MechChem Africa December 2018

An inhospitable earth or urgent green spending?

I ts COP time again. The United Nations Frame- work Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will hold its 24 th annual Conference of the Par- ties (COP24) from December 2 to 14. At the ‘breakthrough’ Paris Agreement of 2015, 175 Parties, including the US, China and the EU, agreed to specific greenhouse gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance measures for implementation from 2020 onwards. COP24 in Katowice, Poland is mooted to be ‘Paris2.0’whererulesandguidelineswillbeestablished to ensure countries deliver on these commitments. After 24 conferences the mitigation specifics are yet to be established! On Black Friday, the US’s frenetic shopping holi- day and one of the best days of the year to ’bury’ bad news, the US Congress chose to release its Fourth Annual ClimateChangeAssessment. Aquote fromthe Summary Findings on the impacts on the US economy reads “Without substantial and sustained global mitiga- tion and regional adaptation efforts, climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastruc- ture and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century.” By2100, according to the report, givenwarmingon the current trajectory, the cost to the US economy in crop damage, lost labour and extreme weather dam- ages could exceed US$500-billion per year; almost double the economic blow of the economic crisis in the late 2000s. DonaldTrumpand theWhiteHousehavedismissed these predictions, suggesting that they are based only on “most-extreme scenarios” and ignore the potential effects of technology. In fact, the assessment above is the ‘do-little’ scenario, which is exactly what Trump‘s Whitehouse is advocating. A report released in May 2018 by Stanford Uni­ versity scientists calculated that climate change, based on the world’s nations adhering to the Paris Climate Accord but still failing to limit the temperature rise to between 1.5 and 2.0 °C, would reduce global GDP by up to 15%. Based on the 2018 global GDP-projection of $87.51-trillion, this puts the annual loss, assuming zero growth for nearly 80 years, at US$13.1-trillion. Alarming indeed: and adhering to the Paris agree- ment is looking like a best-case scenario based on the WhiteHouse’scurrentstanceandpoliticalindifference elsewhere in the world. The UN’s ‘Emissions Gap Report. 2018’ , points out that CO 2 emissions are rising again, for first time in four years and that ‘global efforts to tackle climate change are way off track’ . The report points to economic growth as respon-

Peter Middleton

sible for a rise in 2017, but perhaps the converse, economic constraint, has been flattering emissions mitigation in the past few years. The Emissions Gap report’s analysis predicts that global emissions arenot likely to peak until 2030, ten years later than the Paris Accord’s 2020 goal. “There is still a tremendous gapbetweenwords and deeds, between the targets agreed by governments worldwide to stabilise our climate and the measures to achieve these goals,” said Gunnar Luderer from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the authors of the study. Emission mitigation must be increased five-fold to meet the 1.5 °C goal and, right now, the world is heading for a temperature rise of 3.2 °C by the end of this century. The study fingers countries such as Argentina, Australia, Canada, the EU, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the US as falling short of achieving their nationally determined contributions for 2030, whileon thepositive side, theUNisplacinggreat hopes on ‘non-state actors’: local, city and regional govern- ments, businesses and higher education institutions. More than 7 000 cities from 133 countries and 6 000 companies with at least $36-trillion in revenue have pledged to take climate action. The authors, however, believe this is just scratching the surface of the 500 000 publicly traded companies worldwide. It is clear that we are not doing nearly enough to reduce emissions tomitigate against the very real con- sequences of climate change. Governments theworld over are preoccupied with their political survival and that of their fragile economic recoveries and, as Trump proves, even when nations finally commit to action, progress is too easily overturned on regime change. A friend of mine has recently installed a R130 000 PV system at his home. He is rightly proud. My green commitment is limited to shuffling paper, glass and tin into differently coloured bags. We have to take urgent action if we want to avoid the decline of our planet into an increasingly inhospi- table place. That means we should all be prioritising loweringour carbonemissions, viaour lifestyle choices and our investments in cleaner technologies. We can no longer wait for government officials to make the right choices. Private industry, businesses, hospitals,factories,farms,schools,universities,church- es and homeowners all need to re-align their practices and technology choices towards lower emissions. Green spending now could still influence history, while doing nothing is likely to bring shame on our entire generation. q

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2 ¦ MechChem Africa • December 2018