1.5°

The good news about climate change is that a lot of Australia's political spectrum agrees on a target of under 2°, and ideally under 1.5°, of warming.

What does this target mean? According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, writing in 2018:

Climate models project robust7 differences in regional climate characteristics between present-day and global warming of 1.5°C,8 and between 1.5°C and 2°C.8 These differences include increases in: mean temperature in most land and ocean regions (high confidence), hot extremes in most inhabited regions (high confidence), heavy precipitation in several regions (medium confidence), and the probability of drought and precipitation deficits in some regions (medium confidence). {3.3}

If we keep to 1.5°, we have a chance of avoiding the kind of climate catastrophe that we haven't survived as a species since the Bronze Age. Many of the events that a 2° trajectory would bring could also trigger massive feedback loops; disruptive events in the global climate which themselves cause further global warming, such as ice sheet collapse or permafrost melting.

What would the difference mean for Australia? The end of this graphic model of temperature changes by the ABC gives a good illustration. With runaway climate change, the disastrous bushfire season we just experienced in Australia would be considered a relatively minor one. Our major cities will regularly experience 50° days in summer, and most of Australia will rapidly become unliveable.

If we keep to a 1.5° trajectory, warming, drying and intensification of extreme events should plateau, and we will have a chance to adapt our agriculture and living spaces to the new normal. It's not exactly good news, but bushfire seasons shouldn't get much worse than the one the east coast of Australia just had.

In this context, it's good news that many politicians, from Labor's Mark Butler to Zali Steggall's Climate Change Act to the Australian Greens, say we need to pursue efforts to limit warming to under 2°, and ideally, under 1.5°.

The bad news about climate change, though, is that all of them are lying.

The countdown clock which I embedded in my last post is another graphic model of climate change - this one from the Mercator Research Institute. It shows, at the present estimated rate of emissions, how long we have left until the world's carbon budgets for the 1.5° and 2° trajectories modelled by the IPCC are used up. If the world wants to keep to a 1.5° and was to keep emitting at the present rate (keeping in mind this hasn't been adjusted to account for the present pandemic), we will need to be emitting less greenhouse gases than the world can absorb some time in 2028.

Net zero in 8 years.

The earlier we start reducing emissions, the longer we can buy before we need to reach net zero. But climate change is primarily the responsibility of the global north; 20% of GHG emissions in the atmosphere originated from the USA, 17% from the EU, even though they only account for 4.29% and 9.78% of the world's population respectively. So it is our historic responsibility, as nations with the capital on hand because we were able to rapidly industrialise, to decarbonise first. This principle is called climate justice.

And even if you put the argument that our fair share is more than average aside, the political parties are still lying about the numbers. 

The Australian Greens come closest to matching the science; their policy is for net zero by "no later than 2040." This date doesn't match up to the remaining carbon budget for a 1.5° trajectory unless we make very deep cuts in the next few years and then tapers our reductions towards zero. Their policy mechanisms, of "strong regulatory intervention and a strong effective price on carbon", are not up to the job. The track record of carbon prices is that, like all other market mechanisms, they are good at making profit, but prone to spectacular failure and boom-and-bust cycles. These tools are not going to reduce emissions fast enough, even if the Australian Greens took government at the next election (some time before May 2022).

They might keep us within the 2° trajectory, for which the countdown clock runs out in 2045. Yet still the Greens policy states that Australia needs to "pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels". If they were serious about that goal, then their target for net zero would be much sooner than 2040, and they would not be allowing coal exports to continue for the rest of the decade.

The policies of Labor, and Zali Steggall's climate bill, are even more blatant lies. Both claim to support under 2°, and ideally 1.5°, of warming. Yet Labor has stated that it will not shut down any coal infrastructure or stop the Adani Carmichael mine, which will itself cancel out all pledged reductions in Australian emissions. It should be no surprise that both have a target of net zero emissions by 2050 - completely incompatible with the 1.5° target, even if Australia ignores the principle of climate justice. If this target allows for decades of coal exports, as Labor seems to think it does, then it rules us out of even keeping within 2° of warming. 

If Labor takes government at the next election with this policy, or if net zero by 2050 is written into law by the Climate Act, children born today will probably never experience a summer as "mild" as the devestating one we just had. If we start today, then the whole world needs to hit net zero by roughly 2040 to keep within 2° of warming; if we don't start until the next term of government, closer to 2035. A 2050 target guarantees runaway climate change.


The policy mechanisms we actually need to keep within a 1.5 carbon budget have been known and available for a long time. The Beyond Zero Emissions plan for Australia's stationary energy shows us that a massive expansion of concentrated solar thermal (CST) and wind power, along with improved connection of our grids all the way from east to west coast, could completely decarbonise our electricity grid within a decade. 

Since that plan was written in 2010, it has only grown more technologically viable - yet, when investment is left to the free market, even a single CST plant with massive support in its local community is struggling to get off the ground. We can't leave it up to the market. What is clearly needed is direct government investment in our energy infrastructure - politically and economically unthinkable in the era of privatisation, at least in this country.




But the rules of the neoliberal era have gone out the window in the face of the current pandemic. If we can find hundreds of billions of dollars on demand to boost welfare (and the profit margins of retail giants, private health insurers and landlords), and if we can nationalise hospitals overnight when there is a public health threat - then why can't we do the same to address the climate crisis that threatens to destroy our rural communities and, perhaps, the very existence of our civilization?