Leaving the fossil fuels be

There is only one way to tackle climate change: allow most of the oil, coal and gas to remain underground

Image Credit: Agency
Visitors witness a large chunk of ice falling from Monaco Glacier in Spitsbergen, Norway. After less than 1C of temperatureincrease so far, we are already seeing a collapse in Arctic sea ice coverage more severe than even the most pessimistic predictions
Gulf News

We have far more oil, coal and gas than we can safely burn. For all the millions of words written about climate change, the challenge really comes down to this: fuel is enormously useful, massively valuable and hugely important geopolitically, but tackling climate change means leaving most of it in the ground — by choice. Although we often hear more about green technology, consumption levels or population growth, leaving fuel in the ground is what it all boils down to. After all, the climate doesn’t know or care how much renewable or nuclear energy we have got, how efficient our cars and homes are, how many people there are, or even how we run the economy. It only cares how much global-warming pollution we emit — and that may be curiously immune to the measures we usually assume will help.

There are three facts that tell you all you really need to know about climate science and politics. One: for all the uncertainty about the detail, every science academy in the world accepts the mainstream view of man-made global warming. Two: virtually every government, recognising the profound danger of tampering with the climate that allowed human society to thrive, has agreed the world must limit the global temperature increase to 2C — a level which isn’t by any means “safe” but may be enough to avoid the worst impacts. Three: the amount of warming we will experience goes up roughly in proportion to the total amount of carbon that global society emits — cumulatively.

Here is the rub. Even if we gave up on all the obscure and unconventional fossil-fuel resources that companies are spending billions trying to access and just burnt the “proven” oil, coal and gas reserves — the ones that are already economically viable — we would emit almost 3 trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide. No one can say exactly how much warming that would cause, but it is overwhelmingly likely that we would shoot well past 2C and towards 3C or even 4C of warming.

Four degrees might not sound much but at the planetary level it is. It is about the same as the temperature increase observed since the Ice Age’s “last glacial maximum”, when much of the northern hemisphere was trapped under ice as thick as the world’s five tallest skyscrapers stacked on top of each other. It is impossible to say what changes another three or four degrees would bring, but the impacts could very plausibly include a collapse in global food production, catastrophic droughts and floods, heatwaves and the beginning of ice-sheet melt that could eventually raise the sea level enough to wipe out many of the world’s great cities.

Sceptics argue that this doomsday scenario might not come to pass — and they are right. If we are lucky, the impact of burning all that oil, coal and gas could turn out to be at the less severe end of the plausible spectrum. But that is hardly reassuring: it is akin to saying that it is fine to walk blindfolded into a main road since you can’t be sure there are any cars coming. After less than 1C of temperature increase so far, we are already seeing some profound changes, including a collapse in Arctic sea ice coverage more severe than even the most pessimistic predictions from just a few years ago. (Brits secretly hoping for a hotter future, be warned: that collapsing sea ice may have caused the freakish jet stream behaviour that made 2012 the wettest English year on record and obliterated this year’s spring, both mere amuse-bouche for the feast of climate impacts expected in coming decades, even from the carbon we have emitted so far.)



That might sound hard to believe. After all, thanks to green policies and technologies, emissions have been falling in Europe, the United States and many other countries. Wind turbines and solar panels are ever more common, not just in the West but in fast-growing China. And the energy efficiency of cars, light bulbs, homes and whole economies has been improving globally for decades. So why isn’t the carbon curve showing any let-up? Some might instinctively want to blame the growing population but that doesn’t stack up. The rate of population growth has dropped like a stone since the 1960s and is no longer exponential, but the carbon curve doesn’t appear to have noticed that any more than it has noticed the Kyoto protocol or whether you cycled to work this morning. For whatever reason, cutting carbon has so far been like squeezing a balloon: gains made in one place have been cancelled out by increases elsewhere.



Seen as a technology-driven feedback loop, it is not surprising that nothing has yet tamed the global emissions curve, because so far nothing has cut off its food supply: fossil fuels. Indeed, though our governments now subsidise clean-power sources and efficient cars and buildings — and encourage us all to use less energy — they are continuing to undermine all that by ripping as much oil, coal and gas out of the ground as possible. And if their own green policies mean there isn’t a market for these fuels at home, then no matter: they can just be exported instead.


Or take Australia, which in the same year introduced a carbon tax and started debating plans for a series of “mega-mines” that would massively increase its coal exports, helping build confidence among the companies and governments planning no fewer than 1,200 new coal-fired power stations around the world. Even the United Kingdom, with its world-leading carbon targets, gives tax-breaks to encourage oil and gas recovery and has been growing its total carbon footprint by relying ever more on Chinese factories — and therefore indirectly its reliance on American and Australian coal. And not just that. Although it rarely gets commented on, Britain — along with other supposedly green nations such as Germany — regularly begs Saudi Arabia and the other Opec nations to produce not less oil, but more. As journalist George Monbiot once put it, nations are trying simultaneously to “reduce demand for fossil fuels and increase supply”.

It is not just governments that are in near-universal denial about what needs to happen to the fossil-fuel sector. Blithely ignoring the fact that there is already far more accessible fuel than can be safely burnt, pension fund managers and other investors are allowing listed fossil-fuel companies to spend the best part of $1 trillion (Dh3.67 trillion) a year (comparable to the US defence budget, or more than $100 for every person on the planet) to find and develop yet more reserves.



Of course, oil, coal and gas use will level off eventually no matter what we do. Fossil fuels are a finite resource and each year they get more expensive relative to renewables and nuclear. But given the continued acceleration not just in fossil-fuel extraction but in the production of cars, boilers, furnaces and power plants that need oil, coal and gas to function, there is zero prospect of that happening of its own accord any time soon. Forget peak oil caused by dwindling supplies. At least until we have cracked cheap carbon capture, we need to bring about peak fossil fuels. Voluntarily. And soon.




–Guardian News and Media Ltd