Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
there has been no deviation in emissions from the business-as-usual pathway. With the
rapid development of the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China) countries there
is little hope that emissions will be curbed in the near future. Moreover, the consensus ap-
proach used by the IPCC to secure agreement from all parties means it is inherently con-
servative. We should perhaps therefore view the top estimates of climate change as those
more likely to occur. This means we are staring down the barrel of a gun, with warming of
over 5°C very likely by 2100, if we do not start to act now. Add to this the estimates of
top economists that it could cost us over 20 per cent of everything the world earns in the
future to deal with a warmer world. This contrasts with a figure of only 2-3 per cent of
what we currently earn to convert our global economy to low carbon. Even if the cost-be-
nefits are not so great from an economics point of view, the ethical case for paying now to
prevent the deaths of tens of millions of people and to avoid the likely increase in human
misery must be clear.
So what are the solutions to climate change? First, there must be an international political
solution; without a post-2015 agreement we are looking at huge increases in global carbon
emissions and devastating climate change. Any political agreement will have to include
plans to protect the rapid development of developing countries, as it is a moral imperative
that people in the poorest countries have the right to develop and to obtain a similar level
of healthcare, education, and life expectancy to that in the West. Climate change policies
and laws based around international negotiations must be implemented at both regional
and national levels to provide multi-levels of governance that will ensure these cuts in
emissions really do occur. Novel ways of redistributing wealth, globally as well as within
nations, are needed to lift billions of people out of poverty without huge increases in con-
sumption and resource depletion. Support and money is also needed to help developing
countries to adapt to the climate changes that will inevitably happen.
Second, we must greatly increase the funding for developing cheap and clean energy pro-
duction, as all economic development is based on increasing energy usage. Fossil fuel
subsidies should be made illegal and sanctions applied to countries that continue to skew
the world's energy markets. To tackle climate change we really need the level of funding
that is usually only ever achieved when a country is at war. For example USA has spent
between $4 and $6 trillion on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan; just imagine if all that
money had been put into developing technology for a zero-carbon world. The Internation-
al Energy Agency estimates $20 trillion will be invested in energy over the next 15
years—what we must do is to ensure that it is not in fossil fuels. But even if renewable en-
ergy technology does become available, there is no guarantee that it would be made af-
fordable to all nations, since we live in a world where even life-saving drugs are costed in
