If you don’t think Climate Change is real, or believe that it is real but has nothing to do with human industrialization, you might as well stop reading now. There is a vast amount of evidence, completely incontrovertible, that shows Climate Change is real and that it is modern human civilization, specifically industrialization that is the main culprit.
The challenge that scientists and some governments have been trying to answer since the World Climate Conference in 1990 is how to reverse or at the very least mitigate human effect on the climate. The Conference of the Parties part 27 (COP 27) which seeks to tackle these questions has come and gone. What has happened since the COP1 in 1995 to now can best be classified as a farce or at worst a sick joke. It’s probably the latter. As evidence we have the world’s largest plastic polluter (Coca-Cola) as COP27’s largest sponsor. Hill+Knowlton Strategies a leading PR firm that calls itself a “Green PR agency” has some of the world’s most ultra-green clients; ExxonMobil, Chevron, Saudi Aramco, Shell etc. This firm is in charge of PR for COP 27. Why does the UN even need corporate sponsorship for Climate conferences? This could make excellent material for a satirical piece of comedy.
Figure 1: Billions of tons of CO2 around the world from 1750 (Beginning of Industrial Revolution in the US and Europe) to 2020. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/
As we can see from the chart above the trend has been up and up for CO2 emission. We can also see that since the COP1 in 1995 the rate of change of emissions has been among the highest in the period covered. It is becoming ever more apparent that all these COP conferences have been nothing but a good excuse for fun trips by government officials. The COPs have probably had the grand total same effect as hamsters on a wheel, busy spinning but going nowhere.
Those governments, scientists, celebrities and general public who have taken the issue of Climate Change seriously have inundated the public discourse espousing the use “Greener” sources of energy. Many businesses have latched on to this need by becoming pioneers in “green technology”. But is it possible? Can “green” sources of power generation really solve the needs of our present civilization? Or are we more in need of an actual cultural overhaul? You can be the judge.
The modern human need for energy is by far the greatest contributor to the global emissions responsible for climate change. Life as we know it, the very many technologies that we enjoy are solely based on an energy revolution. Without this energy revolution our standard of living would not be much different from that of our ancestors some 300 years ago. If one looks at human standard of living before the industrial revolution we would see that in general it remained mostly unchanged. It is the abundance and exploitation of fossil fuels that have allowed for the invention and mass use of motor vehicles, airplanes, computers, electricity, entertainment, etc. It has literally powered all human scientific endeavor, social development and leisure.
While the massive exploitation of energy has had some obvious benefits it has also been primarily responsible for Climate Change. It has been shown that energy in it’s various uses is responsible for 73% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Figure 2: Greenhouse gas emissions by sector. Energy = 73%, Agriculture, Forestry & Land Use = 18.4%, Waste = 3.2%, Direct Industrial Processes = 5.2%. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions
The emissions from Energy covers electricity, transport, and heating. These include uses such as residential and commercial buildings that are directly used by humans as well as energy required for the manufacturing of all our food stuff, modern appliances, industrial tools etc. Since the industrial revolution beginning in the late 18th century and accelerated in the 20th century the human thirst for energy can only be described as rapacious. Below we see how that demand for energy has been met.
Figure 3: Global consumption of energy broken down by the source that meets the demand. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/
Two very striking features can be seen here. The obvious one being the massive increase since the 1950s. Equally obvious is that this demand has been mainly met by fossil fuels; Natural Gas, Coal and Oil. We can also see that while renewables have contributed, their contribution has been dwarfed by that of fossil fuels. What is less obvious but very striking, is that the contribution from renewables is just a little bit more than traditional biomass. If we remove hydro we see that traditional biomass contributes, now and in the past, more than solar, biofuels, wind and other renewables combined. This is a pretty damning observation. It shows that despite all the talk about innovation and technology advances of renewables their contribution wouldn’t even meet the requirements of early industrial period. We can observe the same thing with nuclear. At the same time hydro just barely surpasses the demands from the 1850s. Without fossil fuels human lifestyle would be nearly unchanged.
We briefly explored what is causing Climate Change but we should also look at the ‘who’. Who have been the biggest beneficiaries of the energy revolution and therefore who carry the biggest responsibility for the precarious position in which the planet finds itself?
Figure 4: The people of Australia, North America and Europe have been the largest users of energy. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/
It is clear that the largest consumers of and also the largest beneficiaries of energy are people in North America, Europe and Australia. This is important as it is one of the major sticking points in climate negotiations. While people in the Asia, South America, Africa feel the brunt of the effects of climate change they are also being asked to make some of the biggest sacrifices while lifestyles in North America and Europe are supposed to be maintained and should even be improved. There is a lot of talk about what is fair and who needs to sacrifice, but the wrong people are being to asked to make the sacrifices. It is becoming apparent that the COPs will not achieve any of the targets set to limit average global temperature increases below 1.5oC. Instead a new target of below 2oC is being set as average global temperatures are expected to be above 2.8oC. Droughts are occurring in Africa while the melting of Himalayan glaciers is causing massive flooding in Asia. If the trends continue, as it most certainly seems to, then Asia will soon also face massive fresh water shortages leading to droughts. There is talk of reparations for the global south. But can these reparations make the rain fall more in drought affected regions? Will reparations raise low-lying regions and protect island nations from shrinking? Furthermore countries that are demanding reparations should be wary that the main culprits of Climate Change will simply handover an amount and then proceed to continue polluting.
There isn’t even agreement on how much is actually owed. The biggest polluters have proposed reparations of $100B. But this is a woefully small number. The true number is somewhere between $125Trillion to $250Trillion. Does anyone see the biggest beneficiaries of fossil fuel usage hand over $125T - $250T in goods, technologies and services? The “social cost of carbon” is $50-$100/ton CO2 (based on the numbers from Joseph Stiglitz, Nicholas Stern et al.). Let us just look at the US, its social carbon cost for 2020 is $0.25T - $0.5T. Yet the biggest polluters are haggling the most affected for a payment of $100B. It’s just ridiculous.
The biggest abusers of the climate aren’t too inclined to help anyone. What do you think Europe and North America will do as Climate Change fuel resource wars, droughts and famine. Will Europe, and North America open its doors and let climate refugees in? Based on what we have seen with the rise of right wing political parties, including actual fascists, the democratic process says “no”. Even left wing parties are being affected. The Labour party in the UK is calling for increased deportations and limiting immigration. The vaunted Swedes are turning their collective back on immigration with the former Left-wing government, now in opposition, supporting the new Right-wing government’s harsher immigration policies. In France a parliamentarian of the fascist Rassemblement National, the second largest party in France, told a parliamentarian of Congolese origin to “go back to Africa.” The short answer is “No, these people aren’t inclined to help.”
All the rage of the past few COPs has been around Net-Zero. You will often find government papers, politicians and even the fossil fuel industry spokespeople talk about Net-Zero. They all set a target of achieving Net-Zero between 2030 to 2050. The earlier date of 2030 is not going to happen. The more pragmatic governments have pushed their deadline even further to 2070 or even further yet. Net-Zero states that an economy will emit no greenhouse gases by some appointed date. This can only be done in one of two ways. We can either severely reduce our use of fossil fuels. Or invent some technology, while ignoring the existence of forests so that we can continue to exploit them, that will capture carbon emitted by everything described in Figure 2. Now look at Figure 3. Do you really think that renewables can replace even a quarter of our current dependence on coal, gas and crude?
If there is a technology or technologies that will allow renewables to replace fossil fuels it has yet to be invented. Carbon capture technology has been touted for decades but are not on the horizon, plus Carbon capture technology sounds more like an oxymoron. It is accepted that no single renewable technology will cause a dent in the fossil fuel usage. But can even a mix of technologies satisfy the needs of an ever increasing human population? Let us ignore the economics of replacing fossil fuel. Let us assume that the governments of the world will devise a new economic system that replaces financial profits with something else. Maybe profits by how many benefits the environment would gain from whatever activities. Let us just focus on the physical constraints for renewables.
The issue with renewables especially solar, wind and wave is their energy density or lack thereof, their variability, and the expense or inability to store excess energy for future use. Let’s put some perspective on this. If you have 1 gallon of gasoline it can provide 33.7kWh of electricity. To get the same from 1m2 solar panels operating at 100% efficieny at the equator at noon we would require about 1600 such solar panels. The largest solar farm in the world, Bhadla Solar Park in Rajasthan, India has 10million installed solar panels.
Additionally the material requirement to build renewables should be taken into account. These material requirements including their mining, manufacturing and production and transportation to installation location cannot be ignored either. In Figure 5. we see that for equally sized power generation facilities solar, wind, geothermal and hydro all have higher material requirements than those from fossil fuels. Of course these are mitigated over time as the emissions for electricity production is close to 0, ignoring operation and maintenance.
Figure 5: Major materials required for different plant generator types. Fuel is not included. Cannot use this as a correlation with dollar cost of building and operating. Source: US DOE – Quadrennial Technology Review (2015): An Assessment of Energy Technologies and Research Opportunities.
The material requirements are also not the only source of concern for environmentalists. Hydro, wind, solar and geothermal require large areas to be cleared and the destruction of fauna and flora. For example the US Federal wildlife investigator visited Ivanpah solar plant in the Mojave desert in 2014 and recorded one bird being burnt and fell every two minutes. The plant also had to “resettle” turtles and other animals from the area.
Society needs a massive cultural overhaul. Just as examples look at Brazil, Guyana and the US. In Brazil, Bolsonaro, the climate denying, Amazon clearing, ex-president lost the elections to Lula by just 1.8% of the votes. In Brazilian states where the Amazon rainforest covers a large area Lula won 4 states while Bolsonaro won 5. It wouldn’t be too difficult to see that had there been no pandemic and the subsequently incurred economic woes, Bolsonaro would still be president. That being said Bolsonaro’s party gained 66 additional seats in the lower house and 11 in the senate. Lula will have a massive challenge getting much of his environmental policies passed before the next elections and there possible undoing.
In Guyana the shift is quite ironic. Guyana has gone from a policy of championing environmental conservation and mitigating the effects of Climate Change to becoming one of the largest crude oil producers on the planet. None of the major political parties disagree with the change. Their only argument is who would be the best steward for this wealth. One will be hard pressed to find anyone who disagrees with them too. It is certain that a majority of Guyanese want that crude to be exploited so that the everyone, especially the most vulnerable, can benefit from an improved standard of living.
In the US we see lack of self awareness. A 2021 survey by the University of Yale showed that 72% of Americans believed Climate Change is real. The majority, 57%, also believed that Climate Change is caused by human activity. However, the Bureau of Transportation shows that of the 15M vehicles bought or leased in 2021 78% are light trucks (SUVs). This was a 5% increase from 2020 while the purchases of passenger car was down by 2.6%. So while Americans believe Climate Change is real its not really something they consider worthy of changing their lifestyle. After all why shouldn’t one have the ‘freedom’ to use a 3000kg piece of machinery to transport an 80kg person a few kilometers. Capitalist efficiency.
So what is the cultural overhaul that is needed? Emmanuel Macron the President of France put it most succinctly, “la fin de l’abondance” (the end of abundance). Many people will scoff at this idea. But one just has to think about it a little. Human population will continue to increase, if we want to keep the status quo then only fossil fuels have the energy density to meet those requirements, really examine Figure 3, and therefore even more will be required.
What should be obvious is that fossil fuels can only be replaced if we find a new source of fuel that is at least as energy dense. Of course scientists are working on this. With regards to electricity there already exists an answer, nuclear fission. However, many people don’t like the idea because of the exaggerated effects of the public perception of Chernobyl and Fukushima. The Germans, foolishly, shut down all their nuclear plants after Fukushima. Scientist are also hard at work at harnessing nuclear fusion. Perhaps more brain power and finance should be directed at these efforts.
Whatever technology may be developed in the future that can eventually replace fossil fuel we, as a collective need to act now, or we can cross our fingers and hope scientists save the planet. The onus is on political parties to work together. They will need to convince the people that the Climate Crisis is real and the time to act is now. For without political consensus then democracy will simply choose the party that is more appealing and they will turn to blaming the others. Societies throughout the planet, but especially those that have benefited the most from fossil fuels, will have to decouple from fossil fuels. This will inevitably mean getting “poorer”, but what is the point of driving your SUV for a road trip if the forest around you is burning.
I will conclude by quoting the words of Colombian President Gustavo Petro at COP27:
The policy to overcome the climate crisis is nothing more than stopping the consumption of oil, gas and coal. The global conferences of governments must put politics in command to generate a global plan to disconnect hydrocarbons immediately. Decarbonization is a real and profound change in the economic system that dominates. The mobilization of humanity will correct the course and not the agreement of technocrats influenced by the interests of the coal and oil companies. The market is not the principal mechanism to prevent the climate crisis.