Is the 1.5 C target on the climate emergency still possible?

I’d like to feel optimistic that we can limit the amount of carbon we are pumping into the atmosphere but a number of things are conspiring against a target of 1.5 C.

image: DW

Delegates at the recent climate conference in Egypt reflected those conflicting things. Unable to come up with anything positive to say after the conference was supposed to end, they spent extra days just to come up with something to agree on. In the end, a pretty timid agreement, a “loss and damage” fund was established with no money in it.

What delegates at the COP27conference didn’t say was deafening.

They failed to build on the pledges made a year ago at COP26 in Glasgow to eliminate coal. In effect, oil and gas has been given a new lease on life.

They struggled to prevent COP27 from being the conference where the target of 1.5 C dies. But I have to wonder. The target is on life support.

In the face of our conspicuous climate emergency, the target of 1.5 C was supposed to slow the cauldron of ever-rising, heat-trapping carbon emissions. The target refers to the goal, set out in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, to limit global average temperature increases to 1.5 C above preindustrial levels.

Most climate scientists agree that allowing temperatures to rise beyond that level will destroy some low-lying countries as polar and mountain ice melts and water levels rise – and even pose an existential threat to the whole planet.

Delegates made no fresh pledges to ramp up their carbon-reduction plans, nor did the final statement call for the phasing down and eventual elimination of all fossil fuels.

Calls at the conference to keep 1.5 alive were futilely repeated. On the day before the official end of the conference, the Brazilian head of climate and energy policy for WWF International, said: “This cannot be the COP where we lose 1.5. … It is in danger, and we need an energy transition fast.”

The Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands said allowing temperature increases to surpass 1.5 degrees would deliver a “death warrant” to his Pacific island country.

One of the things that’s put a target 0f 1.5 C in doubt is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Europe, on the road to green energy sources, hit a detour. Germany had invested heavily in wind and solar energy with natural gas from Russia as backup.

Now Germany uses coal to generate one-third of electrical needs.

The disastrous effects of a rise in 1.1 C has already been felt. B.C. has suffered from a trio of disasters: wildfires that decimate land and contribute to respiratory disease; the heat wave of 2021 that resulted in the death of 619; the atmospheric river -Canada’s 8th worst natural disaster- cost $675M in insurance losses and $1 billion to repair the Coquihalla.

Twenty seven per cent of the greenhouse gasses that we produce comes from transportation. One-half of that comes from the vehicles we drive to work and to go shopping.

Most discouraging, our car culture is built into society. Suburbs are dependent on cars. Public transit is not an option for many.

We are locked into an increasing consumption of fossil fuels and the concurrent greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s hard to see how we can limit carbon emissions to 1.5 C when the burning of fossil fuels is built into our way of life.

Is the 1.5 C target on the climate emergency still possible?

I’d like to feel optimistic that we can limit the amount of carbon we are pumping into the atmosphere but a number of things are conspiring against a target of 1.5 C.

Delegates at the recent climate conference in Egypt reflected those conflicting things. Unable to come up with anything positive to say after the conference was supposed to end, they spent extra days just to come up with something to agree on. In the end, a pretty timid agreement, a “loss and damage” fund was established with no money in it.

What delegates at the COP27conference didn’t say was deafening.

They failed to build on the pledges made a year ago at COP26 in Glasgow to eliminate coal. In effect, oil and gas has been given a new lease on life.

They struggled to prevent COP27 from being the conference where the target of 1.5 C dies. But I have to wonder. The target is on life support.

In the face of our conspicuous climate emergency, the target of 1.5 C was supposed to slow the cauldron of ever-rising, heat-trapping carbon emissions. The target refers to the goal, set out in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, to limit global average temperature increases to 1.5 C above preindustrial levels.

Most climate scientists agree that allowing temperatures to rise beyond that level will destroy some low-lying countries as polar and mountain ice melts and water levels rise – and even pose an existential threat to the whole planet.

Delegates made no fresh pledges to ramp up their carbon-reduction plans, nor did the final statement call for the phasing down and eventual elimination of all fossil fuels.

Calls at the conference to keep 1.5 alive were futilely repeated. On the day before the official end of the conference, the Brazilian head of climate and energy policy for WWF International, said: “This cannot be the COP where we lose 1.5. … It is in danger, and we need an energy transition fast.”

The Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands said allowing temperature increases to surpass 1.5 degrees would deliver a “death warrant” to his Pacific island country.

One of the things that’s put a target 0f 1.5 C in doubt is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Europe, on the road to green energy sources, hit a detour. Germany had invested heavily in wind and solar energy with natural gas from Russia as backup.

Now Germany uses coal to generate one-third of electrical needs.

The disastrous effects of a rise in 1.1 C has already been felt. B.C. has suffered from a trio of disasters: wildfires that decimate land and contribute to respiratory disease; the heat wave of 2021 that resulted in the death of 619; the atmospheric river -Canada’s 8th worst natural disaster- cost $675M in insurance losses and $1 billion to repair the Coquihalla.

Twenty seven per cent of the greenhouse gasses that we produce comes from transportation. One-half of that comes from the vehicles we drive to work and to go shopping.

Most discouraging, our car culture is built into society. Suburbs are dependent on cars. Public transit is not an option for many.

We are locked into an increasing consumption of fossil fuels and the concurrent greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s hard to see how we can limit carbon emissions to 1.5 C when the burning of fossil fuels is built into our way of life.

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Nuclear energy: It’s not easy being green

Nuclear energy has an image problem. For decades, it has been the energy source that dares not speak its name.

Small Nuclear Reactor. image: Foro Nuclear

No wonder, with the disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, and the problem of what to do with the radioactive waste. Then there’s the high building costs.

While nuclear energy is dirty in many respects, it is clean in another: it produces electricity without producing the greenhouse gases that are contributing to our climate emergency.

Environmentalists deplore nuclear energy, even at a time when the world desperately needs more power that doesn’t come from burning fossil fuels. If only nuclear energy could find a way to become “green.”

Well, there is a way. Europe has found a way to make nuclear green. You just say it’s so. The European Commission has labeled nuclear as sustainable by placing it in a taxonomy that includes other green energy sources. The Commission describes this taxonomy as, “a classification system, establishing a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities.”

The European Commission is determined to achieve net-zero carbon emissions. The commission’s chief described the European Green Deal as “Europe’s man on the moon moment.” She has called climate neutrality “our European destiny” and solemnly proclaimed that no effort will be spared for Europe to become the world’s first continent with net-zero emissions.

However, Germany and France are on opposite sides of the greening of nuclear energy. Germany is against nuclear power. They plan to shut down all its nuclear power plants by the end of 2022 following the Fukushima disaster in 2011.

But Germany’s plan to use natural gas as a transition fuel is in jeopardy. With Russia’s invasion of Eastern Ukraine, Germany placed sanctions on Russia this week by stopping the certification of Nord Stream 2 gas line from Russia. The price of natural gas, already high, is about to go higher.  

Pro-nuclear France gets 70 per cent of its electricity from nuclear plants and its pro-nuclear allies include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Finland. France wants to invest in new nuclear power plants, particularly in new generation called small modular reactors (SMR).

Canada has a role to play in nuclear reactors. Canada is the world’s second-largest producer of uranium. Our reliable Candu reactors pioneered nuclear-power generation. Ontario gets 57 per cent of its electricity from them.

Ontario Power Generation intends on building more reactors. This time, the Crown Corporation plans to build SMRs that are smaller and simpler to build.

 In the International Energy Agency’s plan “Net Zero by 2050”, wind and solar power are the cornerstones. The IEA says they could provide 70 per cent of global electrical generation in 2050. But they say nuclear and hydro are an “essential foundation” in the decades of transition.

Wind and solar are clean and safe, too, but even with falling costs and advances in battery storage, they alone can’t get us to our emissions goals. If we are serious about the climate-change problem, nuclear has to be part of the solution.

Calling nuclear energy “green” may be a stretch. But there’s no way we are going to avert the climate emergency without it.