1.1 Now or Never: The Urgency of Linked Action on Clean Air and Clean Energy in the Struggle Against Climate Change
There is no dearth of scientific and global consensus that anthropogenic or humanâinduced climate change poses an existential threat to human life. In 1824, Fourier first discussed why the Earth was warmer than could be explained by solar radiation and raised the issue of heat being trapped in the atmosphere. Tyndall then offered an answer by experimentally demonstrating that greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide (CO2) can effectively absorb infrared radiation â the greenhouse effect. Building on Tyndallâs results, in 1896, Swedish scientist and Nobel Prize winner, Svante Arrhenius produced the first estimate of the sensitivity of global temperatures to increases in CO2. By 1938, Guy Callendar demonstrated that the production of carbon dioxide by the combustion of fossil fuels was responsible for increasing the average temperature on Earth (Weart 2008; Hawkins and Jones 2013; Seidenkrantz 2018; NASA Earth Observatory website 2000). More recently, NASA, which has conducted a historic program of breakthrough research on climate science, has categorically warned that the Earth is trapping an unprecedented amount of heat, resulting in drastically warmer oceans and land temperature, with most of the warming occurring in the past 40 years and the seven most recent years being the warmest, with 2016 and 2020 tied for the warmest year on record (NASA website 2021).
Global scientific and policy consensus around climate change as a definitive and existential challenge is not a recent phenomenon (Haas 1990; Bernard and Semmler 2015). More than 16 years ago, Bill Allen, editor in chief of National Geographic, wrote that he was publishing the first of a threeâpart series of stories focused on Antarctica, Alaska and Bangladesh on a topic â global climate change â that he was âwilling to betâ would make âpeople angry enough to stop subscribingâ, but was doing so because these stories âcover subjects that are too important to ignoreâ and show âthe hard truth as scientists see itâ. He added that he âcan live with some cancelled membershipsâ but â⌠would have a harder time looking myself in the mirror if I didnât bring you the biggest story in geography todayâ (Allen 2004). Today, that âbiggest story in geographyâ has already devastated, and is anticipated to destroy vulnerable lives spanning the world from Dhal Char, Bangladesh to New Orleans, Louisiana. Deadly forest fires, flash floods and heat waves span the globe, coral reefs are bleached, marine ecosystems are dying and lowâlying coastal cities face the escalating costs of inundation and erosion as both ocean temperatures and seaâlevels rise. But the capacity to adapt to and rebuild after calamitous climatic impacts, retreat to safer environs, and find new livelihoods is a luxury that millions who are exposed to endemic levels of fossil fuel related air pollution cannot afford.
The discomfiting truths are that the global community has long known that the morbidity and illâhealth burdens associated with climatic adversities will be borne by those who have done the least to contribute to per capita emissions of GHGs; and that the nexus between poverty, exposure to toxic levels of air pollution and inexorable climatic impacts will extract the harshest toll on the least resilient and most vulnerable among us. Back in 2007, the United Nationâs (UN) principal development agency, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) issued its Human Development Report that warned of five drivers or âtipping pointsâ by which climate change could stall and actually reverse human development: reduced agricultural productivity and increased food insecurity; heightened water stress and insecurity; rising sea levels and increased exposure to climate disasters; loss of ecosystems and biodiversity and amplified health risks, with the greatest health impacts felt in developing countries. Its warning remains prescient in this current time as the world reels from the combined effects of a global pandemic and the increasing trend of extreme climatic events. The 2007 Report was categorical about the global failure to act conclusively and decisively on climate change: âFailure will consign the poorest 40 percent of the worldâs populationâsome 2.6 billion peopleâto a future of diminished opportunity. It will exacerbate deep inequalities within countries⌠In todayâs world, it is the poor who are bearing the brunt of climate change. Tomorrow, it will be humanity as a whole that faces the risks that come with global warmingâ (UNDP 2007, p. 2). A few paragraphs later, the Report went on to highlight that the world lacked âneither the financial resources nor the technological capabilities to actâ and consequently failure to act, cooperatively on climate change would ârepresent not just a failure of political imagination and leadership, but a moral failure on a scale unparalleled in historyâ. Here, it specifically called attention to the fact that future generations would look harshly upon those who were provided with evidence, and â⌠understood the consequences and then continued on a path that consigned millions of the worldâs most vulnerable people to poverty and exposed future generations to the risk of ecological disasterâ (2007, p. 2).
It is time to acknowledge the fact that the consequences of the global failure to act conclusively on climate change have been known to, and will continue inexorably to be borne by millions living in the poorest households, communities and countries, even as global negotiations to address climate change have been occurring for decades. Within the UN context, climate change was identified more than 30 years ago as a global challenge when the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted a resolution sponsored by the Government of Malta, recognizing climate change as a âcommon concern of mankindâ (UNGA 1988). Intergovernmental climate negotiations have been going on for more than three decades broadly centred around two distinct but interrelated issues, both of which are associated with major technology, financing and capacity related constraints particularly for the smallest and poorest of UN member states:
- Mitigation or the reduction of GHG emissions that are seen as principally responsible for the rise in global surface temperatures.
- Adaptation or the human and/or ecosystem related responses to a range of adverse climatic impacts, such as seaâlevel rise (SLR), increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather related events, effects on fragile marine ecosystems and coastal zone inundation, that accompany a rise in global surface temperatures.
The issue of climate change has galvanized the public more than any other global environmental problem. And yet, a comprehensive and effective global resolution to the climate change crisis that expressly addresses the health and morbidity costs associated with unclean air and polluting forms of energy has proven elusive over the years. 27 years after the first UNGA climate resolution was adopted, the UN Paris Agreement (PA) on climate change was gavelled into history after a marathon final day of negotiations on 12 December 2015. All UN member states universally pledged to undertake ambitious action, and agreed with the PAâs serious concern about âthe urgent need to address the significant gap between the aggregate effect of Partiesâ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission pathways consistent with holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above preindustrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above preindustrial levelsâ (UNFCCC 2015, p. 2). What made this 2015 New Yearâs planetary resolution different from all prior UN climate resolutions and agreements was that it was the first inclusive, yet completely voluntary global climate change accord that covered all member states. The voluntary rather than legally binding aspect of the PA is in contrast to the overarching UN climate treaty, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as well as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (KP) to the UNFCCC. But, it is precisely the PAâs inclusion of the widest possible cooperation by all countries, and the entirely voluntary scaling up national climate pledges that serves as the global litmus test for distinguishing between climate hype versus verifiable climate action. On October 21, 2021, the United States (US) Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released its first âNational Intelligence Estimate on Climate Changeâ and offered a stark âtakeawayâ: âGlobal momentum is growing for more ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reductions, but current policies and pledges are insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement goals⌠Intensifying physical effects will exacerbate geopolitical flashpoints, particularly after 2030, and key countries and regions wi...
