The climate war we have to have

So if it is to be war, the next question is: what’s the battle plan? Where do we make a stand? For a start you can’t fight a war if you can’t define the enemy. Australia and the human race need to know what they are up against. Not whether climate change is real or if it is a serious problem? By now, most serious players are way past those debates. It is more questions of what are the enemy’s positions, and most importantly, what would constitute a victory? As it turns out, this equation is really quite simple.

As the IPCC has re-confirmed, Earth is already most of the way to a human-induced 1C of global warming. This warming can be attributed in large part to a surge in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution began in the second half of the 18th century - about 280 parts per million then, to 383 now, higher than at any time in at least the past million years and probably up to 30 million years. Based on the mainstream science, about 2C of global warming already appears inevitable by the middle of this century. Yet if we can contain average temperature rises to 2C, and that’s a big if, then we may score a victory of sorts.

I say “of sorts” because even that level of unnaturally rapid warming can mean massive ecological and economic damage. At 3C, we are talking about the potential loss of up to half of all species and many millions of human lives, and trillions of dollars of economic loss as canvassed by the recent Stern Review report out of the UK. That’s not much of a victory.

What I call The 3rd Degree, the territory between 2-3C, represents our defining battleground. Go beyond 3C and humanity will get the metaphorical third degree, including the clear threat of runaway climate change. Runaway means rapid, uncontrollable and irreversible, with scenarios where we trigger the inevitable loss of everything from the Amazon forests to the Greenland icecap.

The Earth’s been this hot before, as some of the climate sceptics like to point out, though just never with 6.5 billion-plus people on board - heading for 9 billion by 2050!

The threat message has been laid out clearly for the world’s political leaders, including Prime Minister John Howard, backed by the best climate science available, led by the IPCC process. This quite conservative science has been broadly consistent for 20 years, although recently it’s become a lot more certain.

The CSIRO and scientists advising the United Nations, including eminent figures like UK chief scientist Sir David King, are forecasting at least a 3C rise in the average global daily temperature by the end of this century. That’s without dramatic action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

As early-movers plan for the war against climate change, we need to focus our strategy and actions on avoiding The 3rd Degree. Holding warming at close to 2C and CO2 levels at no more than 450ppm is the stand we have to take. Anything short of meeting that objective will be planning for defeat, and for mass death and destruction and global instability.

In World War II terms, it would have been like the US and the UK circa 1941 planning to let Nazi Germany conquer all of continental Europe, and Japan the whole Asia-Pacific region, while proposing that Americans and Britons would be safe in that new world.

A lot of other war words and phrases come to mind:

Appeasement, when we see our leaders playing Pollyanna and closing their minds to the clear early warning signs.

Phyrric victory, if we fool ourselves into thinking a few easy, early wins like planting a few million trees or government funding for novelty solar power plants will be enough to win this war.