A big report on how to tackle climate change will be published this weekend: How is it being reported?
Hundreds of scientists and policymakers are meeting in Berlin this week to discuss a major new UN climate change report. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release the third and final instalment of its review of the current state of climate change research on Sunday.
While the first two reports aimed to better define the climate change problem, Sunday’s report focuses on potential solutions. The first part of the report, released last September, covered the physical science of climate – from extreme rainfall to Arctic ice melt. The second part of the report – released at the end of March – looked at how rising emissions could affect extreme weather, food production, and human security.
Sunday’s report will focus on what governments need to do to avoid the worst of those impacts. It is expected to emphasise the need for international cooperation to curb emissions, suggesting a variety of ways countries can decarbonise their economies.
With the notoriously leaky IPCC process in full swing, newspapers have been previewing some of the key findings. So what can we expect from next week’s report?
Two degrees
In 1992, countries agreed to curb greenhouse gas emissions, to prevent global temperatures rising by more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels. Since then, emissions have continued to rise. The IPCC’s report is expected to say that the longer this goes on, the harder it will be for countries to keep to the pledge.
Image - WSJ WG3 headlines (note)
The Wall Street Journal says “global temperature is projected to increase by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre industrial levels in less than three decades” based on the current emissions trajectory, according to the report’s findings.
But newswire Agence France-Presse says the report will say that the goal remains attainable if “all countries” act quickly to ease carbon emissions. It quotes one of the report’s co-chairs, Ottmar Edenhofer, saying “that deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions … remain possible” if countries are willing to embrace “challenging technological, economic, institutional and behaviour change”.
Motivating governments to take such action will require the IPCC’s delegates to demonstrate a “high level of enlightenment” this week, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tells Associated Press.
Costs of climate change
A bit of a scuffle over how much the impacts of climate change may cost was played out through the media last month. The cost of implementing policies to tackle climate change looks set to get more attention this time around.
Image - Reuters WG3 cost headline (note)
Reuters says that anyone hoping for “clear-cut economic calculations about the benefits and costs of curbing rising greenhouse gas emissions” is likely to be disappointed by Sunday’s report, however. It points out that while there is a lot of economic analysis in the report, many of the calculations are incomplete, and struggle to model the benefits of acting on climate change.
Energy policy
As the energy sector is responsible for the bulk of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, it’s a given that the IPCC’s new report will dedicate many pages to looking at how power plant emissions can be cut.
Image - Daily Mail renewables spend headline (note)
The IPCC will claim that if global emissions reduction pledges are going to be kept, “global investment in fossil fuels will have to decline by £20 billion a year until 2030, while world investment in low-carbon alternatives will have to rise by £90 billion a year”, the Daily Mail says.
Governments hoping the report will endorse a “dash for gas” – including the UK – are likely to be disappointed, the BBC says. The IPCC’s report will show that “gas is only worthwhile if it is used to substitute a dirty coal plant – and then only for a short period”, the BBC says.
The IPCC will instead recommend that countries scale up their efforts to roll out low carbon energy projects, such as wind and solar farms. The Daily Mail says this will mean Britain’s green energy spending increasing “ten-fold in the next 15 years”.
Geoengineering
If emissions continue to climb, countries will have to look beyond decarbonisation policies and turn to “Plan B“, the BBC says. The IPPC will say that means exploring ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, known as geoengineering, as well as cutting emissions, the BBC claims.
But not everyone is happy with the prospect of “sucking greenhouse gases from the air to help fix global warming”, Reuters reports.
The German government has concerns that the relevant technology is “currently not available and would be associated with high risks and adverse side-effects”, Reuters says. Likewise, China, the European Union, Japan and Russia are also urging the IPCC’s authors to do more to stress uncertainty around the technology, Reuters claims.
Primed and ready
Countries need to make large cuts in emissions if they are going to stand a decent chance of keeping to their two degrees pledge, the IPCC will say. But getting nations with different levels of economic development and political aims to agree on a climate action plan is no easy feat.
The media coverage has so far reflected both the urgency and the scale of the challenge the IPCC is expected to say the world faces, as well as the inherent difficulty of agreeing that message in the first place.