THE CARBON WAR

314
The Winning of The Carbon War
after a meeting with Laurent Fabius. “And I think everybody wants to try to
get this done.”
He would be managing expectations, not offering hostages to fortune, if
he wasn’t confident, I tell myself. I feel my optimism rise again after its dip at
the weekend.
In the blizzard of press coverage from around the world, there is some
useful fuel today for those who tend to glass-half-full analyses. Researchers
publish data in Nature Climate Change suggesting that global carbon emissions
have actually dropped in 2015, by 0.6%. This is extraordinary, given that the
global economy grew. Though economic growth has decoupled from emissions
in many countries, this cannot yet be said of the big emerging economies.
Global emissions growth averaged 2.4% a year over the last decade, sometimes
topping 3%. China’s efforts to cut back its coal burning seem to be the dominant
reason for the slight fall this year, alongside global growth of renewables and
slower growth for oil and gas.
Does this mean that global emissions have peaked? Have they begun a
structural decline, indeed? Or will they rise again in 2016? So much of the
answer to that hinges on China and India, and their plans for their power
sectors. And those plans in turn will hinge on the course of air pollution in
both nations’ cities.
Today Beijing announces its first ever “red alert” for air pollution: the
highest level of public warning. Schools have been closed. Outdoor construction
halted. Factories closed.
It is difficult to imagine that China can reverse its efforts to cut back on
coal any time soon.
Renowned climate scientists stage an event at Le Bourget to explain why
a 2°C global-warming ceiling does not avoid dangerous climate change, and
what a 1.5°C target would entail. Their answer to the latter is a total phase-out
of fossil fuel use worldwide by 2030, maybe even 2025, followed by large-scale
use of negative emissions technology.
Glen Peters of research agency CICERO spells out the implications. “You
would be shutting down coal power plants everywhere, you would be retiring
oil everywhere, there would not be any place for gas”, he says.
He doesn’t view this scenario as likely. The 185 national emissions commitments
now on the table in Paris imply a 1% annual growth in emissions,
he points out. “Personally, I think if you look at progress in the negotiations,
if you look at [national climate plans], you would have to say 1.5°C has an
extremely slim chance.”