A dark phase for CO2 control? The crisis is severe, but improvement likely

This is a truly gloomy moment on the problem of global warming. The case for concern is made in four steps.

 

1. Many of us grew up on Daniel Yergin’s 1990 book, The Prize, which was about the oil industry. Writing in the Foreign Affairs, Mr Yergin, Peter Orszag, and Atul Arya recently argued that the energy transition was not going well (even before the policy shifts derived from Donald Trump taking charge as American President on January 20). They reminded us the share of hydrocarbons in the global energy mix had only dropped slightly, from 85 per cent in 1990 to 80 per cent today.

 

2. The two biggest megatrends of the world — populism and climate change — are interacting in a peculiar fashion. We are able to now look back, and understand the chain of events, where the internet gave us social media, which harmed the thinking of the people. This created greater extremism. When people look to their peers, this is a recipe for being swayed by conspiracy theories and pseudo-science, and the process of Sanskritisation is impeded. Under the Trump administration, the United States (US) government has thrown its weight with governments like those of Russia and Saudi Arabia with opposition to decarbonisation.

 

3. Controlling carbon dioxide emission was always a global public good. It required a sensible global order, where foreign policy engaged in give and take, to get all countries to put their shoulder to the task. In the new environment of governments controlled by angry people (Mr Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping) doing more strategic autonomy, it has become hard to engage in the quiet sophisticated work of foreign policy and economic diplomacy. The world is absorbed in more urgent problems like Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Xi Jinping’s hopes of invading Taiwan.

 

4. The world is warming, and a range of harms upon human societies are visible in the news and the data. Scientists had long warned against breaching the 1.5 degree centigrade mark on the increase in the global average temperatures over pre-industrial conditions. It now appears that 1.5 degree centigrade will be breached, and maybe 2 degree centigrade will also be breached.

 

The wonderful people that brought us to this state of maturity in the field through all the steps of the policy pipeline are choking in fear and despair. How should we make sense of this situation? What is the path ahead? Are we headed for a runaway climate change dystopia or can we do better?

 

The possibility of breaching the temperature target calls for a greater accent upon climate adaptation. Regardless of your beliefs on whether and how carbon dioxide emission should be stopped, it is efficient to understand that the world is warming, and think through the profound impacts upon our lives. The warming world perspective has far-reaching implications for the strategy of every individual, every firm, and every government organisation. For example, we should all be more cautious about the valuation of coastal real estate. What about decarbonisation? Is this a lost cause? Should we just give up, burn coal, and plan a human future on Mars? While recognising that the present moment is a bad one, the future is likely to get better for four reasons.

 

1. In the past, carbon dioxide emission was connected to future harm through scientific reasoning. It required intellectual capability to understand the looming threat. But standing in 2025, the changes in the world are readily visible to all. Agricultural and livestock yields in India are being harmed on warm nights: This has gone from the concern of academic scribblers to the lived reality of practical people. Hence, while the populism and propaganda pushed through social media are indeed a problem, more people are understanding the harm than ever before.

 

2. Messrs Yergin, Orszag, and Arya are correct in looking back and being disappointed. But looking forward, we have to engage in exponential thinking. The prices of renewables and storage are in the midst of “Wright’s law”, the immense gains through learning curves with scale. That genie cannot be put back into the box by the governments of the US and Russia. Understanding straight lines in semi-log graphs suggests that even though the gains in the past were slow, there are massive gains in the near future. In India, we have a bounty of sunshine, and self-interested decisions favour the world of clean energy, over and beyond the objective of eliminating carbon dioxide emission.

 

3. We should not overstate the durability of the American right wing. Opinion polls, consumer-sentiment measures, and financial markets are showing a sharp loss of optimism. If the political rivals manage to find centrist positions, the control of the legislature could be wrested away in 2026. Going beyond the question of the 2026 elections, the excesses of the American right constitute education on democracy and public policy for many people who were earlier in the vortex of social media-fuelled extremism. There is room for hope that after this there will be a better centrist environment.

 

4. For a long time, concepts around carbon dioxide emission involved the phrase “global public goods” and “free rider problems”. For Sri Lanka, self-interest involves unrestricted carbon dioxide emission because the country’s contribution to global emission is small. But for a large country like India, the calculation changes. India is at around 10 per cent of global emission. The cost-benefit analysis for India now changes: 10 per cent of the problem of global warming is made in India. Indian self-interest motivates reducing emission as the harm caused by global warming for the Indian population is very high, and the cost of reducing emission is not that high. Such reasoning applies for the four big economic blocks of the world: The US, China, the European Union (EU), and India. While the US is trapped in a bad political moment, the other three are not. As an example, movement in the EU and the United Kingdom towards the carbon-border tax will continue. 

 

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The writer is a researcher at XKDR Forum