THE CARBON WAR

126
The Winning of The Carbon War
7 th December: I marvel at the complacency of the big oil companies. “Our case
is strong. We are sure and calm about it.” Really? And your investors? And the
journalists who cover your arguments, other than the paid-up re-hashers of
your press releases?
The headline in the Financial Times this morning suggests another view
of Big Oil’s case. “UN climate talks call future of energy majors into question”,
it reads. “ExxonMobil and Shell would cease to exist in their current form in
35 years under measures UN negotiators are considering for a legally binding
global climate pact to be sealed in Paris next year.”
The substance of this article is about the target of zero net carbon emissions
by 2050, as espoused by a growing number of governments.
IPIECA did not address this possibility at all in their press conference
yesterday. I suppose it was because they didn’t think it would be politically wise
to tell nearly 200 governments that the oil majors think they have precisely
zero chance of agreeing a treaty with any teeth, much less a tooth as sharp as
zero net carbon just 35 years from now.
One component of the complacency inherent in this view is the failure
to consider that at some point governments might tip en masse into a mood
for strong action simply because of the course of events with global warming.
Today a million Filipinos have had to flee their homes as a ferocious typhoon,
Hagupit, devastates the nation. This is the third climate summit running where
a “megastorm” has coincided with negotiations.
There will be more such extremes, of storm, flood, drought and fire. An
elevated global thermostat drives the surfeit of extreme weather events around
the world, the World Meteorological Organisation tells us. And the WMO has
come to Lima armed with the latest data for global temperatures. 2014 is set
to be the hottest year ever. Fourteen of the hottest fifteen have fallen in the 21 st
century. Global average temperatures are 0.57°C above the average of 14°C for
the 1961-1990 reference period.
10 th December: “Something huge is happening this week”. So reads an e-mail
from the online activist group Avaaz to its 40 million members. In Lima, governments
are about to set a goal to cut carbon pollution completely. But it is
at risk. The e-mail appeals to Avaaz members to get busy signing one of their
multi-million-signature international e-petitions.
Young digital campaigners are not alone in exhorting action. A group of
Catholic bishops, spanning every continent, publishes a demand for an end