“We can choose to keep shooting up the curve of exponential growth, bringing us ever closer to irreversible tipping points in ecological collapse, and hope that technology will save us. But if for some reason it doesn’t work, then we’re in trouble.” (Jason Hickel)
| This post is part of a reading series on Less is More by Jason Hickel. To quickly access all chapters, please click here. Disclaimer: This chapter summary is personal work and an invitation to read the book itself for a detailed view of all the author’s ideas. |
Gambling in Paris
“Here’s how the [2015] Paris Agreement works. Each country submits a pledge on how much they will reduce their annual emissions. The pledges – known as Nationally Determined Contributions – are supposed to be set in line with the goal of keeping warming to 1.5°C. But if you add up all the pledges that have been made by signatory nations as of 2020, you’ll notice something rather strange: they don’t come anywhere close to keeping us under 1.5°C. In fact, they don’t even keep us under 2°C. Even if all the countries in the world fulfill their pledges – which are voluntary and non-binding, so there’s certainly no guarantee of this – global emissions will keep rising. We’ll still be hurtling towards 3.3°C of global warming by the end of the century. In other words, even with the Paris Agreement in place, we’re on track for catastrophe.” (Jason Hickel)
Here is the explanation. In the early 2000s, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) modelers realized that it would be impossible to keep climate change to 1.5°C by operating a complete transition to renewable energies if our energy needs keep increasing at the rate they do. In the growth-as-usual scenario, fossil fuels have to remain in the mix. And since growth is embedded in our economic system, the Paris Agreement could only be about something other than growth trade-offs. It then relied on “negative emissions.” What are they, and why are they insufficient to reach the goal set in Paris in 2015?