EIA Projects
Climate Catastrophe
(Open URL for charts and
graphs)
The U.S. Energy
Information
Administration has projected that the United
States will lead the world into catastrophic global warming
over the
next
twenty five years. In its 2011 Annual Energy Outlook, the EIA
predicts
that
energy-related CO2 emissions will "grow by 16 percent from
2009 to
2035,"
reaching 6.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent
(or 1.7
GtC):
The fuel mix the EIA projects remains predominantly coal and
oil, with
a
moderate rise in renewable energy, whose pollution benefits
are offset
by
growth in energy demand:
This pathway would almost certainly commit the world to
catastrophic
climate
change, including rapid sea level rise, extreme famine,
desertification, and
ecological collapse on land and sea. Right now, the United
States,
with less
than five percent of global population, produces 20 percent of
global
warming pollution. Center for American Progress senior fellow
Joe
Romm
published in Nature in 2008 that humanity "must aim at
achieving
average
annual carbon dioxide emissions of less than 5 GtC [5 billion
metric
tons of
carbon, or 18 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide] this
century or
risk
the catastrophe of reaching atmospheric concentrations of
1,000
p.p.m." To
do so, he said, humanity needs to adopt a "national and global
strategy to
stop building new traditional coal-fired plants while starting
to
deploy
existing and near-term low-carbon technologies as fast as is
humanly
possible."
Since 2008, the science has grown more dire. The impact of
existing
global
warming on oceans, extreme weather, agriculture, polar ice,
and
ecosystems
is at or exceeding the highest range of past projections. Dr.
Romm's
suggestions were based on the assumption that stabilizing
greenhouse
gas
concentrations at 450 parts per million would likely limit
warming to
2°C
above pre-industrial temperatures. However, as climate
scientists
Kevin
Anderson and Alice Bows write in Philosophical Transactions of
the
Royal
Society, "the impacts associated with 2°C have been revised
upwards,
sufficiently so that 2°C now more appropriately represents the
threshold
between 'dangerous' and 'extremely dangerous' climate
change":
"There is now little to no chance of maintaining the rise in
global mean
surface temperature at below 2°C, despite repeated high-level
statements to
the contrary. Moreover, the impacts associated with 2°C have
been
revised
upwards, sufficiently so that 2°C now more appropriately
represents
the
threshold between dangerous and extremely dangerous climate
change."
Over a year and a half ago, Dr. Michael Mann concurred in
Proceedings
of the
National Academy of Sciences that the 450ppm target is
"terribly
risky":
"So regardless of one's precise definition of dangerous
anthropogenic
interference, stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations much
above 450
ppm
CO2eq would be a terribly risky prospect."
Friends of the Earth UK's latest report, "Reckless Gamblers,"
reflects the
science in its recommendations for immediate and significant
cuts in
climate
pollution, while admitting that there are significant
global-scale
risks
that come even with that effort. If future pollution is
distributed on
a
per-capita basis, then net United States emissions would need
to go to
zero
by 2030 (a similar effort by top climate institutes finds the
US
pathway
goes to zero by 2020). Comparing the EIA pathway for
energy-related
CO2
emissions - which represent about 83 percent of total US
greenhouse
pollution - to the range of merely dangerous emissions
pathways:
Unfortunately, the economics that policymakers rely upon is
grossly
outdated. Even as climate scientists have stopped considering
450
ppm
stabilization safe, economists still question whether there
would be
any
significant climate damage in a 550 ppm world (or even a 1000
ppm
world).
Economist Simon Dietz
recently found that the risk of continent-scale
economic disaster in a 550 ppm scenario is only six percent -
and
that's
dramatically higher than previous economic work. Based on his
unreasonably
sunny scenarios, he estimates that the "social cost of carbon"
-
essentially
how current pollution should be taxed - is around $300/tCO2.
And
that's
dramatically higher than the official U.S. government
estimates.
Suffice it to say our prospects for avoiding catastrophic loss
caused
by our
damaged atmosphere are not improved by a political system in
thrall
to
fossil fuel polluters. Hope for a sustainable future lies in
our
nation's
ability to overcome the fear of changing our disastrous status
quo
and
conquer the great
challenges ahead.