Flattening The ‘Carbon’ Curve

Writer: Mohammed Khan
Source image: https://mackaycartoons.net/tag/2020-09/

The past year has been an exceptional one. The year began with Australia ablaze, rising tensions between Iran and the US and news reports of a virus outbreak in China. During the beginning of the year, it soon became clear that the virus, COVID-19, would not disappear so quickly. For a while it also seemed, when the first lockdown was announced in March that the whole country, or not even the whole world, stood still for a moment. Suddenly, roads were quiet, air traffic halved instantaneously, and worst of all, toilet paper temporarily ran out as well. Fortunately, the latter was short-lived, but an illustrative example that showed that society was not at a complete standstill. It was more like an illusion actually.

Besides the year having passed by in such a strange way, memories about 2020 will be dominated by corona for many. For these reasons, it is interesting to look at what other events played a role, especially in relation to a very different crisis; namely, the climate crisis. The major forest fires in Australia have already been mentioned, but it did not stop there in terms of recurring natural disasters. Droughts, floods and other climate disasters such as locust swarms and hurricanes caused billions of euros in damage last year[1][2]. In poorer countries, the disasters also cost the lives of a large number of people. Even here in the Netherlands last summer we suffered one of the driest periods ever measured[3]. These record-breaking dry spells seem to be a trend that has become increasingly common in recent years. This drought can largely be explained by greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change. As a result, we will experience several problems in agriculture and in terms of subsidence and loss of nature. Solutions are currently being worked on to retain water longer in the soil during heavy precipitation periods, and with the knowledge and capacity for innovation, these solutions will be invented. However, climate impacts will hit poorer countries the hardest.

Last September, a 92-page report was released that attempted to reduce the margin of uncertainty about the temperature rise[4]. In general, there have been many studies indicating that the possible warming is between 2 - 4.5 degrees celsius. This report makes it clear that the probability is currently very close to 2 degrees celsius. Two degrees celsius seems little, but its effects could be catastrophic. NASA has written a very nice article on this topic called: “A Degree of Concern: Why Global Temperatures Matter”. I highly recommend readers read this if you want to understand why temperature fluctuations can have such a big impact on us.

Nevertheless, the past year has also shown that we can indeed have a strong impact on greenhouse gas emissions. The demand for energy fell sharply during 2020 due to the slowing down of economic activities around the world. Very specifically, it was fossil fuels whose demand fell very sharply. This, combined with other financial decisions, led to the price of crude oil turning negative for the first time in history[5]. Oil companies had to get rid of their oil reserves at any cost. Even now, the effects are still being felt by major energy companies. Shell, meanwhile, has already announced nearly 9,000 job losses worldwide. The company also announced that it will double investments in renewable energy, because they see that the current position of fossil fuels is unsustainable. However, these are the same companies that have known since the 1980s what disastrous effects their operations would have. From the beginning, they have actively lobbied against any kind of measures or legislation. Until today, they are also implementing policies in the form of ‘greenwashing’[6]. Unlike natural gas and oil, renewable energy did a lot better. Unlike natural gas and oil, renewable energy did a lot better last year, showing that this form of energy is more stable in times of crises such as the current pandemic. This crisis is a signal that the current status quo of ‘Big Oil’ is coming to an end.

Unfortunately, slowing down the economy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is not the best solution. (It causes quite a few problems, in fact). Now that we as a society are looking further, into the future, into a society without measures, we should not forget to look even further. Early last year, the cry was “Flatten The Curve”, now it should read “Flatten The ‘Carbon’ Curve”.

[1] “FACTOR OF ONE YEAR'S CLIMATE CAMPAIGN: 123 MILLION EURO,” news, (www.ipsnews.be), December 29, 2020, https://www.ipsnews.be/artikel/factuur-van-een-jaar-klimaatrampen-123-miljard-euro.

[2] “Red Cross faces record number of climate-related disasters in 2020,” reliefweb, updated 16 December 2020, https://reliefweb.int/report/world/red-cross-faces-record-number-climate-related-disasters-2020.

[3] “KNMI drought monitor Precipitation deficit in the Netherlands in 2020,” https://www.knmi.nl/nederland-nu/klimatologie/droogtemonitor.

[4] S. C. Sherwood et al, “An Assessment of Earth's Climate Sensitivity Using Multiple Lines of Evidence,”.” Rev Geophys 58, no. 4 (Dec 2020), https://doi.org/10.1029/2019RG000678, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33015673.

[5] Andrew Walker, “US oil prices turn negative as demand dries up,” BBC, 20 April 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52350082.

[6] Emily Holden, “How the oil industry has spent billions to control the climate change conversation,” The Guardian, 8 January 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/08/oil-companies-climate-crisis-pr-spending.