Our new paper in @NatureClimate finds 1.5C pathways underestimate how much Global North must cut CO2 emissions and how fast oil & gas must be phased out globally
This is because pathways rely too much on phasing out coal, with less emphasis on oil & gas. nature.com/articles/s4155…
Ending coal use is urgent, for both climate & health
But it takes time to enable a just transition in countries that are highly coal-dependent: e.g coal provides 73% of power in India + 89% in South Africa. These can’t be switched off overnight without severe social costs.
The median 1.5°C pathway from @ipcc_ch#AR6 sees global coal power down 87% by 2030, and 96% by 2035.
Highly coal-dependent developing countries would have to replace almost their whole power fleet within a decade.
This is an important and thought-provoking new paper by @st_pye et al on the limitations of current energy-system modelling approaches for guiding net-zero policies. Some helpful insights for @ipcc_ch WG3 and @theCCCuk.
1) Fossil CCS is suited to 80% or 90% emissions reductions but not net zero, because CCS does not capture all the emissions where it’s installed. Energy system models (ESMs) still rely heavily on such techs, and may need to be updated to focus more on net-zero techs
2) ESMs generally assume a given level of energy service demands then find techs to meet them. Net zero requires a more transformative approach. Grubler & al (2018) + van Vuuren & al (2018) model reduced energy service demands - need more of this!
With a week’s post-thesis holiday in Cornwall, I finally got round to reading Frank Snowden's Epidemics and Society. I found it absolutely gripping. A few things stand out for me from the historical experience (short thread)
1. Social stigmas tend to be greater when a disease is seen as “foreign” (eg plague) or affecting poor (cholera) or marginalised (HIV/AIDS) parts of society, compared to those that have been around for time (smallpox) or that affect elites (polio). Stigmas drive further spread
2. There’s a fascinating account of TB's transition from socially acceptable, even fashionable, to disgusting and stigmatising, that occurred with greater understanding of its infectiousness and as middle and upper classes adapted their behaviours to reduce infection.
“IEA was set up and designed for a different era and it needs a radical transformation if it's still to have relevance in the modern era” - @KingsmillBond
“Given the IEA’s rhetoric and calls for leadership, omitting 1.5C is a pretty significant oversight” - @mckinnon_hannah
“By sitting on the fence and backing all forms of energy, there is a danger that they will perpetuate the unsustainable pathway we are on rather than showing what could be achieved in the future.” - @PWooders
@Khaldunium Hi Khaldun. The problem is: to limit climate change to tolerable levels (e.g. Iraq is vulnerable to water shortage and extreme heat), most global fossil fuel extraction needs to end by 2050. But this will be much harder to do in countries like Iraq
@Khaldunium I agree oil is currently and historically central to public life in Iraq. I would say it has a cultural role as well as political and economic. So our paper tries to square these 2 realities: global limits vs some countries v dependent on oil/gas/coal
@Khaldunium Illustrated in this graph from our paper
.@GeorgeMonbiot makes a good point in contrasting @theCCCuk's "no need to do more because this is enough to meet target" with UK policy to "maximise" oil extraction. But I don't agree that the problem is targets per se. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
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Rather, IMO the problem is the near-universal framing of climate mitigation that it will necessarily be costly, difficult and unpleasant, and therefore that the amount societies act to address it must be traded off against that cost and pain
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Almost all climate policymakers the insist that they should not do more than a certain amount, because of those costs.
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