“For however the fortune of war shall go, may it not so end that much that was fair and wonderful shall pass for ever?” King Theoden in The Lord of the Rings laments the end of the Ents, magical tree-herders.
Even if we tackle climate change successfully, some beauty and marvels of the nature and human worlds will be lost to us. Our children and grandchildren may never know polar bears, unspoilt coral reefs, the Piazza San Marco in Venice, a verdant Amazon rainforest, or the Anse Source d’Argent beach in the Seychelles.
If we are from parched, semi-arid, or low-lying coastal countries, our children and grandchildren may not know our land at all – they may be fated to be refugees from climatic catastrophes and conflict.
But this is not another despair-inducing screed about climate doom. The climate summit Cop28 opens in Dubai on Thursday. And like Cop, this article is about where we are now, where we will soon be, and what to do about it.
This year is set to be the hottest on record. October was 1.7 degrees hotter than pre-industrial levels. The El Nino effect in the eastern Pacific, after an unusually extended period of its colder opposite La Nina, brings hotter global weather in general.
Cleaning up pollution from sulphur-containing fuels in ships, following regulation in 2020, is good for human health, but the white “aerosol” particles had a helpful side-effect in reflecting some of the sun’s heat back into space. The reduction in sulphate pollution has warmed the busy shipping lanes of the North Atlantic in particular.
And in January 2022, the submarine volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai erupted. Tropical eruptions can sometimes release huge amounts of sulphate particles, with a similar cooling effect to that of the shipping pollution. But Hunga instead injected huge volumes of water into the stratosphere, and water vapour is itself a strong greenhouse gas.
As El Nino’s full effects take time, next year is likely to be hotter still. But the biggest culprit is not cyclical variations, volcanic eruptions or cleaner ships, but the ever-increasing volume of greenhouse gases we are adding to the atmosphere. The Paris Agreement of 2015 was intended to limit warming to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. A single hot year does not invalidate that aim, but on current trends, it will be breached regularly by the 2030s.
If all countries meet the goals they set themselves in their Paris-related commitments, global emissions will remain roughly flat by 2030 at around 55 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases per year. That would still be a major achievement – in 2010, it looked as though we were heading for 65 billion tonnes or more.
Yet, to be on target to limit warming to 2°C – the original Paris goal, and still dangerously hot – emissions could be about 41 billion tonnes. For the 1.5°C goal, emissions should be no more than about 33 billion tonnes.
This leads to four important conclusions.
The recognition at Paris of the need to reach net-zero carbon – not just lower emissions – was crucial. Carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for thousands of years. So, the climate will keep getting hotter as long as carbon dioxide emissions continue faster than they can be removed.
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