Post by NoFixedAddress on May 9, 2020 17:23:21 GMT 8
The Climate Noose: Business, Net Zero and the IPCC's Anticapitalism Rupert Darwall
Report 40, The Global Warming Policy Foundation
The Coronavirus and the 1.5-degree limit Shutting down the whole global economy is the only way of achieving a two-degree goal, the former UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said in in the run-up to the 2015 Paris Agreement. 56 We can now see what a global shutdown looks like. Unlike any economic bounce back from Covid-19 lock- down, decarbonisation permits no let up; it goes on year after year, decade after decade. In a ra- tional world, governments will prioritise economic growth over decarbonisation. Yet adoption of the 1.5°C target was based on a PR soundbite, not reason or analysis. Two factors, however, doom 1.5 degrees and net zero. The first is the growth of non-Western emissions, as shown on the graph on the previous page: • From 1979, it took the Rest of the World 33 years to increase carbon dioxide emissions by 63%, a compound average growth rate of 1.6% per year. • There is a marked inflection point in 2002, after which it took only 12 years for the Rest of the World's emissions to rise by 77% – a compound average growth rate of 4.9% per year – to a level three times higher than the West’s. The second is the return of geopolitics. In its handling of the pandemic, China – the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases – has proven itself a bad-faith actor. Great-power rivalry has no place for a multilateral process that undermines participants’ economies and their national security. At some point, the penny will drop.
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