Input to SB005 annotated agenda and related annexes.

[Robert Chris]

This 96 page 'Information note' illustrates that the so-called climate change emergency is an emergency in name only. 

It makes two brief references to tipping points but policy goals are not referenced to them other than to make the obvious comment that if temperature rises more slowly, there is likely to be more opportunity to avert the dangers of tipping points.  But these comments do not appear to reflect recent research (e.g. Hansen et al, Armstrong MacKay et al) that provide compelling evidence that tipping points are more imminent than previously thought and climate response time and climate sensitivity are both much greater than previously thought.  Both of these contributions make the climate emergency more of an emergency than is reflected in IPCC AR6, requiring decisive action now..

The great bulk of the note is an economic argument for ranking the cost-effectiveness of a range of alternative options.  This is consistent with the historically adopted policy approach to climate change of almost all governments.  It is not an approach that is consistent with climate change being an emergency.  It treats climate change as an economic problem amenable to the prescriptions of neoclassical economic theory, and fails to recognise that it isn't.  Responses to existential threats are generally measured in terms of their immediate effectiveness at preserving life and human well-being.  Cost-effectiveness is a second order consideration.  Markets do not have the capacity to deal with climate change at the speed and scale necessary to avert dangerous human interference in the climate system (UNFCCC Constitution Art 2), because the internalisation past environmental costs from fossil fuels is too great a burden to deliver effectively through future pricing adjustments, and even more so when simultaneously the environmental costs of future fossil fuel use must also be internalised.  Markets can contribute but their impact is likely to be modest given the speed and scale at which action is now needed.

So long as policymakers persist in framing climate change largely as an economic puzzle, we will continue to slide, at an ever accelerating rate, towards a full-blooded devastating climate crisis.

This Information note should be treated as a textbook example of how not to construct climate change policies likely to avert the dangers of human intervention in the climate system.

Its structural weakness lies in its failure to address a) the distinction between necessary and sufficient policies and b) the risks from not including CDR (and greenhouse gas removal (GGR) more widely to include, for example, methane and nitrous oxide).  There is now ample evidence (not listed in this short response) to the effect that while emissions abatement is necessary, it is no longer sufficient to avert dangerous human interference in the climate system, already apparent with only 1.2C of warming and disproportionately worse at 1.5C and above.  1.5C is not a safe harbour, it is merely a less perilous one.  GGR is also necessary but, on its own is not sufficient.  It is now virtually certain that abatement and GGR combined, even if we achieved net zero emissions tomorrow, would not be sufficient to avert dangerous human interference in the climate system, and that to make them part of a sufficient policy response, some direct cooling through one or more approaches to enhance Earth's albedo must also now be added into the policy mix (e.g. Hansen et al. Warming in the Pipeline).

It is facile and unhelpful to note that some, indeed perhaps all, of these responses may have some undesirable side effects and that these risks are often difficult to quantify because of a lack of knowledge and data.  The question is not whether they entail some risk but whether that risk can be mitigated by appropriate research and development so that the benefits to be derived from them make it more likely that in aggregate the dangers from human interference in the climate system can be lessened.  There are risks from not acting, and from not acting at sufficient speed and scale, and these must also be accounted for in any sound decision making process.

In this brief response it is not possible to provide suggestions about how this Information note might be improved.  My advice is that it should be abandoned and a more balanced and diverse panel convened with wider and more appropriate terms of reference.

I close with an extract from Article 3 of the UNFCCC Constitution:

Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures.

While this remark is followed by a recognition that 'policies and measures' should deliver 'global benefits at the lowest possible cost', climatic effectiveness remains the primary criterion.  That requires policymakers to focus on policy regimes that are in aggregate sufficient and not make the mistake of assuming that because one policy (e.g. emissions abatement) is necessary, it is also sufficient and other policies are not therefore needed.

Regards

Dr. Robert Chris

Honorary Assiociate Open University UK

Associate of Centre for Cliamte Repair, Cambridge UNiversity UK.