Act on climate action

The latest IPCC climate assessment report continues a recent tradition of each such report flagging more ominous portents than its immediate predecessor—of course, all of it is based on strong science, and therefore has stoked justifiable alarm. Per the latest, close to 40% of the global population lives in areas that have high vulnerability to the worst climate-change impacts. There is some room to act, but fruitful realisation of such action would need humans—whose print on the planet has been of such magnitude and import that it has now come to define a period in the planet’s history, the Anthropocene—to think as a species for coordinated action and not as fractions such as nationals. Mitigation remains the ideal. Adaptation looks more realistic. But, adaptation will have its limits. No wherewithal imaginable will help humanity conquer “hard limits” if temperatures continue to climb. For instance, wet-bulb temperatures in Indian cities hitting 31oC would make survival a challenge; if they hit 35oC, survival could well become impossible in these jurisdictions. Carbon sinks could turn into carbon sources, worsening loss of such sinks elsewhere across the planet—a wretched pathway by any reckoning. Ice-loss, habitat-loss, rising seas, accelerated extinction of species, all our worst fears could get realised if a drastic reduction in emissions is not achieved.

At the best of times, global coordination for a worthy cause has proven elusive. Now is a time of deep, and further deepening, polarisation, a geopolitical shudder that hasn’t been felt since World War II— 9/11 and the war on terror, recession, Covid-19, etc, notwithstanding. Whether the collective action that the IPCC report says is indispensable can come about is a question that is hard to answer. All signs are of continued enfeebling of such hope.

Take, for instance, a looming environmental governance crisis in the US—thanks to the possibility of an adverse judgment by its Supreme Court. Nature says, depending on how the court rules in a lawsuit involving the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the EPA could effectively see its powers substantially circumscribed when it comes to regulation future emissions. Such a decision could also “potentially reshape other US agencies’ regulatory powers.” How the Clean Air Act (CAA) can be interpreted by the EPA—and the major questions doctrine that detects that regulators can’t interpret a piece of legislation beyond what the legislature intended while framing it—forms the crux of the lawsuit. At stake is the Biden government’s ability to give effect to strong environmental governance. The issue originates with the 2015 Clean Power Plan of the Obama regime—which called for substantial walk-back from coal-fired power by assigning a overarching spirit to the CAA in its interpretation of the Act—being repealed by the Trump regime in 2018, which brought in its place the Affordable Clean Energy Plan that took a much blinkered view of the Act. With, as was expected, significant latitude to the country’s coal sector. Affordable Clean Energy Plan was thrown out by the courts on the last day of the Trump administration along with the latter’s decision to repeal the Obama plan. The Biden administration didn’t resurrect the Obama plan but it is expected that it would be every bit as progressive from an environmental viewpoint. But, if the now conservative-leaning Supreme Court were to rule in favour of the plaintiffs in the West Virginia versus the EPA, US will have a clipped-wings EPA and the world more emissions than was expected with the Biden administration committing the country again to serious climate action.

Another example is Brazil, under Jair Bolsonaro, the 2019 ‘winner’ of the Climate Action Network’s Colossal Fossil award, given to those “best at being the worst and doing the most to do the least” in terms of climate action. Little else needs to be said. But, if you haven’t been following the news, the Bolsonaro regime has facilitated decimation of vast tracks of the Amazonian rainforests in the country, one of the most important carbon sinks the planet has, it has attacked any concerted attempt to decarbonise power meaningfully; at CoP26, it had outrageous proposals with regards to carbon pricing and credits.

Canada, Saudi Arabia, India to some for failing to endorse a methane agreement, China—the list of real and perceived climate villains is a long one, despite how much more countries have been willing to commit since even a decade ago. That is perhaps because time is running out and so much needs be done; thus, any unwillingness for drastic action seems, rightly or wrongly, as derailing the climate agenda.