By 2027, scientists predict average global temperatures will have breached the crucial 1.5°C threshold. A searing new report by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) released 17 May 2023 lays out the stark reality: the annual mean global near-surface temperature for each year between 2023 and 2027 is predicted to be between 1.1°C and 1.8°C higher than the pre-industrial average. After three years of La Niña, a phase of a planet-wide oscillating weather system that has a cooling effect on temperatures, the world is set to shift into the opposing El Niño, a phase of heightening temperatures across the Earth. This shift in the weather system combined with climate breakdown is predicted to break all previous global temperature records in the next five years, bringing with it severe heat waves and unprecedented climate devastation. Meanwhile Britain continues down a destructive path, ignoring the most viable renewable energy solutions, investing in untested and unsafe technologies like carbon capture and storage technologies and nuclear energy, and continuing to grant new oil and gas permits.
Climate crisis demands action
The WMO report follows the March publication of the final synthesis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). AR6 paints a bleak picture of our planet’s future, and lays out the most urgent climate change mitigation and adaptation policies required to address the crisis. It unequivocally states that human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, are responsible for the warming of the planet and warns that melting ice caps and rising sea levels will displace millions of people, further exacerbating poverty and inequality. The world has already warmed by 1.1°C and if 1.5°C is breached, as the WMO report predicts, even more extreme weather events like heat waves, droughts, floods, and hurricanes will be triggered.
Cumulative net CO2 emissions between 1850 and 2019 have been estimated at 2,400 gigatonnes, with 58% occurring up to 1989 and about 42% just from 1990 to 2019. CO2 levels are now higher than at any time in the last two million years. In 2019 79% of global greenhouse gas emissions came from energy, manufacturing, transportation and construction and about 20% from agriculture, forestry and other land use – all industries geared to generating profits from environmental destruction.
AR6 also emphasises the urgent need for immediate and aggressive action but holds back from the most radical measures. Leaked drafts of AR6 before publication included requirements to phase out all fossil fuels and shift to more plant-based diets. Neither of these requirements made it to the final report after intense lobbying efforts by UN delegates from Saudi Arabia, Argentina, and Brazil. Saudi Arabia’s lobbying efforts also led to a framing that describes expensive and unproven carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies (that allow continued fossil fuel usage) as nearly equivalent to renewable energy technologies like solar and wind despite previous AR6 drafts making little to no mention of CCS at all. Even by these compromised standards, AR6 stresses the paltry response of many governments around the world, including Britain.
Britain’s lethal approach
Facing increasing pressure on energy security due to the war in Ukraine, the British government’s newly formed Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) released a new energy security report on 30 March. Titled Powering Up Britain – Energy Security Plan, the report lays out a series of new climate change mitigation policies that include utilising carbon capture technologies, nuclear energy, off-shore wind farms, electric vehicles, home heating pumps and hydrogen power. But these policies are mere sticking plasters that do not address the root causes of the crisis, which lie in the capitalist system’s insatiable drive for profit.
In February 2023 Prime Minister Rishi Sunak rearranged the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy into four new departments, one being DESNZ, and named Grant Shapps as the head of the new department responsible for delivering net zero. Shapps has a track record of voting against climate policies; as Transport Secretary he voted against plans to eliminate transport emissions by 2030, as Business Secretary he supported the installation of prepayment energy metres in vulnerable homes in the middle of winter amidst an energy crisis and as Energy Secretary called on-shore wind turbines ‘an eyesore’.
The government is focusing on new CCS technologies, planning on spending £20bn over the next 20 years in order to allow continued unabated use of fossil fuels. This involves trapping carbon emissions from industrial processes, factories and power plants and transporting them to deep underground storage facilities before they make it into the atmosphere. This technology is still new and developing, very costly and has not been proven at scale, making it a grossly inadequate solution when comprehensive and effective climate action is needed now.
AR6 states global greenhouse gas emissions must reach net-zero by around 2030 to limit climate destruction, already an inadequate goal in the face of a 1.5°C breach in the next five years. Even by this meagre standard, Britain’s target of net-zero by 2050 falls significantly short. The continued investment in fossil fuels, including the government’s decision to grant permission for new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, is a testament to the capitalist system’s disregard for the environment and its people.
Solar and on-shore wind energy provide the best cost-benefit of the potential mitigation options and can provide more immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and reduced costs to the consumer. However the government has gone against the low bar of mitigation recommendations outlined in AR6 and chosen not to invest in these energy sources instead looking to ‘seize the economic opportunity to deliver net zero’. The capitalist system, which prioritises short-term profits over long-term sustainability, is incompatible with the urgent action needed to mitigate climate change.
Bruno Sergi and Soma Kisan
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 294, June/July 2023
