Beyond the target: a bottom-up approach

Looking back on my first ever post, I spent quite a bit of time justifying my position on climate stabilistation. I wanted to make clear that while my blog was meant to be quite critical, it should also be pragmatic, There is no point in questioning just for the sake of questioning, and we have already reached a point where action needs to be taken to combat the momentum of climate change.

With that in mind I think its about time I start talking solutions to the main issue I've talked about so far:

How can we hope to stablilise climate without a clear target to aim at?

From my reading I've come across one key idea:

A bottom-up approach to climate change mitigation 

If you've read my last few post, you will hopefully agree that meta-targets over simply the complex and subjective issue of climate change impacts. They often are more political than they are scientific, can create geopolitical tension and prove ineffective in motivating those who's values are underrepresented in the target formulation process.

Not surprisingly then there have been a number of calls to abandon meta-targets all together and instead focus on motivating climate change mitigation from the bottom-up.

How to eat and Elephant: a bottom-up approach to climate policy - (Rayner, 2011)

Rayner has been one of the most vocal critics of meta-targets. In his 2011 paper, he explores the shortcomings of a 'faulty UNFCCC architecture' built upon a 'targets and timetables' as I have done in my past few posts (he focuses much more on Kyoto principles than I have chosen to do though, so don't feel bad about also reading it as well).

But I've talked enough about problems with the past, so i'll just focus on the solutions he offers.

In stark contrast to the 'hyperbolic multilaeralism' of the past (Prins et al., 2010), Rayner proposes that policy should be both 'designed and implemented at the lowest feasible level of organisation' (Rayner, 2011).

My first thought when I heard that was again highly sceptical. Whenever  hear bottom-up approaches I can't help but think about neoliberal economics; a lot of theory with limited practical relevance (any economists out there are more than welcome to challenge me on that statement). However, Rayner puts a lot of effort into practically exhibiting what he means by this statement. 

He proposes a flexible approach to climate change mitigation. 

"A bottom-up approach to mitigation abandons the idea that climate change policy requires universal framework"

The proposed bottom-up approach recognizes that climate change mitigation is ultimately a 'multilevel governance problem' and should be treated as one (Rayner, 2011).. He emphasizes that climate change mitigation will benefit from complimentary capabilities and interests being brought to the table. For example, separate climate change discussions for the big emitters, and the developing world.

And to me at least this makes some sense. Global emission targets have always been constrained by ethical dilemmas over who has the right to pollute. By separating the targets of the big emitters in the developed world, we are more likely to see progress being made in the 20 countries responsible for around 80% of total global emissions (Prins and Rayner, 2007).

There remains a need for a global cohesion in our efforts to combat climate change, but Rayner proposes that this cohesion must emerge from lower scale efforts. As an example, his paper talks about global carbon markets needing to be cap and trade orientated, allowing them to vary at different scales and in different regional contexts. In his vision, cities can become the hubs of mitigation, and through their connectivity can form regional and ultimately global trading schemes.

If there was perhaps one key point to take from Rayner's proposition, it is probably this:

"Rather than loading more and more issues onto the climate mitigation agenda, we should, as

far as possible, divide climate into a series of more tractable problems, which local or sectional

actors have a strong incentive to solve for themselves in efficient ways and at the same time take

a bite out of the larger problem." (Rayner, 2011)

And this really is the challenge posed by climate change mitigation; tackling the issue on a practical and efficient scale, while keeping in mind how the local feeds into a global effort.

Summing it all up

Climate change mitigation targets are about as problematic as it gets. They are theoretically vital to creating a environment that encourages top-down policy implementation. But in reality, they prove too disputable to be successful in this way. Not only that, but they can discourage efficient mitigative action on practical scales. As Rayners (2011) points out, ' grandiose emissions targets without any plausible technological pathway for achieving them' does very little to motivate change.

So then, counter intuitively perhaps the best thing we can do to stabilise climate change is to not really think about stabilising climate change; instead eat the elephant one bite at a time.

Am I entirely convinced? Well not yet, but at least this paper has got me heading in the right direction; in the next section of my posts I'm going to look into carbon trading and have a think about whether Rayner's vision is really a possibility.

Secret Link

The 2 Degree C Target

OK so just a recap of my last (serious) post:

• Many climate change impacts can be considered from an acceptability threshold” perspective. However, it is not possible to draw a single line in the sand that best deals with all these impacts.
• Even more problematic are the climate change impacts that do not conform well to threshold thinking. Where impacts ramp up (in many cases linearly), determining what qualifies as unacceptable becomes a subjective and ethics heavy task.

The more I read on the topic of dangerous climate change, the more my scepticism of the concept of ‘dangerous climate change thresholds’ seems justified.

I think this quote from Mahoney (2013) sums up my opinion on avoidable climate change targets well:

‘a stale variable which offers an illusion of control and a facade of simplicity’

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The 2 Degree C Target:

So drawing this all back towards the overall aim of this blog, why do I think this is concerning for making stabilisation scenarios achievable? One way to answer this question is to look at the 2 degrees of warming target.

A bit of context:

Jordan et al. (2013) put forward that the target was first developed in response to criticism of the vagueness of UNFCCC’s Article 2 statement:

‘stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’

The figure was designed to add substance to the statement and motivate action to achieving this goal (Jordan et al., 2013). The 2 degrees C of warming was designed as a ‘meta-target’ and ‘boundary object’ (Randalls,2010) connecting the actions of policy makers with the scientific consensus that:

‘Deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions are required according to the science’ (this is a direct statement from the Cancun Agreements).

The target was essentially a clear deadline, intended to draw policy makers and the public’s attention towards long-term environmental goals.

It really is pretty basic behavioral stuff. Imagine you have been set two pieces of work, one with an exact deadline and the other requiring only that it be handed in at some point. Which one would you prioritise doing? Well, unless you defy behavioral theory, odds are you would forget about the second piece of work and instead focus upon the one with a certain deadline (Schneider et al., 2002). This is essentially the idea of short-shortsightedness in the face of uncertainty (the idea that we care more about things and events that are immediately relevant to us and more certain to occur).

So then, the target was essentially an attempt to motivate and rally policy makers and the public behind a common meta-target. And up until recently that was what it was doing.

The 2 degree C warming target gained much more political momentum than article 2 on its own. Jordon et al. (2013) point out that the goal achieved a ‘near totemic status’, especially within the EU. There have even been attempts to legally bind policy around this target (for example at the  Durban Platform).

Recent challenges to the 2 degree target

However, as the target gained status and legal traction, it quite rightly came under more intense scrutiny; and looking back at the criticism I raised in my last blog, this scrutiny highlighted some pretty big flaws.

Despite being considered as a boundary object by some between scientific research and policy, the target was increasingly recognised for what it was; a political construct (Geden, 2013)

 Geden (2013) sums it up well:

“Scientific research on climate change has reported numerous indications that 2°C could be an advisable guideline, but has not produced clear evidence that this precise figure is imperative”. A much smaller and larger warming target would be just as justifiable.

As politicians have realised this, the target has increasingly lost some of its power and purpose. For example, in 2012 US Climate Envoy Todd Stern called for the target’s removal from climate change talks (Jordon et al., 2013) 

Todd Stern adresssing the U.N in Copenhagen Getty Images

How do we determine a dangerous level of climate change?

As you can probably guess, this question is too big to really answer fully in one blog post (in fact you might struggle to cover every aspect in an entire series). So to avoid the risk of turning this blog into a textbook, I thought it would be best if I just cover the key interesting points:

A danger threshold

The UN’s definition of dangerous climate change really frames the issue around a kind of “acceptability threshold”. It promotes the idea that there is a distinct and quantifiable level of climate change, beyond which the impacts cross over into being dangerous. And in some contexts, this approach makes sense.

Thresholds are a major part of ecological research, especially when considering extinctions. The idea of Minimum Viable Population, where species populations can essentially be pushed to a threshold point beyond which they are doomed to go extinct without intervention, is a really fascinating one. At the same time, a lot of research is going into biome thresholds. Marengo et al., 2011 (as well as many others) have discussed the possibility of the Amazonian rain forest experiencing a tipping point into a savanna like state in response to continued warming (save the rain forest campaigns don’t seems quite as melodramatic knowing that).

Threshold thinking can also be useful when considering climate change impacts on the human world. Gitay et al., 2001 discuss the idea that global agricultural production may actually benefit from small levels of global warming, but transition into dangerous impacts at greater levels.

The table below (taken from the IPCC AR4 report) showcases a number of key impact thresholds and how it is possible to therefore to think about these issues from the “acceptability threshold” approach.

The issue is that this is not the case for all climate change impacts (Schellnhuber, 2006).Climate change is already believed to have contributed to the ‘global burden of disease and premature death’. Similarly, there is growing evidence of a ‘climate change signal’ in 20^th Century extinctions (Parmesan and Yohe, 2003). The point I’m trying to make then is that, in many respects, climate change impacts are already dangerous by the UN’s definition and appear to have already crossed an acceptability threshold.

Considering this, the issue of dangerous climate change transitions from one of “at what level do the impacts become dangerous” to “what level of danger is acceptable”. And as I’m sure you can see, this completely changes the issue at hand from an objective and generally quantifiable consideration, into a largely subjective and ethics heavy debate.

Take, for example, the issue of human health and climate change:

“World health experts have concluded with ‘‘very high confidence’’ that climate change already contributes to the global burden of disease and premature death.” (IPCC, 2007)

Put yourself in the shoes of a policy-maker informed of this. How would you go about establishing a level of unacceptable climate change? There are proposed solutions to this dilemma, (I’ve put a list of some interesting stuff below) but ultimately the point I want to get across is that:

• For many climate change impacts, a level of climate change considered dangerous becomes strongly dependent upon ethics and the opinions of ‘particular policy-makers’ (Schneider et al., 2006)

This Burning Ember’s diagram really expresses the issue, especially when compared to the more quantitative table above. While certain aspects of climate change conform to clear-cut threshold thinking (as proposed by the UN) the vast majority of impacts involve an element of subjectivity ( In fact this diagram was controversially excluded from the IPCC AR4 report because of this factor).The result is a difficulty in creating an agreeable and clear-cut target of dangerous climate change which we should avoid.

Hopefully you have now reached the point where you are rightfully asking "why have I heard so much about avoiding 2 degrees of warming then?". Well in my next post I'll go over that question, drawing everything I talked about back to the issue of a stabilisation target.  

Secret Link!

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Climate Change and Health:

An interesting paper on the differing regional effects on climate change on health. I raises more questions of whether it is useful to consider a dangerous level of CC on a global level, when the impacts are so closely tied to individual regions.  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7066/abs/nature04188.html

This chapter from the book “Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security” is a good summary

 of some of the ethics of risk management in the context of Climate Change. It is long, but has been written with policy-makers in mind so is definitely worth a read.

http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/9783642177750-c1.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1068963-p174086661

Why do we care about dangerous climate change?

Why do we care about dangerous climate change?

Over the next 40 years or so we are unfortunately going to see human induced climate change regardless of human attempts to prevent it (Wigley et al., 2005). Inertia within the climate system (primarily caused by the oceans absorbing massive amounts of energy and gradually releasing it into the climate system), means that the impact of emissions in the present will still be taking effect in decades to come. This is what people are talking about when they say change in the pipeline or Climate Change Commitment.

This figure from Murphy et al., 2009 shows just how substantial the ccean heat uptake has been over the past 50 years relative to the land and atmosphere  

The key point is that when we talk about stabilising GHG concentrations, the ultimate goal is not to instantaneously stop climate change in its tracks, but to constrain it within 'manageable levels' (Taken from the Energy and Climate Change Committee's 2014 report)

Climate change happens naturally on a variety of timescales ranging from decades, to millions of years. There is great deal of research on the role of past climate variability on human societies, and biodiversity (I’ve put a list of some interesting links at the bottom). The world that we see around us is in many respects a testament of resilience to this change. However, in the context of anthropogenic climate change, where GHG concentrations and associated radiative forcing are with a ‘very high confidence’ occurring at rates unprecedented in the past 22,000 years and most probably the last 800,000 years (although confidence in this statement is restricted by a present lack of high resolution records going back to that date), this resilience is likely to be put under extreme stress.

This is where the concept of dangerous climate change comes in.

As Stephen H. Schneider and Janica Lane comment, danger has become a buzzword used so often in the climate change context that it has become cliché and suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity. Despite this fact, the term dangerous climate change was initially formulated at the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with a strict meaning and purpose.

Dangerous climate change was defined as change which:

§  Does not allow ecosystems to adapt naturally;

§  Threatens food production;

§  Does not enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner (UN, 1992)

The term was to be used as a baseline to guide mitigate efforts, one designed to simply present the threat at hand. While no formal attempt was made by the UNFCCC in 1992 to quantify a level of climate change considered dangerous, the term has since become heavily linked to a 2^oC global warming limit relative to pre-industrial temperatures (Randalls, 2010).

“2^oC of global warming to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally, food production to continue un-threatened and economic development to continue in a sustainable manner, what a conveniently precise and rounded figure” I hear you say. Well you guessed right, I (and a large portion of the scientific community I might add) am not convinced.

So get ready for my next post where I explain exactly where this number comes from and why it is so difficult to quantify dangerous climate change.

Here is my Secret Link and some interesting papers on the links between past climate change, evolution and societal development: 

Maslin M.A., C. Brierley, A. Milner, S. Shultz, M. Trauth, K. Wilson “East African climate pulses and early human evolution” Quaternary Science Reviews (2014) 

Willis, K. J., Bennett, K. D., Bhagwat, S. A., & Birks, H. J. B. (2010). 4° C and beyond: what did this mean for biodiversity in the past?. Systematics and Biodiversity, 8(1), 3-9.

Dangerous Climate Change: be afraid, be very afraid

Hello again. If you’re reading this I guess it is safe to say that you either found something interesting in my first post, or I succeeded in scaring you into reading further.

Funnily enough, I’ve been doing some reading on the role of fear in encouraging climate change adaptation and I came across a few interesting points that might actually help me write this blog.

Hoog et al. (2005) talk about how fear can promote action and behavioural changes, but it works best when the threat has personal relevance. At the same time Moser and Dilling (2007) point out that without constructive information on how to reduce the threat, fear mongering can actually prove to be extremely disempowering.

Taking all that into account welcome to my first segment on

Dangerous Climate Change



http://wwf.panda.org/who_we_are/wwf_offices/belgium/index.cfm?uProjectID=BE0009

http://www.cockburn.wa.gov.au/Council_Services/Environment/Climate_Change/Adapting_to_Climate_Change_/default.asp

Well that’s my job done.

In all seriousness, this next series of posts is going to be a bit of discussion on what it is we are trying to achieve with a GHG concentration stabilisation scenarios. I’m going to talk about:

·       What we mean when we say dangerous climate change

·       How we actually quantify and assess danger in this context

·       And how the notion of dangerous climate change is used to judge a desirable level at which GHG concentrations should be stabilised

So stay tuned as I take you through all things dangerous about climate change.

Here’s my secret link to really get you excited: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siwpn14IE7E