Accelerating Transition to Renewable Energy Essential to Limit Damage From Climate Change: Horowitz

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Rob Horowitz, MINDSETTER™

 

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Speeding the transition from fossil fuels to non-carbon-producing renewable energy is essential to curbing the rise of global temperatures, according to a new report reflecting the consensus of scientists worldwide. This comprehensive new assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds that the window for making this transition in time to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, including fierce and extended heat waves, stepped-up flooding, accelerated extinction of species and widespread crop failures, is still open, but closing rapidly. If we continue on our current trajectory, we will exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7% Fahrenheit increase from pre-industrial levels that scientists estimate is when the consequences begin to become unmanageable in the first half of the next decade.

 

“This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe,” declared UN Secretary-General António Guterres. The chair of the IPCC, Hoesung Lee, sounded a similar note, “We are walking when we should be sprinting,” he told The New York Times.

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The report, however, was not all gloom and doom.  As the Environmental Defense Fund noted, the progress on climate change so far and the increased commitments of nations have “led to a reduction in expected warming by at least a degree from a very high emissions scenario.” Most importantly, the solutions required to still achieve the goal of limiting warming to a 1.5 % Celsius increase are already developed and can be quickly scaled.  “There are multiple, feasible and effective options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to human-caused climate change, and they are available now,” said the scientists in a media release accompanying the report.


This rapid scaling is within our grasp in large measure because the cost of renewable energy has dramatically decreased over the past ten years.  For example, the cost of solar power and batteries has dropped 85% and wind power is 55% less expensive “These changes mean that clean energy is simply becoming cheaper than dirty energy,” wrote the Environmental Defense Fund.

 

There are a number of recent positive political developments, which taken together, make the task ahead somewhat less daunting.  The defeat of Bolsonaro in Brazil--under whose leadership the deforestation of the Amazon was speeding up-- by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is dedicated to protecting the world’s most important carbon sink, is an important victory for the climate.  The European Union has upped its renewable energy goals as the invasion of Ukraine has driven home that it is imperative to reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels. And in 2022, the Biden Administration won unprecedented incentives for the dramatic expansion of non-carbon producing renewable energy, creating the potential for a quick and dramatic decline in the use of fossil fuels on the home front.

 

Still, renewed proactive and aggressive climate diplomacy by the United States will be required to get the other top carbon emitters, India and China, to speed their efforts.  The good news is that President Biden has restored the United States’ credibility on this topic after it was badly eroded by the former president’s “heat up the planet as fast as possible” policies and his withdrawal from the Paris global climate agreement. While President Biden’s ill-advised decision to greenlight some drilling for oil on federal lands in Alaska puts a slight dent in an otherwise great record of accomplishment, it is an isolated action that is unlikely to change the perceptions of leaders of other nations around the world about the president’s strong commitment to tackling the climate crisis.

 

Specifically, the administration’s special climate envoy, John Kerry, needs to work to secure renewed and expanded commitments from the world’s top carbon emitters in advance of two important climate summits to be held later this year.  A talented negotiator, who as secretary of state under President Obama, negotiated the bilateral climate agreements with China that paved the way for the historic Paris global climate agreement, Kerry is respected around the world. With US actions on the home front upon which to point as well as this new climate report that hammers home the stakes of inaction, he is well-positioned to achieve results.

 

These new commitments would create momentum for achieving substantial progress at the New York Climate Ambition Summit in September, an initiative of the UN secretary-general, and the global climate conference to be held in December in Dubai. The Dubai gathering, which is the more important of the 2 meetings, will bring together nearly all the nations of the world for a look at what has been accomplished since the Paris accords were signed 7 years ago, setting the stage for countries to make new and expanded commitments with an eye to a speedier implementation of their climate goals.

 

The path to avoiding the worst consequences of climate change is well-marked and we are part of the way down it. With the fundamental building blocks now in place to speed our transition away from the fossil fuels that are heating up our planet, it is time to find the political will to firmly hit the accelerator.  The new report from the world’s scientists tells us in no uncertain terms why it is imperative to do so.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.


 

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