The world is on track for around four degrees Celsius of
global warming under current carbon emissions trends, says the EU’s
chief climate negotiator, a trajectory that some scientists say risks a
planetary mass extinction event.
"When you look at the global emissions,
with the current pledges which are on the table … we are probably
heading towards 3.8 or 4.2 degrees [warming],” said Artur Runge-Metzger,
speaking at a roundtable hosted in Brussels by the Institut français des relations internationales on 14 March.
The EU official then asked US and Japanese officials at the
roundtable: “Are you making preparations in your countries to tell your
industries and households what it means to adapt to a four-degree
[change] and have you made estimates of what these costs are that will
be born by the public sector and households?”
Japan has refused to commit to a second round of commitments under
the Kyoto Protocol, while the US has still not ratified the treaty
itself.
The Japanese trade official, Jun Arima, said he had “a serious doubt”
that current pledges would be enough to limit global warming to two
degrees, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s official
target.
For the US Mission to the EU, Dale Eppler, the climate attaché, said
that he was not aware of any studies on the climate impacts of a four
degrees temperature rise for the US population.
“There is a significant amount of opposition to work on climate
policy [in the US],” he said. “Parts of Congress have even blocked
attempts to set up a climate service.”
Existential risk
A report by the Royal Society last year
found that with planetary warming of four degrees or more, the limits
for human and environmental adaptation “are likely to be exceeded in
many parts of the world”.
The London-based Royal Society report estimated that at four degrees of global warming,
half the world’s current agricultural land would become unusable, sea
levels would rise by up to two metres, and around 40% of the world’s
species would become extinct.
Meanwhile droughts and wildfires would ravage the globe.
“The ecosystem services upon which human livelihoods depend would not be preserved,” the authors contended.
“I would be interested to hear from the US and Japan what they intend
to bring to the table in the negotiations this year to at least start
bridging that gap [between two and four degrees],” Runge-Metzger said.
Shale gas revolution
He also questioned whether the US achieving self-sufficiency in fossil fuels by 2030 – because of what commentators call ‘the shale gas revolution’ – would allow emissions to be reduced quickly enough.
“In terms of what is required in the energy sector - Europe would say
total decarbonisation by 2050 - if you just switch from coal to gas,
that probably is not going to be achieved,” he said. “So how will you
deal with those emissions in the medium term coming from a still heavy
form of fossil fuel, even if it is a gas based economy?”
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