A Song of Melting-Ice and Forest-Fires
By Devin Quinn
Article originally published in Issue 5 of Rupture, Ireland’s eco-socialist quarterly, buy the print issue:
Scorching heatwaves have dominated headlines all across the world this year. This includes the hottest temperature ever recorded in Lytton, Canada (49.6°C) before the town was burnt down by wildfires that ravaged millions of acres during the Western North American Heatwave. This heatwave also produced the world’s hottest temperature ever recorded in Death Valley, California (54.4°C), as well as an estimated[1] 1,260 deaths attributed to it. Turkey and Greece saw extreme temperatures followed by devastating wildfires displacing thousands of people. The wildfires in Siberia were ‘bigger than all the world’s other blazes combined’[2], and a horrific famine as a result of four years of drought is devastating over a million people in Madagascar.[3]
At this point, there is no more debate. These events are unequivocally caused predominantly by burning fossil fuels (such as coal, oil, and natural gas), with industrial agriculture, deforestation, bottom-trawling[4] in the oceans, and manufacturing also contributing significantly. The ocean, which has absorbed 90 per cent of the additional heat trapped, is also under threat from this warming with potentially catastrophic consequences (see ‘Save our seas, save ourselves’ on page 7).[5]
How much warmer is it?
The global average surface temperature has risen by about 1.09°C since the late 19th century.[6] From 1880 to 1980, it rose on average by 0.07°C every decade. However, since 1980, this rate has more than doubled, rising by 0.18°C every decade, with the hottest 10 years recorded since 2005 (and the top seven since 2014).[7] So, the warming is accelerating. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that ‘[g]lobal surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50-year period over at least the last 2000 years’.[8]
No longer able to ignore the science, nearly 200 governments vowed in the 2015 Paris Agreement to cap warming at ‘well below’ 2°C—and at 1.5°C if possible (before this, it was widely thought that 2°C would be ‘safe’).[9] From what we know today, 2°C would be significantly worse than 1.5°C, with greater species extinctions and sea-level rise, and would overall result in severe consequences for our future.[10]
““Based on current emission rates, the world is heading for at least 3°C at best—with a 40% chance to hit 1.5°C at least once in the next 5 years[11]—unless drastic changes are made immediately.””
Based on current emission rates, the world is heading for at least 3°C at best—with a 40% chance to hit 1.5°C at least once in the next 5 years[11]—unless drastic changes are made immediately. The recently released IPCC assessment of the physical science makes it very clear that prolonged warming, even just beyond 1.5°C, could produce ‘progressively serious, centuries-long and, in some cases, irreversible consequences’. They also warn of the growing risk of the ‘apocalyptic’ effects of 2°C warming within two decades and up to 5.7°C by the 2080s.
So everyone is reducing their emissions, right?! Not really. The world’s greenhouse gas emissions have been steadily increasing. From 1990 to 2016 emissions increased by 40%.[12]
Irish Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Ireland has the third-highest emissions per capita in the whole EU.[13] Emissions come from three main sectors, agriculture (cows and sheep belching methane), transport, and energy. The most significant drop in emissions (4%) came in 2020 as a by-product of the Covid-19 pandemic. Even taking this into account, Ireland will be nowhere near reaching the energy and climate targets for 2020. The target was to reach a 20% decrease in emissions by 2020 from levels in 2005. Emissions are projected to only be around 8% lower than 2005, requiring even faster rates of emissions reductions over the next decade.[14]A worrying point to note is that our overall levels of emissions over the last few years have actually risen back to 2009-2010 levels—with agriculture and transport emissions having also been steadily increasing since 2011/2012—bringing an end to a few years (2011-2014) where overall emissions had been slightly reduced. In 2018, agriculture and transport combined made up 55% of our total emissions.[15]
Are we too late?
With all of the recent events of this summer and stark projections of temperature rise, extreme weather events, and species extinction before us, many are wondering whether we’re already too late to prevent more than 1.5°C warming. The frank (and scary) answer is “we don’t know”. One of the most challenging questions for scientists is how climate feedbacks will speed up warming and extreme weather events. For example, forest fires have and will continue to increase due to rising temperatures, which then reduces CO2 absorption by the trees, further accelerating global warming. Much more ice sheet melting could slow or stop the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt,[16] which would bring a complete shift to world temperatures.
While we may not know whether we can keep warming to 1.5°C, one thing we can be sure of is that taking action now will stop things from getting even worse.
Fight for some ‘breathing room’
Although CO2 makes up the bulk of greenhouse gases (76%), methane (16%), nitrous oxide (6%), and fluorinated gases (2%) (which are 80, 300, and 23,000 times more potent than CO2 respectively, albeit shorter-lived) also contribute to warming. Despite the IFA constantly trying to downplay the impact of methane[17], these gases contribute to faster and more severe heating of the planet, with the inverse of this also being true; they dissipate faster and therefore a focus on their drastic reduction now would also lead to a potentially faster reduction in the rate of heating and a much needed short-term drop in contributions to global warming.[18] This of course is only to try and give us a bit of ‘breathing room’ to combat the longer-term problem of urgently cutting CO2 emissions.
Every bit of reduction in emissions now makes a difference to our future. Changing our own individual habits is important, but the most important thing is to combat the main drivers of greenhouse gas emissions as a whole. We need to end fossil fuel exploration and extraction immediately. Not a single fossil fuel infrastructure project should go ahead. We need to drastically change our current destructive capitalist-driven methods of food production, energy production, and transportation. The transition to low-carbon food production, all-renewable energy production, and free and green public transportation around the country must be done in a just and equitable way, ensuring nobody is left behind.
It’s not too late to stop things getting worse. Every moment we delay only exacerbates the situation for everyone around the world. We must act now.
Endnotes
1. Deaths are estimated due to the discrepancy of classifying ‘heat-related deaths’ and ‘excess deaths’ due to the extreme heat. More information on this topic here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/11/climate/deaths-pacific-northwest-heat-wave.html
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/11/siberia-fires-russia-climate/
5. https://rupture.ie/articles/poking-the-angry-beast-the-other-carbon-problem
6. IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.
7. https://www.climate-change-guide.com/hottest-years-on-record.html and https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/2020-tied-for-warmest-year-on-record-nasa-analysis-shows
8. IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.
9. See Jess Spear, Poking the Angry Beast: How do we know?, Rupture Issue 2, Winter 2021.
10. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/23/climate-change-dangerous-thresholds-un-report
12. https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions
13. https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-eii/environmentalindicatorsireland2020/greenhousegasesandclimatechange/
15. https://www.seai.ie/data-and-insights/seai-statistics/key-statistics/co2/
16. See N. Boers, ‘Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation’. Nat. Clim. Chang., no. 11, pp. 680–688 (2021) and https://www.letusrise.ie/rupture-articles/remember-the-younger-dryas
17. https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40361306.html
18. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02287-y and https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11092019/nitrous-oxide-climate-pollutant-explainer-greenhouse-gas-agriculture-livestock/