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Nations don’t need carbon to grow their economies, says John Kerry
If John Kerry were only able to accomplish one thing as US climate change czar, he'd focus on changing the minds of the one-third of countries in the world that say they're "entitled" to pollute because they didn't before.
For Kerry, it's a fallacy that heavy carbon use is the only way to develop an economy because these nations can leapfrog from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
If we are able to cut by half the amount of carbon we're now releasing into the atmosphere by the end of the decade, he says, we may be able to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goal of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
"Currently, we're on a track to blow through 2 degrees, let alone 1.5. This is the urgency that people need to understand," he says. "Promises are fine, but they don't get the job done. It's the implementation that gets the job done. So, we're working on something called implementation plus."
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Do individual carbon footprints really matter?
Do we spend too much time thinking about our own carbon footprints and not enough time thinking about bigger factors? Climate journalist Elizabeth Kolbert acknowledges it's necessary for individuals to make changes in the way they live, but that isn't the number one priority.
"What would you do to try to move this battleship in a new direction? It requires public policy levers. And it requires … some pretty serious legislation." Ian Bremmer spoke with Kolbert, an award-winning journalist and author and staff writer at The New Yorker, on a new episode of GZERO World, airing on US public television.
Watch the episode: Can We Fix the Planet the Same Way We Broke It?
Biden says “America is back” on climate — do others buy it?
US President Joe Biden's highly anticipated two-day climate summit opens on Thursday, when dozens of world leaders and bigshot CEOs will gather (virtually) to try to save the planet. Above all, the US is looking to showcase the idea that "America is back" on climate change. But will other countries buy it?
The ease with which the Trump administration pulled the US out of global climate compacts in 2017 has left lingering doubts about how much the US can be trusted to honor present and future promises.
To assuage those concerns, Biden will reportedly promise to cut emissions in half by 2030, from 2005 levels, nearly doubling the target that the US agreed to as part of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. But others are going further: the EU has agreed to cut by 55 percent from 1990 levels over the same period, and to take the Union carbon neutral by 2050. The UK — looking for goodwill from the US as it navigates post-Brexit life — said that by 2035 it would cut emissions by 78 percent from 1990 levels.
The biggest intrigue surrounds China: President Xi Jinping has, at the last minute, decided to attend. As the world's largest current carbon emitter, China has a critical role to play alongside the US (the second biggest polluter) in any efforts to slow climate change. But the rapid deterioration of ties between the two countries has raised alarming questions about whether they can really work together on climate. Keep an eye on session one, at 8am EST Thursday, when Xi, along with other world leaders, will make opening statements.
A domestic angle for Biden: The White House's ability to push his ambitious climate agenda through Congress — where Democrats have the narrowest of majorities — will depend in part on whether Biden can show that other countries are moving fast too.
The agenda: If you want to follow the play-by-play of the summit, here is the full schedule. (If not, we'll tell you the important bits afterwards.)
The bottom line: Biden is staking a lot on this event. In the end, this summit will tell us at least as much about the geopolitical climate as it does about the actual climate.- The US is rejoining the Paris Climate Accord. What comes next ... ›
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Who will still listen to the US on climate policy?
The Biden administration's much ballyhooed Earth Day Summit this week promises to be revealing. We're going to learn a little about what additional action a few dozen of the world's largest emitters are willing to take on climate change, and a lot more about which countries are willing to take such action at the behest of the United States.
Call it a situational assessment of the status of American power just shy of Biden's 100th day in office.
We're also about to discover whether John Kerry has gotten out over his skis diplomatically. Kerry, Biden's special envoy on climate, has been busy lately. His consistent message that the 2020s must be the decisive "decade of action" is a welcome one, but it's being received with some annoyance by allies who were left to fill the vacuum when American leadership vaporized for the second half of the 2010s.
As part of a Canadian government that worked hard with allies to keep the US in the Paris Climate Accord under President Trump, I can tell you that diplomatic failure had real consequences, principally for the United States. The world moved on.
Most notably, China ran up the score on developing renewables and electric vehicles, while the European Union developed a mature carbon market and increasingly sophisticated policies to harness the power of financial markets to solve the climate crisis. Bets were hedged against American leadership everywhere.
Meanwhile, the impacts of climate change only intensified. Epic wildfires raged from the Arctic to Australia, and storms of biblical proportions in every season became irrefutable evidence for most of the world's population — especially its young people — that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models were right and the science is sound. Indeed, if climate scientists sound like alarmists these days, it's only because they're alarmed. They know that the most pernicious fact about greenhouse gas emissions is that they persist. That's true no matter the outcome of Biden's summit or the UN's COP summits — the 26th of which is set to take place in Glasgow this year. We have already baked into the atmosphere a dangerous amount of warming for the foreseeable future.
All of that means that the Biden administration is bringing America back to a very different climate discussion than the one it exited four years ago. The policy environment is less stable, more urgent and a lot more competitive. For one thing, we've gone from a world of wary multilateral cooperation to one of furious competition for dominance in the industries, technologies, and supply chains that will be at the heart of the global transition away from fossil-fuel dependence.
So, given all of this, what does the White House want out of the Earth Day Summit? Biden and — very personally — Kerry initially set a high bar for success at having the world's largest emitting countries show up with stronger commitments to reduce their emissions. In COP language, that means setting stronger Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs) heading into Glasgow than were tabled for Paris. All of this sounds rather arcane to the uninitiated, but these national targets are the motor that drives the COP process, for better and worse.
At their best, targets are useful for directing complex systems toward meaningful ends, while providing clear benchmarks for accountability. At worst, they are the rhetorical equivalent of an inebriated promise to never touch another drop of alcohol. In fact, if you're really cynical, Net Zero targets set for mid-century are worse than that: they're promises that our children and grandchildren will never drink again, while we continue to empty the liquor cabinet.
In either case, the United States has had little luck in cajoling friends or competitors to arrive fully stocked for their Earth Day party. The world seems to be telling the Americans that they need to do a lot more walking and a lot less talking when it comes to climate change.
There are rumors at the time of this writing that the US will in fact unveil an ambitious new target, perhaps as much as a 50 percent reduction in emissions. There will be a gap between whatever number they choose and the policies they've planned to achieve it— most notably the lack of a broad-based carbon price in the US economy. If that gap is too wide, the target will strain credulity.
But what can we expect from other major economies that are set to attend the summit?
Large European states have been the most interesting to observe in the early days of the Biden administration. The post-Brexit UK needs friends more than it once did, so Biden can count on Boris, but the Germans and French have been cagier. Macron and Merkel's "meeting before the meeting" with Xi Jinping is a particularly spicy diplomatic move in this respect. Among other things, it should serve to remind the Americans that — for all the talk of reinvigorating the trans-Atlantic partnership — the most important climate dynamic is trans-Pacific.
Chinese and Indian emissions, particularly from coal, remain the single most lethal threat to the climate. Xi Jinping — a man not usually full of surprises — stunned most observers with his UNGA speech last fall, committing China to Net Zero by 2060 and to peak emissions this decade. He may have more aggressive action planned for the run-up to COP 26, but there is a 0 percent chance that he will allow the Americans the satisfaction of extracting it from him. He dropped in on Merkel and Macron to make sure the US got that message. Kerry's follow-up mission to China was tame compared to the diplomatic bunfight that took place between top US and Chinese diplomats in Alaska last month, but even the Americans described Kerry's success as "modest."
To his great credit, Kerry has spent a courageous amount of time and political capital on the problem of India's electricity sector, which has tripled its output from coal since the turn of the century. In fact, with Chinese coal use plateauing, it's not much of a stretch to say India's electricity grid will soon be the climate's public enemy number one. The traditional Indian argument that it is unfair for developed nations to impose restrictions on its development that they did not suffer themselves is surely fair. But as the great American physicist Robert Socolow has recently written, when it comes to the near-term future of the climate, "safe is not fair and fair is not safe." If John Kerry does nothing else as climate envoy other than find a way through the impasse where those arguments meet it will be time well spent.
Other nations whose emissions are of less importance will present a mixed bag on Earth Day. US-Russia relations are at a post-Cold War nadir, and nothing will happen this week to materially alter that. Canada and Japan might be the only two countries to show up with their assigned homework completed — more ambitious new targets — though I keep hearing noises that Brazil may surprise us as well.
Overall, Team Biden has done a good job of resetting expectations back from "every country must increase their ambition." There's more practical talk now about the US proving the depth of its own commitment to the climate with its NDC, and using the Summit as a productive kick off on the road to COP 26.
That's because their first 100 days of climate diplomacy has taught them what will be on full display for all of us on Earth Day. The climate policy arena has gotten more aggressive, urgent and competitive. The statements of those who attend will tell us less about where their countries stand, and a lot more about where each believes the United States sits in this new competition.
Gerald Butts is Vice Chairman at Eurasia Group, and former Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada.Podcast: Can we fix the planet the same way we broke it? Elizabeth Kolbert on extreme climate solutions
Listen: In a wide-ranging interview with Ian Bremmer, Pulitzer Prize-winning climate journalist Elizabeth Kolbert assesses the current state of the climate crisis and answers a simple question: how screwed are we? And as the climate continues to warm at a record pace, she unpacks some of the more extreme climate solutions that some increasingly desperate nations are starting to consider. Such measures may sound like stuff of science fiction (see: injecting sulfur particles into the atmosphere or shooting millions of tiny orbital mirrors into outer space) as times become more desperate, their appeal is growing. Can we fix the planet the same way we broke it?
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Smoke is discharged from chimneys at a coal-fired power plant in China's Jiangsu province.
How China fits into global climate change
Want to tackle climate change? If so you'll have to reach out to China, which is currently responsible for over a quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions. Beijing will certainly take your call, as climate is a huge priority for President Xi Jinping.
Xi has promised that China will go "net zero" — meaning its carbon emissions will be offset by equal amounts of either natural or tech-driven carbon capture — by 2060. Is a decade later than most of the top 10 polluting countries fast enough for the rest of the world? It is for the Chinese, who want to help but have their own ideas about how.
The world's smokestack. Burning fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow has been essential for China's economy, now the world's second-largest, to have grown around 10 percent annually for most of the past thirty years. The tradeoff for that growth is massive pollution, which continues today and is the main reason China is not on track to meet its emissions reduction targets in the 2015 Paris Climate Accord.
When carbon emissions from China's coal plants and smoke-belching factories get stuck in the atmosphere, they contribute to the global warming that leads to stronger monsoon floods in Bangladesh, longer droughts in sub-Saharan Africa, and more frequent cyclones in the Gulf of Mexico.
It's not that China doesn't care about the problems it causes other countries. But it's only fair, the Chinese argue, that we get the same shot at growing our economy through fossil fuels that industrialized Western countries got when they started polluting the planet way before we started to.
Climate is a big deal inside China. Once-arable lands in the interior are now barren, Beijing has long experienced poor air quality and increasingly frequent sand storms, and rising sea levels threaten major coastal cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai. No matter how fast the Chinese want to get rich, they are no longer willing to do so at the expense of their environment.
So, what is China doing about all this? First, China is embracing renewables at a scale the proponents of the Green New Deal in the US would balk at. In 2020, China accounted for more than half of the world's added electrical capacity from renewables. Second, the Chinese are betting on modern nuclear plants to become a more reliable and clean(ish) alternative in the country's energy mix.
At the same time, though, China has not only not abandoned coal, but is rather doubling down on new coal-fired plants. Xi, though, has an ace up his sleeve: carbon capture and storage technology, which traps emissions before they are released into the air and keeps them stored underground.
If widely adopted by heavy industry, it is estimated that carbon capture could cut China's emissions by at least 15 percent in 2060. What's more, emissions could be slashed by an additional 20 percent if the stored carbon is transformed into clean hydrogen, which Beijing expects to power nine out of 10 vehicles — including aircraft — to meet its net-zero target.
Beijing is also making a global play for green tech. The so-called "factory of the world" is reinventing itself to cash in on climate. China — which is increasingly looking to tech to solve all its problems — has already cornered the global market on affordable solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. The next step is to make carbon capture and clean hydrogen accessible and cheap for the rest of the world.
Dominating the global market for green tech is a win-win for Beijing: Chinese companies would benefit tremendously, and China itself would take credit for doing more than its fair share to save the planet.
But the Chinese don't want to do it all alone. A major sticking point in current US-China climate negotiations is that Beijing is demanding that America and its allies pitch in more cash for developing countries to wean themselves of fossil fuels. The Chinese complain that rich nations which demand net zero targets for all gobble up most of the available budget to help everyone go green.
China wants to open the floodgates of climate finance to increase global demand for Chinese green tech. Will US tech firms step up their game to compete with them? Earth will surely benefit from that.
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Security personnel stand guard in front of the India Gate amid the heavy smog in New Delhi.
India’s push for climate justice
India, the world's third largest emitter of carbon dioxide, is one of the countries worst affected by climate change. But it takes issue with those now asking it to clean up its act. Why, the Indians ask, should we give up our right to get rich by burning fossil fuels like you developed economies have done for generations?
That's precisely the message that India's energy minister had for the US and other wealthy nations at a recent Zoom summit after they pressured Delhi to set a future deadline for net zero emissions. For India, he explained, such targets are "pie in the sky" aspirations that do little to address the climate crisis the country faces right now.
High stakes. The impacts of climate change will be severe for India. Parts of the country are set to become unbearably hot in the coming years. Torrential monsoon rains are becoming more frequent and unpredictable, as are droughts, which will hinder the agriculture's sector ability to feed 1.4 billion people and employ nearly 60 percent of the labor force.
Melting glaciers may alter the course of the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra rivers, making it harder for farmers to irrigate crops. And tens of millions of Indians live in low-lying areas that could be underwater in a couple of decades.
Taking action. Faced with such grim prospects, India says it's doing its part to turn the tide. The country is one of the few currently on track to meet its emissions reduction target in the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, and is very close to achieving its objective of using 40 percent of renewable energy sources by the end of the decade.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been internally recognized for driving India to become a global climate champion. His government has spurred massive public and private investment in clean energy, especially solar, where India is now a major player due to ultra-low prices. But that's not the entire story.
Coal remains king. India still burns a lot of coal. In fact, coal powers about half of the country's electricity generation. As the Indian economy grows, so will demand for coal — and the air in megacities like Delhi and Mumbai will get even more toxic.
And it's not just coal. Eliminating dirty household fossil fuels for cooking, heating and lighting would fix India's air pollution problem without any changes to industrial or vehicle emissions. But an attempt by the government to force hundreds of millions of low-income Indians to use more expensive green alternatives would likely be met with the same fierce resistance that farmers have shown to Modi's new laws to make the agriculture sector more business-friendly.
To drastically cut emissions, India needs cash. Delhi believes that rich nations should spend less on going "net zero" themselves and more on helping developing countries realize their climate action plans with less stringent requirements. Why, the Indians ask again, should wealthy nations demand that we all go green but only we stay poor, when you still get most of the available climate finance money, and yet it is we who will suffer the most?
For India, it's high time to shift the burden of paying for climate action to those who caused Earth to warm in the first place. But will that argument convince rich countries to divert funds intended to reach their own targets so India won't have to choose between economic growth or saving the environment? We may find out in a couple of weeks at Joe Biden's Earth Day Summit.Nuclear energy is costly — and still highly unpopular a decade after the Fukushima disaster in Japan. But it also generates emissions-free electricity. Will countries embrace nuclear power to fight climate change?
After Fukushima, can nuclear power actually help save the planet?
Ten years ago this week, a powerful earthquake off the coast of eastern Japan triggered a tsunami that destroyed the Fukushima nuclear plant, resulting in the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. A decade and dozens of decommissioned reactors later, nuclear energy still supplies about 10 percent of global electricity, but its future remains uncertain.
As more countries pledge to curb emissions to mitigate climate change, nuclear could serve as a clean(ish) and reliable source of energy. But investing more in nuclear comes with tradeoffs.
Nuclear is greener than you think. It's not renewable like solar or wind, but nuclear's direct carbon dioxide emissions output is zero. Over its life cycle, a nuclear plant produces about the same volume of indirect emissions per unit of electricity (mainly to extract and process uranium, to build and operate the facilities, and store the waste) as wind, and one-third of solar. That helps explain why the use of nuclear power is not ruled out entirely by US proponents of the Green New Deal.
There's also the unintended environmental cost of shutting down. When the Fukushima disaster prompted Germany to take most of its nuclear plants offline, it was soon forced to fire up its coal plants, leading to 1,100 additional deathsper year from air pollution. Scientists estimate that not replacing all nuclear plants with fossil fuels by 2050 could save more than seven million lives.
Moreover, while solar and wind are both intermittent and therefore depend on energy storage, nuclear is as reliable as oil, gas, and coal. The International Energy Agency projects that the world could meet its Paris climate goals by 2040 by raising nuclear's share of the global energy mix to 15 percent and investing a lot more in cheaper, cleaner nuclear plants.
But nuclear is also very expensive, and understandably unpopular. Generating electricity from nuclear now costs about $112-189 per megawatt hour, much more than solar ($36-44) and wind ($29-56). Also, while the total lifetime cost of building and running a plant has declined for solar and wind over the last decade, it has increased for nuclear, so poorer countries can't afford it. Finally, the average construction time for a single plant is nearly 10 years — dangerously slow for the urgent battle against climate change.
The other major concern is safety. To be fair, unlike Chernobyl the Fukushima accident didn't kill anyone from radiation, and was caused not by a chain of human errors but a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, a catastrophe on a scale that even the safety-conscious Japanese hadn't planned for. But they did build the site near the coast in a known quake-prone area, and they didn't protect the reactors as well as European countries did after a French plant flooded in 1999.
More importantly, Fukushima spurred a global popular backlash against nuclear power that has yet to dissipate. More than 49 percent of Japanese people said a year ago that they want nuclear power to be discontinued. Roughly the same percentage of Americans now have an unfavorable view of nuclear, making it the most unpopular source of energy in the US after coal.
So, who's still building new nuclear plants, and why?Russia, for now the dominant global player in the industry, is exporting its nuclear technology to countries with relatively friendly governments like those in Hungary, Iran, and Turkey. But China is catching up fast, and has plans to both finance and construct new plants in places as diverse as Pakistan, South Africa… and the UK.
Moscow and Beijing — the latter betting big on nuclear as part of its bid to go carbon-neutral by 2050 — are competing to fill the void briefly created by the US. (The Trump administration reversed Obama-era bans on US international public lenders financing nuclear projects abroad, although President Joe Biden has yet to say whether he'll stay the course.)
If the Americans stage a nuclear export comeback, things could get interesting. On the one hand, US-built plants might be preferable for countries committed to net zero emissions that can afford them. On the other hand, some of those same nations have popular environmentalist parties that want to abolish nuclear energy, and many locals will protest nuclear construction in their backyard.
A tough choice. Weighing the risks of a costly, unpopular source of energy against the benefits of emissions-free electricity will provoke debate in many countries. But as the drive for climate action becomes more urgent, governments are running out of time to make their choice.