The one thing never to forget about global warming is that it’s a timed test.
It’s ignoble and dangerous to delay progress on any important issue,
of course – if, in 2020, America continues to ignore the healthcare
needs of many of its citizens, those people will sicken, die, go
bankrupt. The damage will be very real. But that damage won’t make it
harder, come 2021 or 2025 or 2030, to do the right thing about
healthcare.
But the climate crisis doesn’t work like that. If we don’t solve it
soon, we will never solve it, because we will pass a series of
irrevocable tipping points – and we’re clearly now approaching those
deadlines. You can tell because there’s half as much ice in the Arctic,
and because forests catch fire with heartbreaking regularity and because
we see record deluge. But the deadlines are not just impressionistic –
they’re rooted in the latest science.
In the aftermath of the Paris climate accords in 2015, for instance,
many researchers set 2020 as the date by which carbon emissions would
need to peak if we were to have any chance of meeting the accord’s
goals. Here’s an example of the math,
from Stefan Rahmstorf and Anders Levermann. Under the most plausible
scenario, they wrote, “even if we peak in 2020 reducing emissions to
zero within 20 years will be required,” and that is an ungodly steep
slope. But if we wait past 2020 it’s not a slope at all – it’s just a
cliff, and we fall off it. As the former UN climate chief Christiana
Figueres put it when she launched Mission 2020,
“Everyone has a right to prosper, and if emissions do not begin their
rapid decline by 2020, the world’s most vulnerable people will suffer
even more from the devastating impacts of climate change.”
Here’s another way of saying it: the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change reported last autumn that if we hadn’t managed a
fundamental transformation of the planet’s energy systems by 2030, our
chance of meeting the Paris temperature targets is slim to none. And
anyone who has ever had anything to do with governments knows: if you
want something big done by 2030, you better give yourself a lot of lead
time. In fact, it’s possible we’ve waited too long: the world’s
greenhouse gas emissions spiked last year, and – given Trump, Bolsonaro
and Putin - it’s hard to imagine we won’t see the same depressing thing
this year.
Which is why, I guess, it’s a good thing that 2020 is an election
year in the US, and that the Democratic party finally seems willing to
talk seriously about climate change. If it nominates Sanders or Warren,
maybe the kind of aggressive approach that shakes things up is possible.
But America is just one country; we also need to pressure our real
global government, which has its headquarters not in Washington but in
Wall Street. Last year banks increased their already staggering lending
to the fossil fuel industry; if that continues there’s no chance of
turning this round in time.
If you’re looking for optimism, at least we come into 2020 on a roll.
The great climate strikes of this September were the largest
demonstration of climate activism in history, with 7 million people in
the street. And April 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day – it
could be a day for an even more massive outpouring.
The planet is running a hideous fever, and the antibodies – all those
protesters – are finally kicking in. It’s a race, and we’re behind, and
we better start catching up right now.