Something more important than football

Original story at  ABC Environment, by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg

EARTH’S SILENT ODOMETER has reached a new milestone. Ticking over as global society remains inactive on the issue of climate change, atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million for the first time in over three million years. This brings the atmosphere to a state never experienced before by our species, Homo sapiens.

Symbolic of our current paralysed state, there was little discussion in the media. There was much more talk about the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson as manager of the Manchester United Football Club. We all know that football is important but surely the future of our planet and the kids should rate a little more attention.

Measurements of Earth’s atmosphere come from more than 100 sites worldwide. Perhaps the most famous of these is the US National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration’s facility near the summit of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Begun by Charles Keeling in the late 1950s, samples sipped from the relatively pristine air of Mauna Loa have been used to construct a curve of carbon dioxide concentrations over time.

While there are small fluctuations between seasons and between years, carbon dioxide has marched steadily upward over time. While many remain unaware, a crisis for Earth’s biological and human systems looms.

Carbon dioxide is opaque to infrared radiation which means that adding it to the atmosphere increases the amount of energy absorbed by the Earth over time. This then pushes up average global temperature which in turn impacts the relative heating and cooling of landscapes and oceans, weather systems, and many other parts of Earth’s climate system. In addition to changing the balance of our planet, carbon dioxide flooding into the ocean is also acidifying the world’s ocean forcing pH and chemical state outside any of the conditions experienced by marine life for millions of years.

At this point, some might suggest that the statements are too strong here. After all, isn’t there a debate among scientists over the facts of climate change? The truth is, however, that there isn’t. More than 97 per cent of scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed expert literature on climate research are in agreement that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by humans are dramatically changing the climate.

There is also a major consensus in the scientific community that changing such a fundamental property of the Earth is affecting natural and human systems on a scale that has few if any precedents in human history or prehistory. If you take natural systems, which are very sensitive to small changes in temperature, every added part per million of carbon dioxide brings the world closer to a point at which coral reefs, cloud forests and entire ecosystems will cease to exist. Similarly, changes to temperature, rainfall and sea level ratchet up the risk to human systems and our well-being.

Considering the very strong and undeniable linkages between carbon dioxide and the risk of dangerous outcomes for human and natural systems, Earth’s carbon dioxide odometer begins to assume a number of different roles.

The DEFCON system for rating military defence readiness comes to mind.

One role is to give us an important measure of risk as we go forward. The higher we go, the more we are going to pay for inaction. Importantly, the scale is likely to be non-linear meaning that the impact associated with each click of the odometer grows in size. The DEFCON system for rating military defence readiness comes to mind.

Another role is to give us a report card on whether we have been effective in battling climate change. Many governments proudly hold forth on how effective their action on climate change has been. However, and in business-management-speak, our success in meeting the key performance indicator (reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide) has steadily got worse. And if it were a business, it would be clearly failing and I suspect that we would be asked to pack up our desk and leave the premises.

The last role is one which gives us a measure of how much time we have left to fix the problem. As time has gone on, the idea of a climate guardrail (pdf) beyond which we must not go has become increasingly clear from the science and scientific community. From many angles this looks like the guardrail exists at around 450 ppm (although many of us feel it might be a lot lower).

The best science tells us that the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and the Daintree cloud forests (pdf) would cease to exist as the climate becomes too warm, dry and sea levels flood our precious wetlands. At 450 ppm, most glaciologists conclude that irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheets will begin, committing the world to metres of sea level rise over the coming centuries. And at the same point, the Southern Ocean becomes more acidic with consequences for critically important ocean food chains and fisheries.

This is a serious guardrail which we must stay well away from.

Looking at our odometer, which is turning over at least two ppm per year, we will exceed 450 ppm guardrail within 25 years. All of which means that we need to have transformed to a world with zero carbon emissions within this timeframe.

This is ambitious, yet achievable. Considering what is at stake, there really isn’t any room for not engaging with this problem. As has been said time and time again, the alternative is unthinkable. There is no other alternative pathway.

What we desperately need is action by leaders who collectively drive policy development towards a world in which we are not passively watching the odometer turn over knowing that disaster lies around the corner.

This will require leaders from politics, industry and civil society who understand the dangerous consequences of the short-term extraction and use of fossil fuels such as coal and gas, and who are willing to challenge the subsidies of over US$1.9 trillion per year that are provided to the fossil fuel industry as outlined recently by the International Monetary Fund.

AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) recently estimated (pdf) that it would cost a total of around $250 billion to move to 100 per cent renewable power in Australia. This might seem a lot except for the fact that it is a one-time cost while the subsidy given to fossil fuels is an annual cost.

Imagine what would happen to Earth’s odometer if we were to inject US$1.9 trillion per year into the carbon-free renewable energy sources. What a remarkable game-changer in human history.

Now wouldn’t that be just the sort of clever thinking that would impress Sir Alex and the tens of millions of Manchester United fans around the planet?

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is Director of the Global Change Institute and ARC Laureate at the University of Queensland.