Bridging the gap between scientific necessity
and political realism
Sivan Kartha, Stockholm Environment Institute
contributed background paper for report by Watson et al. to the Chair of AOSIS
Abstract
In the words of the authors of the Blue Planet Report, “In the face of an absolutely
unprecedented emergency, society has no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse
of civilization. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or
they will be changed for us.” (Brundtland et al, 2012) With the recent release of the Fifth IPCC
assessment report, the science community has further underscored the need for dramatic action if
society is to successfully face the climate challenge. Yet, as is all too clear from the lack of concerted
action so far to reduce emissions, what is politically realistic remains far short of what is scientifically
necessary. This report synthesizes (from the recent IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, notably) some
core elements of what is scientifically necessary to address the climate challenge. It highlights some
key dimensions of the political realism that has prevented a commensurate global response. It finally
outlines two issues that are critical to bridging the gap: equity in the distribution of global efforts,
and the political-economic impediments to earnest climate action.
Scientific Necessity:
Gt CO2-equivalent/yr
Since well before the release of the IPCC’s First Assessment Report in 1990, climate scientists have
been providing the input needed for society to assess the risks posed by dangerous climate change,
and the steps that would be needed to avoid those risks. Most recently, with its Fifth Assessment,
the IPCC clearly providedi the “carbon budgets” corresponding to various levels of risk of exceeding
2°c global warming. For a 1-in-3 chance (i.e., a 33% chance) that warming will stay below 2°c, the
available budget is about 1,410 GtCO2. For a
70
less risky 1-in-2 chance that warming will stay
IPCC-66%
below 2°c, (i.e., a 50% chance), the budget is
IPCC-50%
about 1,120 GtCO2. And for still less risky 260
IPCC-33%
in-3 chance (i.e., 66% chance), the budget is
Business-as-usual
Historical emissions
around 1,1010 GtCO2. (See Table 1.) (Note,
50
however, that the analysis presented by IPCC
WG3 (IPCC, 2014) suggests that even the
most stringent of these budgets is “more
40
unlikely than likely” to hold warming below
1.5°c.)
30
20
10
0
1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 2070 2080 2090 2100
Figure 1. Three global emission reductions pathways,
corresponding to the IPCC carbon budgets that provide a
33% chance (red pathway) that warming stays below 2°c, a
50% chance (blue pathway), and a 66% chance (green
pathway).
To make the implications of these budget
figures more clear, Figure 1 presents three
emissions pathways with cumulative carbon
emissions that keep within these three
budgets. (All of them use the same non-CO2
emissions pathway, consistent with IPCC
concentration pathway “RCP2.6”). The red
pathway uses up the budget that gives a 1-in3 (33%) chance of staying below 2°c, the blue
pathway uses the budget with the 1-in-2
chance (50%), and the green pathway uses
the budget with a 2-in-3 chance (66%). (See
Baer et al, 2013 for further details.)
Table 1. The IPCC’s three carbon budgets
as presented in the WG1 AR5 Summary for Policy Makers
Chance of keeping warming below 2°c
>66%
chance
>50%
chance
>33%
chance
Total CO2 budget (assuming no non-CO2 forcing)
(1880 forward) (GtCO2)
3,670
4,440
5,760
Adjusted CO2 budget (accounting for non-CO2 forcing as per
RCP2.6) (1880 forward) (Gt CO2)
2,900
3,010
3,300
Already used CO2 budget (up to 2011)
(Gt CO2)
1,890
1,890
1,890
Remaining CO2 budget (2012 forward)
(Gt CO2)
1,010
1,120
1,410
As Figure 1 makes immediately clear, in order for each of these three pathways to keep within its
respective budget (as given in Table 1), emissions must peak very soon, and decline rapidly
thereafter. All three pathways shown in Figure 1 have global carbon emissions peaking in the next
five years (before 2020), and then soon declining precipitously at rates that reach 4-5.5% per year,
even while economies and access to energy services continue to grow. It is striking how close
together these three curves are to each other, despite the rapidly rising level of risk they span.
Indeed, by opting for the more lenient 33% pathway instead of the 66% pathway, one accepts twice
the risk of exceeding 2°c, but gains disappointingly remarkably little additional emissions space in
return.
There are two ways to defy the strict constraints of the IPCC’s 2°c budgets. One way is to accept
considerably greater risk (or virtual certainty) of exceeding 2°c. This, of course, implies also accepting
rising risks of exceeding even higher temperatures -- 3°c, 4°c, even more. Without additional
mitigation, global temperature rise of roughly 3°c to 8°c (IPCC AR5 WG3, SPM table 1) can be
expected. While this amount of warming might not seem terribly large when compared to our
everyday experience in our own locales (after all, don’t we often see the outdoor temperature rise
by even 15°c on many days as the sun rises and warms the air?), it would in fact be a tremendous
amount of warming when imposed at the scale of the entire planet. Indeed, the earth has warmed
only 3°c to 8°c (IPCC AR5, WGI Ch 5) since the frigid depths of the last ice age, yet this was sufficient
to utterly transform the surface of the planet, in the process making it hospitable to the
development of human civilization. To impose a further warming of this magnitude is to invite a
future in which the earth’s surface is again profoundly transformed. It’s hospitability to human
civilization can by no means be taken for granted.
A second way to defy the IPCC’s budget constraints is to assume that at some point in the future,
society will have the ability and willingness to deploy “negative emissions” technologies at large
scale. This strategy allows us to exceed the budget in the near term and make up for it in the long
term. However, this strategy also has its risks. We might learn, much too late, that the needed
technologies are not feasible at the necessary scale. Or, if they are deployable at the necessary
scales, it may be only with adverse affects of their own, such as the appropriation of land to grow
biomass energy feedstocks, competing with scarce land to provide natural habitat and to secure
food for a growing global population. And, by exceeding the budget in the near term, we elevate the
risk of overshooting temperature thresholds that trigger tipping elements or irreversible climate
impacts.
These budget constraints are clearly a severe challenge to our current business as usual
development, and there are no alternatives to radical changes to our ways of doing business. As
articulated in the Blue Planet Report, “In the face of an absolutely unprecedented emergency,
society has no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilization. Either we will
change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us.”
(Brundtland et al, 2012)
Yet, all the same, the emergency still seems distant and secondary to the policy maker with other
pressing priorities. What is politically realistic is far short of what is scientifically necessary.
Politic Realism
Chief among those other pressing priorities facing societies is the challenge of poverty eradication
and development for the majority of the world’s population that is still impoverished. In both the
developed and developing world, it is understood that unmitigated climate change is a severe
challenge to further development. In developing countries, however, action against climate change
is also felt to jeopardize development. In many ways, it is this latter danger that is the more keenly
feared.
Consider the Figure 2, which highlights the predicament facing the developing world. The figure
shows a global emission pathway (green, from Figure 1) consistent with the IPCC budget with a likely
(i.e., 66%) chance of keeping
warming below 2°C.
60
IPCC-66%
developing country pathway
Annual emissions (GtCO2e/yr)
developed country pathway
50
40
30
20
10
0
1990
2000
2010
2020
2030
2040
2050
Figure 2. The global pathway (red) with a 66% chance of keeping warming
below 2°c, divided between developed (blue) countries and developing
(red)) countries. The developed country shows emissions reduction of
8%/yr starting immediately. Developing country emissions peak one year
after global emissions peak.
Figure 2 also shows the
developed (i.e., Annex 1)
emission pathway (red),
assuming dramatic mitigation
efforts were undertaken,
sufficient to drive emissions
down nearly 50% by 2020 and
95% by 2050 relative to current
emission levels (which is similar
to that assumed by Anderson
and Calverley in this volume).
While this would be very
challenging and is well beyond
the mitigation pledges put
forward in Cancun, developed
countries do have the
technological and financial
wherewithal to undertake such
ambitious reductions if they
mustered the political will to do
so.
Having stipulated a global 2°c
pathway, and made a heroic
assumption about the future
developed country pathway,
simple subtraction reveals the pathway that would be available to support the South’s development
(shown in blue, which is simply the green path minus the red path). Despite the apparent
aggressiveness of the developed country mitigation efforts, the developing countries are still left
with a severely limited budget that forces upon them the need for similarly aggressive mitigation.
Developing country emissions would have to peak only a few years later than those in the North –
still well before 2020 – and then decline rapidly through 2050.
Figure 3 gives a sense of the level of development in several countriesii at the time at which their
emissions need to peak. For the developed countries, the figure shows incomes in the year 2010
(blue bars), roughly when aggregate developed countries emissions started a decline. The range in
incomes is substantial (consider Norway and Ukraine), reflecting a substantial range in material
welfare.
Figure 3 also shows a set of
developing countries, and their
$$10,000
$20,000
$30,000
$40,000
$50,000
projected annual per capita
United States
Canada
incomes during the 2015 to
Australia
2025 time period. (This time
Japan
period is generously wide, since
EU28
Income in
Russia
in order for developing
2010
Ukraine
countries in aggregate to peak
in the next few years, as Figure
2 implies, most developing
China
countries individually would also
Mexico
need to peak within the next
Brazil
South Africa
few years.) The darker red
Projected income
Iran
portion of the bars in Figure 3
range 2015 - 2025
Indonesia
shows the projected income
India
LDCs
range, with the left end showing
the 2015 income projection, and
Figure 3. Annual per capita incomes (PPP – purchase power parity) of
the right end showing the 2020
several developed and developing countries at the time of peaking of
income projection. The range in
emissions.
incomes across countries is
substantial, but most developing countries will still be considerably less wealthy when their
emissions would need to peak than most developed countries were in 2010. China, for example, is
projected to have an income one-sixth to one-half the US income in 2010. Indonesia and India are
projected to have per capita incomes in the $5,000 range, which happens to be the income level the
United States was at in the 1890siii. At that point in time, the US had recently found industrialization
fuelled by fossil carbon to be its route out of poverty, and its emissions were soaring. At this same
level of development, countries such as Indonesia and India would need to be eliminating carbon
emissions – and forgoing development fuelled by fossil fuels – at similar annual percentage rate that
the United States had been increasing its carbon emissions.
This peaking of emissions would thus need to take place while most of the developing world’s
citizens were still struggling to maintain or improve their livelihoods and raise their material living
standards. Yet the only proven routes to development – to water and food security, improved health
and education, secure livelihoods – involve expanding access to energy services, and, consequently,
a seemingly inevitable increase in fossil fuel use and thus carbon emissions. As clearly reflected in
the companion piece by Strivastava et al in this volume, and the numerous studies and reports that
underlie it, access to energy services is fundamental to the fulfilment of development goals.
Indeed, in the absence of climate constraints, developing countries would continue to increase the
use of conventional energy resources to fuel the expansion of their infrastructure and the
improvement of the material well-being of their citizens, as was done in the developed world.
This perceived tension between development and decarbonisation motivates a powerful form of
political realism. It underlies the developing world’s reluctance to earnestly engage in the lowcarbon transition that is scientifically necessary if warming is to be limited to 2°C or less. Yet, this gap
between scientific necessity and political realism is not necessarily insurmountable. One of the key
findings of the IPCC’s AR5 is that technological and policy options are available that would allow
warming to be held below 2°C, without preventing poverty eradication or impeding development, in
the North or the South (IPCC WG3 AR5). This portfolio of technological and policy options has been
broadly overviewed in several of the other companion papers in this volume. While further delay will
make this endeavour much more challenging – and will soon render it impossible – it still within
reach now, but not without its costs.
A fundamental challenge, therefore, is agreeing how those costs will be shared. Who will provide the
financial and technological resources required to realize these technological options and implement
the necessary policies, while advancing development sustainably. Who will bear the costs of the
globally essential low-carbon transition?
Thus arises a conflict between two seemingly irreconcilable political realisms. On one hand are the
decision-makers in developing countries who cannot imagine dramatically curbing emissions,
certainly not so severely as indicated in Figure 2 and not without substantial international support.
On the other hand are the decision-makers in developed countries for whom the prospects of
providing substantial financial and technological resources to the South itself seriously strains their
political realism.
In principle, such support is already accepted in the climate context. The UNFCCC obliges the
developed countries to “take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse impacts
thereof”, and commits them to provide financial and technological resources to enable and support
mitigation actions in developing countries. But the details remain unresolved and highly contentious.
Bridging the gap
An approach based on equity may be the only viable way forward. Even though discussions of equity
on the international stage have been extremely divisive and shown little progress so far, there may
be no alternative. An equitable approach is morally preferable, of course, but also a legal
commitment for all Parties to the UNFCCC, who have agreed to “protect the climate system … on the
basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and
respective capabilities.” But more importantly, an equitable approach is more likely to succeed in
solving the climate crisis.
This is so because climate change is a classic case of a commons problem. As with any commons
problem, the solution lies in collective action (Ostrom, 1990). No single country is able to protect “its
own” climate by reducing its own emissions, and thus no country can solve its own climate problem
by itself. For this reason, countries concerned about protecting their climate must persuade other
countries to help it. Thus, countries reduce their own emissions – and cooperates in other ways –
not in order to directly protect their climate, but for the sake of inducing reciprocal effort, i.e.,
getting other countries to do likewise. A country is only likely to succeed in inducing reciprocal effort
among its negotiating partners if it is perceived to be doing its fair share of the effort. Thus, a
cooperative agreement among countries is more likely to be agreed and successfully implemented if
based on equitable effort-sharing.
Young (2013) has identified three general conditions—all of which apply to the climate context—
under which the successful formation and eventual effectiveness of a collective action regime may
hinge on equitable burden sharing: the absence of actors who are powerful enough to coercively
impose their preferred burden sharing arrangements; the inapplicability of standard utilitarian
methods of calculating costs and benefits; and the fact that regime effectiveness depends on a longterm commitment of members to implement its terms. This, in the terse words of the WG3
Summary for Policy Makers, “The evidence suggests that outcomes seen as equitable can lead to
more effective cooperation.”
Much scholarship and analysis has been carried out examining the nature of an international
agreement that would distribute costs of a low-carbon transition equitably. Even absent any specific
universally accepted definition of equitable effort-sharing, one salient and robust finding stands out.
That is that wealthy countries have the greatest share of the responsibility for causing climate
change and the greatest financial and technological capabilities for solving it, while the developing
countries have the greatest share of the mitigation opportunities that must be captured if warming
is to be held below 2°C.
The implication of this is that a global cooperative agreement will depend, to an important degree,
on institutions, mechanisms and frameworks whereby countries generally perceived to have the
moral obligation to bear the costs can provide the resources to those countries where emissions
must be driven down. Again, as articulated by the IPCC WG3, “Effort-sharing frameworks can help to
clarify discrepancies between the distribution of costs based on mitigation potential and the
distribution of responsibilities based on ethical principles, and they can help reconcile those
discrepancies through international financial transfers.” [AR5 WG3 TS].
Government decision-makers cannot, unfortunately, simply and straightforwardly respond to the
scientific necessity, acting objectively and benevolently to secure the long-term interests of society.
Political realism, inevitably, intrudes here as well. Rather, governments respond to constituents,
which are sometimes their citizens articulating their interests through legitimate means, but all too
often are powerful vested interests imposing their interests through undemocratic means. There is
a long and ignominious history of corporate interests resisting and effectively impeding initiatives to
protect the environment and public health. Tobacco is the most notorious example, but similar
campaigns have delayed and weakened efforts to regulate lead additives in gasoline and paint, seat
belts in automobiles, sulphur from power plants, leachate from landfills, and countless other
environment and health issues. The tactics consistently rely on undermining science to sow doubt,
fabricating economics to overestimate regulatory costs and underestimate benefits, and, perhaps
most importantly, subverting democratic processes by unduly influencing elected representatives
through campaign finance and interfering with government regulatory agencies and judicial
processes. (See, for example, Union of Concerned Scientists, 2012a, 2012b; Mann, 2012. Oreskes
and Conway, 2011; Pew Environment Group, 2010.) That these tactics have been applied in the
climate change context as well is no surprise, given the financial stakes for corporations currently
engaged as major actors in our fossil fuel economy (Grantham Institute, 2013). With the evident
interest of such actors in impeding climate action, even the European Parliament has passed a
resolution acknowledging “growing recognition of the need to be vigilant concerning efforts by
economic actors that emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases or benefit from burning fossil
fuels, to undermine or subvert climate protection efforts;” (European Parliament, 2013).
Political economy determines whether we act to address climate change, and if so how we do so.
Though curbing corporate influence and restoring government accountability are only part of what is
needed to bridge scientific necessity and political realism, an effective climate response is
implausible otherwise.
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i
The figures given in Table 1 are taken from the IPCC’s Working Group 1 Summary for Policymakers (IPCC, 2013,
Sec. E.8). It gives budgets of 3670, 4440, and 5760 GtCO2 for keeping warming below 2°c with probability of
66%, 50%, and 33% respectively. If emissions of non-CO2 climate forces are strictly limited through ambitious
reductions (consistent with IPCC’s stringent “RCP2.6” pathway), the IPCC states the remaining budgets are
2900, 3010, and 3300 GtCO2, respectively. Subtracting off the emissions already released up through 2011
(amounting to 1980 GtCO2) – leaves 1010, 1120, and 1410, respectively, for the period 2012 and forward.
(Note, roughly 75 GtCo2 of this budget was consumed by 2012-2013 carbon emissions.) The scenario analysis
presented by WG3 (IPCC, 2014, SPM Table 1) suggests that all of budgets are, at best, “more unlikely than
likely” to hold warming below 1.5°c.
ii
The developed countries show here amount to about nine-tenths of total Annex 1 population. The
developing countries shown here amount to about three-quarters of total non-Annex 1 population.
iii
See Maddison’s historical database covering population by country, GDP and GDP per capita back to 1820.,
http://www.worldeconomics.com/Data/MadisonHistoricalGDP/Madison%20Historical%20GDP%20Data.efp)