As the planet heats up and records continue to be broken, governments around the world are failing to address some of the most fundamental causes. In a column in the November issue of Energy in Buildings & Industry, Andrew Warren, chair of the British Energy Efficiency Federation, highlights some of the potential repercussions of putting off meaningful action. This is a particularly powerful article because it combines three disturbing developments: weakening climate commitments, Europe’s preparations for a 3°C warmer world, and the growing reliance on the idea that temperatures can eventually be brought back down after overshooting climate targets.
Rising global temperatures cannot be ignored
I am not sure which is the most alarming. First of all, an annual United Nations (UN) assessment is showing that national climate change abatement plans will “cut global emissions only half as much by 2035”, even compared to last year’s findings. Emissions would fall to just 6% below 2019 levels by 2035, compared to 12% in last year’s assessment.
These findings “put the world on course for between 2.1C and 3.2C of warming by the end of the century”. That is because the higher projections are due to new national climate pledges that are “less ambitious than the earlier UN modelling had hoped for”.
And then there is the European Commission’s response. Recognising this alarming trend, it is proposing a new directive that will require every country to make plans during this century to adapt to a 3C rise in global temperatures from pre-industrial levels. This would require all 27 governments to prepare for that eventuality whenever making policies and investments.
“Even if we do everything right today in the domain of mitigation, it will not be enough to get our citizens out of harm’s way,” warns EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra.
Record-breaking temperatures
High temperatures contributed to about 50,000 excess deaths across the continent in summer this year, far exceeding the previous record of 29,000 heat-related deaths in the summer of 2022.
The UN has concluded it is now impossible for the world to limit climate change to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, with emissions on track to cause 2.8C of warming by the end of the century. Despite increasingly urgent warnings from scientists outlining the dangers of warming above the 1.5C growth limit agreed in Paris by 195 countries in 2015, global emissions aren’t yet falling. And governments around the world aren’t doing anywhere near enough to decarbonise their economies.
The only way to achieve the 1.5C limitation target now is by “overshooting” that goal in the short term, the UN said in its latest Emissions Gap report, before relying on vast amounts of global cooling in the latter half of the century. But last month, governments failed – for the sixth time running – to agree even on a timeline for publishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC)’s next set of influential reports. The IPCC’s 65th session was seen by many to be the final opportunity for countries to agree on a schedule where its seventh assessment report would be published in time for the UN’s big “global stocktake” of climate action, due in 15 months.
IPCC chair Prof Sir Jim Skea, a Scot, has consistently warned that releasing the reports in time for the stocktake would depend on a timeline being agreed by the end of 2026. Even so, a week-long meeting in Ethiopia last month descended into fraught disagreements between governments, resulting in Sir Jim “suspending” the talks with no decision made. Countries were also unable to agree on the IPCC’s forthcoming budget, leaving this vital body with a “serious funding crisis”.
Limiting global warming, which is the primary goal in such discussions of control efforts, is fast being reframed as a “temperature to be attained only following a period of overshoot.”
Overshoot means exceeding that warming threshold – before eventually returning to the present. Or even cooler, according to some proponents.
The possibility of cooling the planet after exceeding a climate target may sound wonderfully reassuring.to indecisive politicians .But for families deciding where to live, communities protecting their water supplies, and companies’ planning infrastructure, a lower future temperature would not necessarily mean that earlier damage will miraculously disappear.
European Commissioner Hoekstra insists that his legal proposal, based around that forecast 3C temperature rise by 2100, because his measures on “risk ownership” would have “teeth” to ensure Europe reacts more quickly to climate change consequences. Because the Commission also intends requiring countries to designate the bodies responsible for managing climate risks in different areas of the economy,
“Clarity upfront on who should do what, and who is responsible, is hugely important,” he told the Financial Times.
Recovery rate
Leaving aside the potential to detract from the urgency to reduce emissions right now, my concern is that the promise of an eventual reduction could encourage an incomplete understanding of what “recovery” will require. A temperature target can help guide policy. But it cannot tell us everything about the condition of a coastline, the security of a food supply, or a community’s ability to return to current conditions.
The IPCC is warning that relying upon ”overshoot” brings additional risks, some involving many irreversible impacts and associated consequences, which will have increased in magnitude and duration. In practical terms, how hot the planet becomes and how long it stays that way ,both matter. An eventual decline would not make the intervening years inconsequential.
Consider a coastal community weighing whether to reinforce its defences or relocate essential services. Its leaders need more than a projection of the consequences of average global temperature growth through to the century’s end.
They need to understand persistent local risks, the useful life of their investments, and the consequences of waiting. Research should help them compare those choices under different possible futures and plan accordingly. But where is that research, and who will fund it?
Meanwhile, we have the President of the world’s biggest economy actively obstructing any efforts to control emissions. Alongside him there are many more despots and dictators. Plus dangerous populists like Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, all too happy to lean into a high-emissions future by attacking almost everything that can be portrayed as assisting ”net zero” targets.
Next year, it will be 40 years since the first House of Commons report alerted us to the dangers of out-of-control climate change. I gave evidence to that environment select committee, later becoming a Special Advisor to it.
Re-reading that report’s conclusions of what needed to be done remains depressingly accurate. Stop wasting energy, cut out fossil fuels. At that time, we had total confidence that such basic logic and sound economics would swiftly be implemented.
Instead, I fear I shall be entering 2027 with the poet Robert Browning’s words ringing in my ears: ”Never glad confident morning again”.
