The numbers are clear. We are pumping 50 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent into the atmosphere each year. At current rates of emissions growth, the world will reach 1.5 degrees Celsius of human-induced warming within the next 30 years. The impacts will not be pleasant.
Less clear is what we are actually doing to ‘bend the emissions curve’. In the 24 years since the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change came into force, the climate negotiations have generated a menagerie of impressive-sounding acronyms – PAMs and QELROs and NAMAs and LEDS and their like – and no end of inventories, reports and assessments. Sagas could be written about the late-night debates held on the relative merits of commas versus semi-colons, “shalls” versus “shoulds”.
And yet the world continues to warm. Over that same 24-year period – a period, remember, that experienced two major global recessions, benefitted from remarkable technological progress and witnessed a huge increase in public awareness of climate change – greenhouse gas emissions not only continued to increase but they did so at an accelerating rate.
Global CO2 emissions. Credit: The Global Carbon Project
Which is rather sobering, to say the least.
Add in the prominent strain of climate scepticism, verging on active denial, evident in US politics today and the set of underwhelming NDCs that form the vanguard of the world’s mitigation efforts, and it’s hard to be optimistic that the next 20 years will be any more effective than the last 20.
And yet.
And yet, despite all its famed challenges – international externality, potential for free-riding, ‘wicked’ complexity and more – solutions to mounting greenhouse gas emissions are certainly ‘out there’.
The UK now emits less CO2 than at any time since 1890. China has reduced the carbon intensity of its economy by 40% over the past ten years. Four in ten new cars sold in Norway are electric. On current trends, the global aviation sector will be 20% more fuel-efficient within the coming decade.
And the problem is tantalisingly manageable.
Emissions are geographically concentrated: the world’s top 20 economies emit 80% of global emissions.
Emissions are sectorally concentrated: energy generation and industry account for almost half of global emissions.
In many cases, low-emission investments make financial sense. Renewable energies are increasingly cost-competitive against fossil fuel alternatives, even without state support. Behavioural and awareness barriers notwithstanding, most energy efficiency investments generate a positive financial return. No one seriously doubts that ‘green’ technologies are going to drive countries’ future industrial innovation and growth.
And so-called ‘negative emission’ technologies, which will undoubtedly be needed over the coming years, are not as far-fetched as one might suppose: China has, after all, committed to planting over 6 million hectares of forest in 2018 alone (an area the size of Ireland), which can be conservatively expected to remove half a gigatonne of CO2 from the atmosphere over the coming decade.
The challenge lies in knitting all of this together: transferring practical ‘how to’ knowledge, replicating incentive structures and policy frameworks that have been shown to work, unlocking investment capital. And, crucially, doing so quickly – so as to achieve global net-zero emissions by 2050.
Hence the growing calls for a new Apollo Programme – or Manhattan Project or Marshall Plan or other historical state-led inspiration of one’s choice – to address the challenge once and for all. The attractions for (some) governments are clear: to move away from the arcane complexities of the UNFCCC process, to work only with like-minded partners who share a common objective, and to strategically develop national economic ‘champions’ – firms and sectors – for the nascent green industrial revolution.
None of this is easy. After all, even the historical namesake initiatives, so positively regarded today, were hugely controversial in their time. The command-and-control ethos of the past would have to give way to a more market-oriented approach that recognises the centrality of price signals. The original focus on R&D would need to be supplanted by a focus on implementation: most mitigation technologies don’t need basic science (they are well beyond that), they need scaled-up deployment.
Moreover, practical – and politically sensitive – problems such as leakage, the accelerated closure of sunset industries and labour market disruption – would quickly be encountered, as has been the case with Germany’s faltering Energiewende.
Nonetheless, the value of a new Apollo Programme should not be discounted. At a time when political vision is in depressingly short supply in the developed world and established economic orthodoxies are in retreat, the symbolism of a new organising framework – a new ‘contract’ linking government, industry and citizens – could be enormously powerful, particularly if explicitly coupled with other, more immediate, benefits to citizens such as improved public infrastructure and services, better health and more liveable cities.
Even as a mere ‘marketing wrapper’, bringing together disparate policies and strategies under a common ‘brand’ would have value in terms of signalling and raising stakeholder awareness.
So, let’s shoot for the moon. It might just save the earth.