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13 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 15 AUGUST 2021 OPINION IPCC report: how to make global emissions peak and fall – and what's stopping us EVERY few years, the Intergov- ernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the United Nation's climate science body – produces a major report on the state of the climate crisis. How- ever you slice it, the latest IPCC report told the world what it already knew – and added even greater urgency. Like the last two in 2014 and 2018, the recent IPCC report doesn't say it directly in the text, but you can clearly infer from the numbers that to have an- ything like a decent chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C – the goal of 2015's Paris Agreement – global emissions need to peak by around 2025 and then plunge rapidly towards zero. We had 11 years to reach that peak and turn it around. Now we have four. The report sets out five dif- ferent pathways that emissions could take in the coming dec- ades, with different "climate futures" attached to them. The pathway in which emissions fall as fast as possible gives us a bit less than a 50% chance of lim- iting warming to 1.5°C. In this scenario, the world has to limit total greenhouse gas emissions over time to the equivalent of around 500 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂). The report shows that at the moment, the world emits around 40 gigatonnes a year (and growing). That leaves about 12.5 years of emitting at current levels. So if the world reaches zero emissions by 2050, in each year until then, emissions must be no higher than 40% of 2021's emissions on average. To get emissions to peak and then start on a downward trend is fairly simple in theory. There are several major changes that can be made in sectors like elec- tricity, construction and trans- port, where lots of emissions come from, and where there are readily available alternatives. These include: • A ban on new fossil fuel in- frastructure. No new coal- fired power plants, no new oil and gas operations, and no airport expansions. In essence, the world could agree a fossil fuel non-pro- liferation treaty. • Existing coal plants could be rapidly replaced with renewable sources of ener- gy, like windfarms. • Radical improvements could be made in the ener- gy efficiency of buildings. • Natural gas could be elim- inated in buildings, re- placed with heating and cooking which use elec- tricity. • Ground transport could be decarbonised by a shift to electric vehicles (cars, trucks, buses, trains) and from cars to bikes, walking and public transport. • Achieving all of this in ten years is technically possi- ble. But there are signifi- cant obstacles which are fundamentally political. What's the hold-up? Fossil fuel companies continue to fight to prevent action that threatens their profitability, lob- bying governments to weaken legislation and to protect their subsidies. They have enough support in enough countries – think Australia, Poland, Russia and Saudi Arabia – and enough countries with contradictory interests – Canada, the Nether- lands, the US and Norway – to stall action in a range of forums, as in the latest G20 summit. Even in countries with relatively strong climate policies, the pow- er of the fossil fuel industry gen- erates various contradictions, as in the UK's continued support for North Sea oil and gas. Global inequalities in emis- sions remain an important issue to deal with too. There are rapid- ly growing emissions in develop- ing countries but stable or gen- tly declining emissions in most industrialised nations. Peaking emissions globally means curb- ing emissions growth in China and other countries, with much more rapid declines in the US, UK and Germany than the glob- al average. The politics of this are delicate and complicated. Then there is the question of how to finance this rapid shift. This entails mobilising invest- ment in renewable energy, do- ing huge amounts of retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency and electrification, and acceler- ating the construction of electric vehicle infrastructure. It also en- tails significant global financing of such transitions in developing countries. But how should this money be mobilised? The neoliberal consensus of the last four decades favours private finance. But leaving this effort to the free market is likely to be inadequate. Fossil fuels are often still more profitable than renewables, despite the latter's cost-competitiveness. Reviv- ing notions of public finance to generate sufficient investment in low-carbon sectors may be necessary. There has been some shift towards this approach in the emergence of green new deals in different countries, but a much bigger push in this direc- tion is needed. And of course, the world re- mains distracted by other crises. The most obvious of these is COVID-19, which has disrupted climate action in most countries, delaying new policy announce- ments, focusing attention on both the pandemic and the eco- nomic recovery. The level of in- vestment needed to overcome COVID-19 has presented some opportunities, but the evidence so far seems to suggest that the world economy is bouncing back towards high-carbon growth. Meanwhile, COVID-19 has re- duced the pressure on political leaders to act on climate change. It has been much harder to or- ganise the protest movements – the school strikes, Extinction Rebellion – that were burgeon- ing before lockdowns came into force globally. The importance of COP26 The IPCC report will be used to inform the discussions of world leaders at the UN cli- mate talks, otherwise known as COP26, which are to be held in Glasgow in November 2021. But if there are so many things pre- venting putting emissions on a downward trajectory, what can the world expect from this fort- night-long meeting? Clearly it can do some things. It is the key site for negotiating global inequalities, such as how richer countries should compen- sate poorer ones for having to bear the brunt of a crisis largely not of their making. Such issues have dogged the UN climate process since negotiations start- ed in 1991. It is where national governments are supposed to make new sets of commitments, known as nationally determined contributions, to meet the over- all goal of the Paris Agreement's proposed global temperature limit. Some of these commitments have already been published, but the signs that they are sig- nificantly strengthening global action are not good. So far, and despite US president Joe Bid- en's summit in April, there is no sense that leading states are suc- cessfully persuading each other to improve their commitments, generating the kind of momen- tum in 2015 which led to the Paris Agreement. To expect much from COP26 itself is to miss the key sites of action involved in causing emis- sions to peak and decline howev- er. In the Paris Agreement, these are national governments. And most of the conflicts preventing action occur within countries. It's at this level that people must focus much of their atten- tion, to outweigh the influence of fossil fuel companies, find novel ways to fund decarbonisa- tion and steer the economic re- covery from COVID-19 towards a low-carbon future. Matthew Paterson is Professor of International Politics, University of Manchester theconversation.com Matthew Paterson Fewer cars, more cycling