more ambitious targets, better implementation, and stronger international cooperation.
00:28:27.599 --> 00:28:39.680
Going back to our analogy, it's kind of like having the pilots, mechanics, and flight attendants on our mythical airplane all independently trying to figure out what they're going to do to help us avoid a bad crash.
00:28:39.920 --> 00:28:43.920
I'd like to draw your attention to a key point that Doug made.
00:28:44.160 --> 00:28:50.640
While the planned nationally determined contributions help, they are not enough.
00:28:50.880 --> 00:28:55.200
And more importantly, NDCs are just a plan.
00:28:55.519 --> 00:28:59.599
And most countries actually never achieve their commitments.
00:28:59.920 --> 00:29:01.759
Which brings us to today.
00:29:06.799 --> 00:29:14.559
Let's start with an assessment by UN Secretary General Guterres, and this is in the form of a speech he gave at COP 30, so just a few months ago.
00:29:14.720 --> 00:29:20.319
And listen to what he is saying about targets, the implications, and the nationally determined contributions.
00:29:21.359 --> 00:29:30.880
Since the Paris Agreement was adopted ten years ago, nationally determined contributions have been a barometer of countries' climate ambitions.
00:29:31.599 --> 00:29:35.599
The latest NDCs represent some progress.
00:29:36.319 --> 00:29:43.519
But we must be honest, the plans and policies on the table are still far from enough.
00:29:44.160 --> 00:29:51.920
Science tells us it is still possible to keep temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
00:29:52.079 --> 00:30:01.279
Yet a temporary overshoot above 1.5 degrees, starting at the latest in the early 20s thirties, is now inevitable.
00:30:01.839 --> 00:30:09.519
But we can manage the scale and duration of that overshoot and bring temperatures back down if you take serious action now.
00:30:10.079 --> 00:30:18.319
And action requires deep emissions cuts, 60% by 2035, to stay on track to meeting 1.5.
00:30:18.880 --> 00:30:22.720
The new NDCs deliver just a 10% reduction.
00:30:23.279 --> 00:30:32.720
We need an acceleration plan to close the gaps in NDC ambition and implementation, and that acceleration must start here in Berlin.
00:30:33.200 --> 00:30:39.680
First, closing the gap means all countries submitting their new NDCs without delay.
00:30:40.160 --> 00:30:47.279
Second, closing the gap means creating the enabling conditions for countries to meet and exceed their commitments.
00:30:47.599 --> 00:30:51.440
NDCs must become a springboard for greater action.
00:30:51.759 --> 00:31:00.720
This means ensuring developing countries have access to the tools and technologies they need to transition to sustainable just economies.
00:31:01.279 --> 00:31:12.319
And it means trade policies that support climate action, with developing countries building their own links to supply chains and channeling the economic benefits to their people.
00:31:13.039 --> 00:31:32.400
Third, closing the gap means bringing all sectors together to cease the renewables evolution by building modern grids and large-scale storage, scaling up energy efficiency, transitioning away from fossil fuels, reducing methane emissions and slashing deforestation.
00:31:32.880 --> 00:31:38.559
And fourth, we must close the financing gap for most mitigation and adaptation.
00:31:39.119 --> 00:31:52.480
To keep the one five degrees limit alive and deliver universal energy access, annual clean energy investment in developing countries outside of China must rise more than fivefold by 2030.
00:31:53.039 --> 00:31:55.920
Developing countries can't get there alone.
00:31:56.240 --> 00:32:02.640
The US$300 billion promised to developing countries by 2035 must be fully mobilized.
00:32:02.880 --> 00:32:16.160
The Bakutu Blain Roadmap to 1.3 trillion US dollars by 2035 must restore confidence that climate finance will flow predictably, fairly, and at scale.
00:32:28.559 --> 00:32:35.119
But we have not corrected the situation by reducing emissions and the quantity of carbon in the atmosphere.
00:32:35.359 --> 00:32:44.480
And the numbers that are required in accordance with what the scientists are saying is needed to avoid a catastrophe are eye watering.
00:32:45.119 --> 00:32:50.799
So as you and I captain our planet Earth, it's kind of like the engine is on fire.
00:32:51.119 --> 00:32:57.359
We haven't figured out how to put it out, and we're still looking like we're facing a pretty bad crash landing.
00:32:57.680 --> 00:33:03.279
Having said that, it isn't as bad as we thought it was going to be even about five years ago.
00:33:03.519 --> 00:33:13.039
Things have somewhat improved since then, which gives us hope that we can maybe impose more mitigations to help us avoid that catastrophe.
00:33:13.519 --> 00:33:18.559
Let's put some numbers on this in the form of the United Nations 2025 emissions gap report.
00:33:18.640 --> 00:33:20.160
So this is fairly fresh.
00:33:20.400 --> 00:33:33.920
Based on full implementation of all the nationally determined contributions, temperature rise is expected to reach around 2.4 degrees Celsius, which is an improvement over previous years.
00:33:34.079 --> 00:33:38.720
But remember that point I made about the NDCs, they're just plans.
00:33:39.039 --> 00:33:44.559
And so far only 15 of 195 countries have actually achieved their plan.
00:33:45.119 --> 00:33:51.200
Which means we can expect a rise of over 1.5 Celsius within the next decade.
00:33:51.680 --> 00:34:01.839
And faster and bigger reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are needed to minimize climate risks and damages to ensure a return to 1.5 Celsius by the year.
00:34:02.000 --> 00:34:02.640
Ready for this?
00:34:02.960 --> 00:34:04.480
2100.
00:34:04.960 --> 00:34:13.679
So what they're saying is just doing what we said we're gonna do means we'll get back to 1.5 Celsius by 2100.
00:34:14.079 --> 00:34:15.920
That's a long time from now.
00:34:16.559 --> 00:34:23.199
If you want to see some amazing graphs on all of this, go to the United Nations 2025 emissions gap report.
00:34:23.360 --> 00:34:24.480
You can find it online.
00:34:24.639 --> 00:34:26.960
It has some amazing information in there.
00:34:27.599 --> 00:34:29.760
All right, let's take stock.
00:34:30.079 --> 00:34:39.119
Most scientists think we have a climate change problem in that the Earth is warming due to human activity, primarily carbon dioxide emissions.
00:34:39.360 --> 00:34:50.960
They believe that this warming will lead to catastrophic outcomes like sea level rise, mass migrations, species die-off, and food production failures, all leading to millions of deaths.
00:34:51.280 --> 00:34:57.039
Put another way, we're running a huge risk if we leave things as they are and don't do anything about it.
00:34:57.920 --> 00:35:06.639
To mitigate this risk, many countries are electrifying wherever they can and using green energy production instead of burning fossil fuels.
00:35:06.960 --> 00:35:11.599
But most countries can't afford it or simply haven't achieved the goals.
00:35:11.840 --> 00:35:19.119
This is despite promises to achieve their NDCs that will keep temperatures below 1.5 Celsius above pre industrial levels.
00:35:19.440 --> 00:35:35.039
Going back to our risk view, we have managed to contain some of the risk, but we still look like we're about to have a catastrophic outcome, or a bad crash, if you will, and we still need to reduce emissions by huge amounts.
00:35:35.440 --> 00:35:42.239
Now the next step is to have a look at what happened in the latest conference of the parties, which was COP 30.
00:35:42.400 --> 00:35:46.559
But that's gonna have to wait until the last of this three-part series.
00:35:46.800 --> 00:35:59.039
I hope you enjoyed hearing about the likelihood and the catastrophic consequences that most scientists are predicting for our planet, and hopefully you're turning your mind to the question of what we do about it.
00:35:59.199 --> 00:36:02.559
Whether you believe it or not, it's about risk mitigation.
00:36:02.800 --> 00:36:18.960
And you might also think about the other countries on this planet and ask yourself, what is it going to take to get all the nations on this planet to reduce emissions, particularly when that probably means great expense and perhaps lowering of standards of living?
00:36:19.199 --> 00:36:23.920
And we'll tackle COP30 and COP31 and those issues in the next episode.
00:36:24.159 --> 00:36:28.480
Until then, if you enjoyed this episode, please recommend it to a friend.
00:36:28.639 --> 00:36:30.320
Thank you for listening.
00:00:25.760 --> 00:00:39.920
Welcome to episode 17 of the Spartan Spirit season three titled Rescuing Reason, where we examine topical political and socioeconomic issues affecting Western liberal democracies, particularly Australia, Canada, and the USA.
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And today we're on the second episode of a three-part series on carbon and its relationship to climate change.
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I'm your host, Bill Carolakis.
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I'm a retired senior Air Force officer.
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I use history and research to baseline the topics on rescuing reason, and I'll be offering you a Spartan perspective about those topics.
00:00:58.799 --> 00:01:06.000
In other words, taking a pragmatic view that values the nation and broader Western society over individual interests.
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A few months ago, COP thirty concluded, and Australia is leading the agenda for COP thirty-one, and that means conference of the parties.
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So this is about the right time for Australians and its close allies like Canada and the US to consider what approach Australia should be taking at COP thirty-one.
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And that's why we're talking about climate change today.
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In the last episode, we covered much of the climate change terminology like COP, climate change, global warming, carbon, and carbonization of the atmosphere.
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We also briefly mentioned some dire consequences of continuing to pollute the Earth with ever increasing carbon emissions.
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Today we'll take the next step and consider all of this through a risk lens.
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In other words, how do you manage large scale risks like these?
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And by necessity, we'll take a deeper look at the predictions climate scientists are making, and we'll talk about the United Nations Carbon Emissions Program and the Global Political Response, which is framed around the agenda of the Conference of the Parties, better known by its acronym COP.
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I'll start by giving you an analogy to help paint the picture of how we might approach climate change through a risk management lens.
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My background is in aviation.
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The aviation industry is one of those no fail industries where we don't have a lot of tolerance for getting it wrong, largely because when you get it wrong, airplanes crash and people die.
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I was an accountable authority in the Air Force for aircraft operations, and the choices I faced were something like this.
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We have to fly airplanes, we have to do risky things with them, like fly in bad weather, fly low to the ground, fly in emergency situations where taking a risk was necessary, and that includes in combat environments.
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In other words, we flew despite knowing that a catastrophic outcome was possible.
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Now we mitigated those risks by doing things to prevent the accident, say like training or making sure the aircraft was in good condition.
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And we also did things like helping people survive in the event that things went badly, so for example, giving them survival training or providing emergency food and equipment to be used in case of a crash, and training them how to deal with problems as they occurred.
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And it was through this mechanism that we accepted the risk of flying dangerous missions.
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So now let's put that in terms of the global warming crisis.
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Our airplane is planet Earth.
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You and I are the pilots and copilots of this big ball, and we have a lot of things happening, such as economies to manage, standards of living that people care about, having to feed people, living conditions, migration, conserving the flora and fauna all around us, and of course the health of the eight billion passengers we have on our planet.
00:04:04.400 --> 00:04:12.639
We have no choice but to continue flying this planet and to continue doing most of these things because that's what most people want.
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But we have to ask ourselves, what can we adjust to help us avoid a terrible crash?
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And here we have Professor Tim Palmer of Oxford University talking about climate change through a risk-taking lens and the consequent mitigations that we might consider.
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Do we have enough evidence to make a decision about cutting our carbon emissions?
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You know, it's like every decision you make in life, you don't necessarily have to know exactly what's going to happen to make that decision.
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You have to know the threat that you're facing and whether the decision is justified given that threat.
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Now, the one thing that, you know, climate models are have been quite uh unequivocal about is actually that if we continue to emit uh CO2 as we are doing now, then by 2100, you know, the most likely amount of global warming might be three or four degrees.
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We know from these ensembles of integrations that there is a tail which goes out to more than that.
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It could go out to six or seven or even more than that degrees.
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Now, for anyone who knows their climatology, that really is catastrophic.
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So the politicians in principle have that, have enough information to make that decision.
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So the fact there is this threat, this risk, not only of very undesirable levels of climate change, but actually catastrophic levels of climate change, the risk is quite clear.
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And the only way to reduce that risk is to reduce our emissions.
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Even if we cut our emissions to zero tomorrow, we've already put into the climate system a certain amount of climate change that will continue.
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Now we're not going to cut our emissions tomorrow, we're going to carry on for sure for many decades to come.
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And so we are faced with a changing climate, and we are faced with decisions on how to make society more resilient to that changing climate.
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And I think nowhere is that more important than in the developing world, who, after all, have had absolutely nothing to do with this problem.
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I mean, they have not caused it in the most minute way.
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Um, but in a way, they're suffer they they're likely to suffer the most, either from extreme levels of drought, to these really occasional but exceptionally damaging storms, or to levels of periods where temperatures and humidities could get so high collectively that the human body can no longer lose heat by sweating or any other means.
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So then that becomes an existential threat.
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That puts very much the onus of climate change at the regional level, not just on the global mean temperature.
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You know, my end view is that this is a little bit like the famous Marshall Plan for bailing out Europe after the Second World War, where the US pumped large amounts of money into stimulating the European economy, not particularly for an altruistic reason, but because they feared the spread of communism and they wanted to stop that.
00:07:08.399 --> 00:07:28.800
Now, you could very much view the whole uh investment in climate adaptation in the developing world could similarly be viewed at a very self-interested level in the sense that we're already seeing migration in Europe from Africa and the Middle East, in the United States from Central America and South America.
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And there are certainly aspects of climate change in the reasons why people are migrating.
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Now, this is potentially nothing compared to what it could be like later in this century.
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And so I think a kind of modern-day Marshall Plan by the developed world to try to make life just more bearable, like the Marshall Plan to stop communism, this would be to try to keep people in place and say, actually, you know, living where you are is not so bad.
00:07:55.519 --> 00:08:00.879
But if it becomes unbearable, then the trickle of migration that we're seeing now will become of torrent.
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We don't yet have a good and I would say reliable picture of how these extremes of climate at the regional level are changing.
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And whether, for example, these tipping points, as they're called colloquially, but these kind of sudden, rapid changes in climate which cannot be reversed.
00:08:18.879 --> 00:08:20.959
I mean, that's the key point about tipping point.
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You can't reverse it.
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Once it's flipped into this new state, it's irreversible.
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This actually has a kind of a feedback into this question of emissions reduction, because there's certainly a body of political thought which says, well, cutting our carbon emissions today is really, really difficult for various political reasons.
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But we don't have to worry, because in 50 years' time, we'll have developed the technology which will enable us to suck the CO2 out.
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You know, we'll we'll suck it out of the atmosphere and dump it underground.
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And so we don't have to be too kind of aggressive in our emissions cuts today, because that will be a technology that will be there in the future, which will help us.
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Now, the point about that is if in that period before the technology has been developed, if it ever can be developed, which is a major question mark, I would say, if we have undergone these tipping points, for example, in Greenland ice or some of the biosphere, or indeed ocean, some of ocean dynamics might potentially have that capability, then you've gone to a state that you can't reverse.
00:09:25.120 --> 00:09:30.159
So sucking the CO2 out of the air once the tipping points happened, won't do any good at all.
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You're not going to recover back to where you were.
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And they haven't quite looked after migration and the health of all the passengers on our big planet.
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One of the problems you and I face now that we've taken over flying planet Earth is that it looks like we might have a crash landing at the next airport if we even make it to the next airport.
00:10:08.080 --> 00:10:12.480
And that being the one that we land at in the next twenty ish years.
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How bad this crash landing becomes depends on the actions we take now to repair damage systems, the engines or whatever, and how we manage the passengers and what they do in support of that.
00:10:26.399 --> 00:10:48.399
In this analogy, if we do nothing about global heating, the engineers are telling us that the aircraft or the planets might become so unstable as to result in a situation where we can no longer live the way we do and that many people will die in this crash or find themselves in unlivable conditions.
00:10:48.720 --> 00:10:58.639
Much like I did as an accountable authority for real life aircraft, you and I have to consider what we should do and what risks we should or shouldn't take.
00:10:59.519 --> 00:11:07.039
So in simple terms, we could just keep flying the planet as we are and accept that we might have a bad landing and kill a lot of people.
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That's kind of the approach Donald Trump is taking.
00:11:10.799 --> 00:11:16.000
We could slow down a bit and cut down the risk of a bad crash, and that might work.
00:11:16.399 --> 00:11:18.480
It might not, we don't know for sure.
00:11:19.039 --> 00:11:26.399
Or we could look at the safest way to land the airplane right now and to minimize the chance of a crash landing that kills a lot of people.
00:11:26.480 --> 00:11:35.120
And this is what some environmentalists are saying, and they're saying we need to cut all emissions right now down to net zero, and to do that within the next ten years.
00:11:35.360 --> 00:11:45.279
But what we do know is that even if we do that, we're probably still going to have a rough landing and that some people are gonna die as a consequence of how the planet has been managed to date.
00:11:45.600 --> 00:11:50.080
Well, fortunately, we have a lot of advisors who can help us make this decision.
00:11:50.399 --> 00:12:00.879
In non-make-believe terms, our governments and industry leaders have choices to make about the risks we are facing and how to go about reducing the risk of a catastrophe.
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When you are making decisions that are inherently risky, it's good to understand how you got to where you are.
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So let's start by considering what global decisions have been made in the modern era.
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And we're going to start by going all the way back to 1992.
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The UN Framework Convention on the Climate Change, or UNF Triple C, was adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit, and it was one of the first international treaties on global warming.
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It stipulated that parties should meet regularly to address climate change, and these meetings now occur at the Conference of Parties or COP meetings, like the ones I mentioned at the beginning of this series on climate change.
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At COP three, held in 1997 at Kyoto, Japan, the Kyoto Protocol was adopted, and it sought to regulate greenhouse gas reductions for a limited set of countries from 2008 to 2012.
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The protocol was extended until 2020 with the Doha Agreement in 2012, but it had a legally binding nature to it and it was not adopted by the entire global community, notably the US did not adopt it.
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The consequence was that it failed, resulting in the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, which was not legally binding and did not get adopted universally.
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Basically, the Copenhagen Accord was seen as a global failure.
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But it did lay the framework for the Paris Agreement, which came out of COP twenty one in late twenty fifteen.
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The Paris Agreement was adopted by the one hundred and ninety-five participating member states.
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In the agreement, the members promised to reduce their carbon output as soon as possible and to do their best to keep global warming to well below two degrees Celsius, which is three point six degrees Fahrenheit.
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This led to much euphoria, as we can hear from President Obama at the time.
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But make no mistake, this agreement will help delay or avoid some of the worst consequences of climate change.
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It will help other nations ratchet down their dangerous carbon emissions over time and set bolder targets as technology advances, all under a strong system of transparency that allows each nation to evaluate the progress of all other nations.
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And by sending a signal that this is going to be our future, a clean energy future, it opens up the floodgates for businesses and scientists and engineers to unleash high-tech, low-carbon investment and innovation at a scale that we've never seen before.
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So this gives us the best possible shot to save the one planet we've got.
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So that was 2015.
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But now let's fast track to COP 30, the one held in late 2025.
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And here we have Julie Siegel, who is a senior manager in the Canadian government's environmental defense department, giving us an example of how the Paris Agreement is going today.
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This COP had been defined by the President of Brazil as a COP of open and a COP of truth and accountability, recognizing we're way off track from keeping global temperature rises to safe levels.
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And that is because of what every country is doing at home domestically.
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It's very important to think about the homework that we have following a COP, which is delivering domestic climate policies to reduce emissions at home.
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A clear example for us to look at would of course be Canada, where there's been, rather than funding for climate action, increases in subsidies for oil gas, which are the leading causes of the climate crisis.
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So we are not on track to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030 and to net zero by 2050, which is what was agreed upon at the Paris Agreement 10 years ago.
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This is a good point at which to consider what those mitigation strategies were that were put in place between the Paris Accord and today.
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So to start off with, we need to look at the target they set in Paris, and that was trying to keep temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius or at the very least below 2 degrees Celsius.
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The science here isn't black and white, but it's fairly certain.
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To limit the temperature rise to 1.5, the IPCC says we need to get CO2 emissions down to zero.
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None, not any, by the year 2050, which would be a 35 billion ton reduction in output.
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Alternatively, the United Nations Environments Program says we would need to reduce outputs by 30 billion tons.
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So let's call it 30 billion tons to keep the math simple.
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Anything less than that will lead to a rise of greater than 1.5 Celsius, which we don't want.
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We aren't going to debate the science behind that reduction figure, but most researchers agree with the figure of around 30 billion tons to stay below 1.5 Celsius.
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And many would say that it should be more than that.
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In other words, we need to take carbon out of the atmosphere to get the temperature down.
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The following is drawn from the UN's 2022 emissions gap report and the UN's six-sector solution to climate change, both of which are available online.
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And although these are now about three years old, the data is still relevant and not too far off the mark.
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The UN's plan calls for reductions in six sectors.
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We'll look at each and also what's actually being done in each of these.
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First, save six billion tons of emissions by creating more carbon plant material.
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So one of the proposals is to plant 350 million hectares of trees.
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That's almost 900 million acres.
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And at 100 trees per acre, that's 90 billion trees.
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And at the same time, we would need to get to zero net deforestation by 2030, which means planting as many trees as we cut down each year.
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Right now, we cut down about 15 billion trees a year.
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Well, what are we doing about this?
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The UN webpage says that 200 million hectares of land has been committed for reforestation by a variety of nations.
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But has it really?
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If you look at which countries have committed and how much, you'll see that poor nations, particularly in Africa, have committed a significant bulk of this, and that some of that is just not realistic.
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For example, Ethiopia and Sudan have combined for thirty million hectares.
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Of what?
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Desert?
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As far as planting goes, we plant somewhere between two to five billion trees a year.
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And that's well short of the required fifteen billion.
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In other words, we've not met our targets in this area.
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In fact, in this sector of the plan, we're going backwards.
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If you go out and plant ten trees, then you'll have done your bit for this plan.
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Oh, and by the way, then you have to plant two more trees every year thereafter.
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And don't go cutting any down.
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Let's move on to point number two.
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Save six billion tons by reducing wasted foods.
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This one caught me by surprise.
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According to the United Nations, we throw out 1.3 billion tons of food every year, and then it rots and turns into CO2.
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Unfortunately, the UN website on what's being done is surprisingly sparse.
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The fact is, our economies are just not geared up to be efficient in terms of redistributing that food.
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It costs money and energy to do that smarter.
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The solution here is to educate people like you to make sure that you are buying only what you need.
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There are education programs out there, plenty of them, but I must confess I'd never seen one until I read about it while doing this research.
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Bottom line, we're not meeting this target either.
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Your job is to make sure you don't buy food that you will likely throw out, and eat your leftovers.
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Third point, save six billion tons by building better infrastructure.
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That means energy efficient buildings and infrastructure.
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For example, make sure your buildings are insulated.
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Use solar panels to power city lights, etc.
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etc.
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There are a million options here.
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So what's actually being done?
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Well, according to a Deloitte report, admittedly a couple of years old now, and is called InfraCompass 2020, not much is being done.
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Many governments have set up agencies to manage this, but tax reforms, investment, and action are all lagging.
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I can tell you I'm recording this in my rural home in Australia, which has single-pane windows and almost no insulation.
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Like the majority of homes in Australia, and pretty much most of the houses around me and in many other parts of Australia have smoke pouring out of their chimneys as they burn wood to stay warm in winter, largely because electricity prices are so high.
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Until governments get serious about fixing infrastructure and incentivizing people and companies to build with green technology, we're not going to meet this target either.
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But I have some hope that we can change our ways here and get onto this one.
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Point number four, save 5.5 billion tons through more efficient industry.
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This is all about imposing tougher environmental standards on industry.
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For example, using less polluting methods of producing products or providing services or managing CO2 producing waste.
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It's also about carbon pricing.
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There's some movement here, but nothing.
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Nowhere near what's needed.
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For example, the UN's plan calls for cement and steel production to reduce carbon emissions by 40% and 30% respectively by 2030.
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Yet, both of these sectors are actually increasing their CO2 emissions due to rising demand and not making enough progress on finding greener ways to produce these products.
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Interestingly, cement manufacturing produces almost a ton of CO2 for every ton of cement made.
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What a statistic.
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There's a lot of cement being made, which means there's a lot of cement-derived CO2 going up into the atmosphere.
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And a quick note on carbon pricing.
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This is a policy that requires carbon emitters to purchase credits for every ton of CO2 they emit.
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This supposedly incentivizes companies to go green, thereby making them more competitive in selling their products versus companies that don't go green.
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The Australian National University analyzed the impact of this policy and found that countries with a carbon pricing system have indeed reduced emissions relative to other countries.
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But interestingly, they were still increasing their outputs just not as much as the other countries.
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Bottom line, we're making some ground in this area, but nowhere near enough to make that target.
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The fifth point, 4.5 billion tons from the transport sector.
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So here we're talking about electric cars, which hopefully you're very familiar with.
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It also means choosing to ship products by rail instead of trucks, and it means traveling less or by more efficient means when able.
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We all know that electric vehicles are all the rage, but how are we going with actual reductions?
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Cars are the easy target here, they account for 40% of the transport emissions, and electric vehicle production is on the rise.
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Trucks account for 25%, aviation 10%, and ships 10%.
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But not much is happening to electrify those things.
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It's going to be a long time before we get ships or the aviation sector off of carbon fuels, and trucks are going to be difficult too.
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We all know the challenges involved here.
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Basically, we're going to have to figure out how to convert trucks to electric and how to make sure that everyone converts to electric cars.
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Then, of course, we'll have to produce more electricity to charge everything, but that's another challenge down the track.
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I reckon we'll eventually achieve this target.
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And the last one, 8 billion tons from energy production.
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In other words, we're talking about producing electricity.
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So this is quite the jigsaw puzzle, but to succinctly capture the current state of play, here is Nina Sega of Cambridge University.
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If we are to stay within the safe operating space for ourselves and for our planet, we really do need to limit the warming to one and a half degrees.
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And what that means is reducing and stop using all fossil fuels and rapidly increasing investment in renewable low carbon energies like wind and solar today.
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What that means is cutting greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half by 2030.
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And it's not only about the money element, it's not only about the cost.
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Actually, if you look at the health and the well-being benefits, the pollution reductions of stopping to use fossil fuels, they're huge.
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And they're actually over, much over than what the mitigation will cost.
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Now you're probably wondering, okay, we have targets, and we need to cut about 30 billion tons of emissions per year, which is about half of all the greenhouse gases going up into the atmosphere every year.
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And we need to do that permanently, by the way, and it needs to be done in the next five years.
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So it's not looking too good on achieving that target.
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And we then have to ask ourselves, so what's everyone doing?
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And this is where I introduce you to the term nationally determined contribution, or NDC for short.
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Basically, that means a national plan to combat climate change.
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Here's Doug Specht of the University of Westminster explaining what NDCs are.
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NDCs to nationally determined contributions are at the heart of the Paris Agreement, a global effort to combat climate change.
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At their simplest, NDCs are individual climate action plans created by each country.
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These plans outline how a country will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate impacts.
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It's not a one-size fits-all.
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Each nation sets its own goals based on its unique circumstances and capabilities.
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NDCs are updated every five years, encouraging countries to gradually increase their climate ambitions over time.
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NDCs cover various aspects, including specific emission reduction targets, adaptation strategies, implementation plans, and sometimes requests for support.
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Together, these plans aim to keep global warming well below two degrees Celsius, and ideally limiting it to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
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NDCs reflect our collective responsibility.
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They show how each nation contributes to the global fight against climate change.
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By setting clear targets and strategies, NDCs aim to drive real action.
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They guide policies, attract investment, and inspire innovation in clean technologies.
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However, it's important to understand that NDCs have their limitations.
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Current NDCs fall short of the Paris Agreement's goals.
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If implemented, they would only limit warning to 2.4 to 2.6 degrees, far below the 1.5 target.
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There's also a significant gap between NDC targets and actual implementation.
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Many countries struggle to turn their plans into a reality.
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NDCs vary widely in scope and detail, making it hard to compare efforts.
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Some lack clear targets or financing plans.
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And often NDCs aren't well integrated with national development policies.
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And some contain conditional elements, meaning they will only take action if they receive external support.
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This creates accountability challenges and reduces their overall effectiveness.
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Addressing these limitations is crucial for NDCs to truly drive global climate action.
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We need more ambitious targets, better implementation, and stronger international cooperation.
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Going back to our analogy, it's kind of like having the pilots, mechanics, and flight attendants on our mythical airplane all independently trying to figure out what they're going to do to help us avoid a bad crash.
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I'd like to draw your attention to a key point that Doug made.
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While the planned nationally determined contributions help, they are not enough.
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And more importantly, NDCs are just a plan.
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And most countries actually never achieve their commitments.
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Which brings us to today.
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Let's start with an assessment by UN Secretary General Guterres, and this is in the form of a speech he gave at COP 30, so just a few months ago.
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And listen to what he is saying about targets, the implications, and the nationally determined contributions.
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Since the Paris Agreement was adopted ten years ago, nationally determined contributions have been a barometer of countries' climate ambitions.
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The latest NDCs represent some progress.
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But we must be honest, the plans and policies on the table are still far from enough.
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Science tells us it is still possible to keep temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
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Yet a temporary overshoot above 1.5 degrees, starting at the latest in the early 20s thirties, is now inevitable.
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But we can manage the scale and duration of that overshoot and bring temperatures back down if you take serious action now.
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And action requires deep emissions cuts, 60% by 2035, to stay on track to meeting 1.5.
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The new NDCs deliver just a 10% reduction.
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We need an acceleration plan to close the gaps in NDC ambition and implementation, and that acceleration must start here in Berlin.
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First, closing the gap means all countries submitting their new NDCs without delay.
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Second, closing the gap means creating the enabling conditions for countries to meet and exceed their commitments.
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NDCs must become a springboard for greater action.
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This means ensuring developing countries have access to the tools and technologies they need to transition to sustainable just economies.
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And it means trade policies that support climate action, with developing countries building their own links to supply chains and channeling the economic benefits to their people.
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Third, closing the gap means bringing all sectors together to cease the renewables evolution by building modern grids and large-scale storage, scaling up energy efficiency, transitioning away from fossil fuels, reducing methane emissions and slashing deforestation.
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And fourth, we must close the financing gap for most mitigation and adaptation.
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To keep the one five degrees limit alive and deliver universal energy access, annual clean energy investment in developing countries outside of China must rise more than fivefold by 2030.
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Developing countries can't get there alone.
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The US$300 billion promised to developing countries by 2035 must be fully mobilized.
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The Bakutu Blain Roadmap to 1.3 trillion US dollars by 2035 must restore confidence that climate finance will flow predictably, fairly, and at scale.
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But we have not corrected the situation by reducing emissions and the quantity of carbon in the atmosphere.
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And the numbers that are required in accordance with what the scientists are saying is needed to avoid a catastrophe are eye watering.
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So as you and I captain our planet Earth, it's kind of like the engine is on fire.
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We haven't figured out how to put it out, and we're still looking like we're facing a pretty bad crash landing.
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Having said that, it isn't as bad as we thought it was going to be even about five years ago.
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Things have somewhat improved since then, which gives us hope that we can maybe impose more mitigations to help us avoid that catastrophe.
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Let's put some numbers on this in the form of the United Nations 2025 emissions gap report.
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So this is fairly fresh.
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Based on full implementation of all the nationally determined contributions, temperature rise is expected to reach around 2.4 degrees Celsius, which is an improvement over previous years.
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But remember that point I made about the NDCs, they're just plans.
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And so far only 15 of 195 countries have actually achieved their plan.
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Which means we can expect a rise of over 1.5 Celsius within the next decade.
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And faster and bigger reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are needed to minimize climate risks and damages to ensure a return to 1.5 Celsius by the year.
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Ready for this?
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2100.
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So what they're saying is just doing what we said we're gonna do means we'll get back to 1.5 Celsius by 2100.
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That's a long time from now.
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If you want to see some amazing graphs on all of this, go to the United Nations 2025 emissions gap report.
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You can find it online.
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It has some amazing information in there.
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All right, let's take stock.
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Most scientists think we have a climate change problem in that the Earth is warming due to human activity, primarily carbon dioxide emissions.
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They believe that this warming will lead to catastrophic outcomes like sea level rise, mass migrations, species die-off, and food production failures, all leading to millions of deaths.
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Put another way, we're running a huge risk if we leave things as they are and don't do anything about it.
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To mitigate this risk, many countries are electrifying wherever they can and using green energy production instead of burning fossil fuels.
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But most countries can't afford it or simply haven't achieved the goals.
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This is despite promises to achieve their NDCs that will keep temperatures below 1.5 Celsius above pre industrial levels.
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Going back to our risk view, we have managed to contain some of the risk, but we still look like we're about to have a catastrophic outcome, or a bad crash, if you will, and we still need to reduce emissions by huge amounts.
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Now the next step is to have a look at what happened in the latest conference of the parties, which was COP 30.
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But that's gonna have to wait until the last of this three-part series.
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I hope you enjoyed hearing about the likelihood and the catastrophic consequences that most scientists are predicting for our planet, and hopefully you're turning your mind to the question of what we do about it.
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Whether you believe it or not, it's about risk mitigation.
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And you might also think about the other countries on this planet and ask yourself, what is it going to take to get all the nations on this planet to reduce emissions, particularly when that probably means great expense and perhaps lowering of standards of living?
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And we'll tackle COP30 and COP31 and those issues in the next episode.
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Until then, if you enjoyed this episode, please recommend it to a friend.
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Thank you for listening.
