… which sounds rather like a weapon from Star Trek, but is not – it’s the code word for the movement away from fossil fuels and thus blunting the impact of anthropocentric climate change. The G7 nations agreed to remove fossil fuels from their economies by 2100, or at least so the communique is interpreted. From whitehouse.gov:
Urgent and concrete action is needed to address climate change, as set out in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report. We affirm our strong determination to adopt at the Climate Change Conference in December in Paris this year (COP21) a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) applicable to all parties that is ambitious, robust, inclusive and reflects evolving national circumstances.
The agreement should enhance transparency and accountability including through binding rules at its core to track progress towards achieving targets, which should promote increased ambition over time. This should enable all countries to follow a low-carbon and resilient development pathway in line with the global goal to hold the increase in global average temperature below 2 °C.
Germany’s dw.de reports on environmentalist reactions:
Lutz Weischer, of the German environmental NGO Germanwatch, told DW that the decisions on climate change constituted an “important moment in the international climate debate.” The commitment to global decarbonization, he added, was “a significant step.”
Samantha Smith, who leads the WWF’s global climate and energy initiative and was also in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, was less enthusiastic: “The G7 have given us some important political signals, but they’ve left out the concrete commitments from themselves as nations,” she told DW. Concrete, immediate actions to cut emissions, Smith added, “would have had a big impact,” particularly in the run-up to the summit. She did, however, call an initiative agreed by leaders to roll out renewable energies in Africa and other emerging countries “very positive.”
But,
Concrete financial pledges were, however, not made in the 17-page communiqué, which was hammered out by the delegations on the sidelines of the meeting. Leaders also pledged to lift 500 million people in developing countries out of hunger and malnutrition by 2030 – also without making concrete financial commitments.
Climate Central suggests this is too little, too late:
“Decarbonization by the end of the century may well be too late because the magnitude of climate change long before then will exceed the bounds of many ecosystems and farms, and likely will be very disruptive,” Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said.
The goal is a step in the right direction, but not very meaningful considering greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced dramatically within the next decade, well ahead of the G7’s timeline, Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said.
“In my view, the science makes clear that 2050 or 2100 is way too far down the road,” he said. “We will need near-term limits if we are going to avoid dangerous warming of the planet.”
350.org warns investors:
The commitment should serve as a dire warning for investors considering new dirty projects, like the Galilee Basin coal mines in Australia, or investors who continue to hold shares in companies such as Exxon and Chevron, who refuse to acknowledge their climate risk and continue to spend massively on high carbon projects.
And Big Oil may become Tiny Oil:
More ambition is needed, but even these targets should send shivers down the spines of major fossil fuel companies. Scientists are clear that meeting the 2°C target will require leaving at least 80% of known fossil fuel reserves underground. Any new investments in extracting or finding new reserves will only further inflate a carbon bubble that is bound to burst.
G7 leaders also reiterated the need to phase out the fossil fuel subsidies, a push that will only gain momentum between now and the G20 summit in Turkey this November.
Bjorn Lomborg’s take at MSN is here. Clean Technica reports,
Merkel and US President Obama, as well as President Hollande of France, have stood at the forefront of the G7 decarbonization movement. Jennifer Morgan, director of the global climate program at the Washington, D.C.-based World Resources Institute, said that “It’s pretty clear that Canada and Japan are in a different place than the rest of the G7 on the issue of climate change.”
Obama cannot make this succeed on his own, however. International Business Times reports Sir David King of the UK is optimistic:
For him, Monday’s G7 agreement to “decarbonize the global economy” means a workable global climate deal is likely in Paris, he said late Wednesday 10 June.
“That commitment from the G7, to me, was a critical turning point,” said Sir David King, the UK’s Special Representative for Climate Change, in a process where “progress has been painfully close to zero.”
After failed talks in Copenhagen in 2009, “I think we’re coming to a very different point now,” he added. King is leading the UK’s efforts abroad to secure an ambitious deal at the crucial UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. …
During the G7 Heads of Government meeting on Monday, 8 June, world leaders from the developed nations pledged to remove carbon from the global economy by 2100.
The conditions for creating a global climate deal are now “realistic,” King said, because various carbon tax schemes are “emerging country by country.” Currently six Chinese provinces are trading carbon credits, with all provinces in the country set to take up the scheme in 2017.
As is Sami Grover @ Treehugger:
This is a significant coup for climate hawks, especially given that the G7 includes tar-sands rich Canada. And yet I see many Internet commenters voicing their incredulity: 2100 is simply too slow, given the speed at which the climate is already changing.
In many ways these angry voices are right. Many were hoping for more ambitious push by 2050 – and many individual G7 member countries including the United Kingdom and the United States have emission reduction targets of around 80 percent by that date – but this collective commitment to actually phase out fossil fuels completely, now signed onto by recalcitrant nations like Canada and Japan, represents a significant statement about where the future is headed.
As I’ve argued before, once we are firmly headed in a particular direction, the pace at which we get there becomes less about specific government targets, and more about the sheer momentum of social and technological change.
