THE CARBON WAR

From carbon capitalism to climate capitalism 123
change and use new technologies that won’t cook the planet: endless all night
bickering at the United Nations.
The United Nations Environment Programme releases a report updating
its estimates of how much adapting to a warmer climate could cost: up
to $300 billion a year by 2050, even if global warming can be kept to a two
degrees ceiling, the agency says. This is a sum almost three times as much as
previously thought. The conclusion deepens the problem of the rich nations’
adaptation funding for poor nations. But matters could be worse yet. I am
always suspicious of global-warming damage or adaptation estimates. How
can they cost in the potential for amplifying feedbacks in the climate system,
and the synergistic effect of multiple climate impacts doing their worst all at
once? An abiding concern, harboured ever since the two-degrees target for
maximum global warming was first mooted at the climate talks, is that it won’t
prove to be a strong enough to hold at bay the natural amplifications of global
warming that might be triggered along the way. Many governments share that
view. At the 2010 climate summit at Cancun, Mexico, one of the pledges in the
closing statement was for a review by 2015 on whether the objective of two
degrees needs to be strengthened in future to a 1.5°C goal, on the basis of the
best scientific knowledge available.
These days, almost all the talk is of two degrees. But the possibility that
we will need a 1.5°C target is still there. That was what the poor dead polar
bear was worried about. And methane release from the Arctic is just one of
the potential amplifying feedbacks that we know about.
I tell myself this. Just focus on playing your bit part in looking for ways
to help a clear direction of travel to emerge: an accelerating transition. Once
the clean-energy revolution is really rolling, there is every chance that it will
amaze people at its speed. Then many options open up. Including, just maybe,
keeping global warming below 1.5°C.
6 th December: I suppose we should be flattered. The oil industry has organised
a special side meeting at the summit to rubbish Carbon Tracker’s arguments.
It is truly remarkable that in their one set-piece press conference, at a global
climate summit, they avoid every other topic germane to oil and gas – not least
the still-falling price of oil and the huge issues it raises – simply to focus on
trying to undermine the arguments of a small team of analysts based in London.