Issue:
November 2024 | Deep Dive
FCCJ Deep Dive panelists are asked if it really is too late to stop global heating
A warning by the International Monetary Fund [IMF] that the “world is sleepwalking toward the edge of a cliff” on climate change is a wake-up call that should be taken seriously. The IMF’s recent report makes for scary reading, as does another report due to be published by the Asian Development Bank [ADB] that was previewed at a recent FCCJ Deep Dive event. It warns that climate change is accelerating and that “tipping points” may have been reached that could make global warming go “much faster” than expected” from here on in.
Governments are not keeping pace with the acceleration in global warming (some are too busy waging war or preparing for it) or can’t afford to pay the bill for battling climate change. The private sector, meanwhile, says it can “follow but not lead" the fight.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the U.S. followed typhoons in Asia that left death and destruction in their wake, while experts predict losses and damage caused by these and other “natural” disasters will reach trillions of dollars in the coming years.
Yet for all the words that have been spoken and written about this existential crisis – a subject that seems to turn off many people – these frightening truths do not seem to have sunk in.
They will be repeated at COP 29 in Azerbaijan from November 11-22, but it remains to be seen whether policymakers will listen.
I’ve long been skeptical as to whether governments and businesses are up to the task of dealing with global warming – topics I have addressed in two books on the subject. My doubts only increased after moderating the expert panel at the FCCJ that included people from the IMF in Washington, the ADB in Manila, the Institute of International Finance (IIF) in Washington and the United Nations University in Tokyo.
The panelists were asked if it was too late to save the planet. That sounds a little dramatic, but the question elicited sobering responses that proved that climate change poses an existential threat.
The IMF’s annual report on climate change, published in advance of a UN “stock take” early next year on progress in achieving nationally determined commitments (NDCs), warns that the world is falling dangerously behind its CO2 reduction targets.
There is a need to “cut emissions drastically” if CO2 and other greenhouse gas targets set under the 2015 Paris Agreement are to be reached by 2030, provided emissions do not rise above 1.5 C, or even 2 C, from pre-industrial levels, IMF senior economist Karlygash Zhunussova told the Deep Dive event.
Ahunussova said ambition “needs to be doubled,” given that IMF data show that China and the rest of Asia, including India, are the biggest emitters, while the U.S. is reducing its emissions and the EU is roughly stable. But “the whole world needs to decarbonise,” she added.
Unless current targets for 2030 are tightened, there would need to be a 75% reduction in global emissions from 2030 to 2035, which is technologically implausible and would involve a massive global economic shock.
Is taxing emissions the answer? Coverage of such schemes remains low, as do carbon prices. Currently they average around $5 per ton while they need to reach $85 a ton by 2030 or even up to $385 a ton if global warming is to be limited to 1.5 C, according to World Bank estimates. Meanwhile, fossil fuel subsidies remain plentiful.
The "cliff edge” had come into disturbingly sharp focus at the end of a record-breaking summer in many countries, including Japan, where temperatures frequently reached 40 C or higher.
Climate change is “not only happening, it’s actually accelerating,” said David Raitzer, senior economist in the ADB's research and development impact department. It is going faster as time progresses, and two-thirds of the warming since the preindustrial era has happened since 1970.
More disturbing is that there are signs of “feedback effects”, such as increasing methane emissions from natural ecosystems, glacial melt, and reductions in sea ice cover, that could make warming accelerate much faster than suggested by climate modelling.
The world, Raizer said, was “increasingly locked into a hotter, more variable future”. Under the higher emission scenarios now being sketched in the light of warming trends, “all of Asia virtually would have more than a doubling of days above 35 degrees” and many more in some cases, he added.
The ADB, which styles itself as Asia’s “climate bank,” was due to present an updated report on the subject by the end of October. It was clear that it would not make for comforting reading.
Policymakers and the public seems to place faith in throwing ever greater amounts of money at climate change, but as Sonja Gibbs, head of sustainable finance at the IIF, said, finance can facilitate the battle against climate change but it can’t sustain it. Finance, as she put it, “is not in the driving seat”.
So-called green investment is popular with investors around the world but is aimed chiefly at financing new and consciously “green” projects. Far fewer wish to invest in the countless firms engaged in “brown” or polluting activities so that they can transition toward becoming green.
Nothing short of a fully coordinated effort among governments, NGOs, civil society, multilateral development banks, and companies, in addition to financial sector, will be able to tackle an issue of this magnitude. But who is going to coordinate the response? That question remains unanswered.
Where do we go from here? Will the climate’s predicament become so severe that people, even the wealthy, will need to cut their consumption of a wide range of goods, take fewer flights and generally change their behaviour? Or will carbon taxes force such changes?
There are no easy answers. It is up to all of us to speak with once voice, according to Gibbs, and pressure governments to act more decisively and in concert to halt or slow the slide toward the cliff edge. And that needs to happen now, before it really is too late.
Anthony Rowley is a columnist and contributor for the South China Morning Post.
