Our Leader's Solution To Climate Change Is To Pretend Like They Have Solved The Problem

Photo by Maxim Tolchinskiy on Unsplash

On May 20, 2023, the G7 concluded its regular summit. This loose pact of countries, a competitor to BRICS and other such geopolitical alignments, put out a statement, the "Hiroshima' Communiqué. Alongside supporting the War in Ukraine and other such goals, the statement claimed these countries were committed to "phasing out coal," claiming the G7 would move toward: "…the goal of accelerating the phase-out of domestic unabated coal power generation in a manner consistent with keeping a limit of 1.5°C temperature rise."

At first glance, this legalese seems good, great even. However, there is a catch. Not only is no end date given for this phase-out, but it says nothing about the fossil fuel methane and other "natural" gases, which have increasingly become more and more abundantly used as the United States' reliance on coal has started to wane. As Harjeet Singh, Head of Global Political Strategy, Climate Action Network International, said recently of the Communiqué more broadly:

“The G7, among the richest nations in the world, have once again proved to be poor leaders on tackling climate change. Paying lip service on the need to keep global warming below 1.5°C while at the same time continuing to invest in gas shows a bizarre political disconnect from science and a complete disregard of the climate emergency..”

It has been increasingly clear from the leaders of the world that even as the effects of climate change become more pronounced and the knives of people sharpen, their solution is to propose half-measures that do not solve the problem— to pad out the time until their lifespans end or their bunkers are built.

From the US to Russia to China, our leaders don't give a damn

We need to recognize that things are dire. We will potentially reach a global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (at least temporarily) this decade. If we continue along this path and refuse to make radical changes on a systemic (not individual) level, we will face a world of increasing famines, sea rises, and a series of compounding effects that cascade into downright apocalyptic scenarios.

For example, trapped in the world's rapidly thawing permafrost, chemicals such as methane and DDT, as well as microorganisms, many of which our bodies might not have defenses against, could be released in the next few years. This terrifying scenario keeps me up at night sometimes, and we are talking about a natural process here and not the frightening geopolitical scenarios that will result from a warming planet (see Climate Change is a Bigger Existential Threat Than AI).

And yet our leaders are not treating these scenarios with the urgency we require, often passing statements like the Hiroshima' Communiqué, which provide lip service to fighting climate change while providing loopholes for their country's economies to continue to emit and, in many cases, increase their emissions.

The five biggest historic polluters of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the United States at the top, followed by China, Russia, Brazil, and Indonesia. If we reframe this to focus on the ten countries with the most prominent current emissions, we can add India, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia to the list, with the US and China swapping first and second place. However, except for Japan, whose peak was over a decade ago, and Germany, carbon emissions in these countries have primarily increased or flatlined.

China, the biggest current polluter, is showing an increase in its emissions, experiencing a record high in the first quarter of 2023. And yet the rhetoric we are hearing is one allegedly concerned with tackling the climate crisis. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, the country has pledged to be "carbon neutral" by 2060, saying in an address to the United Nations: "We aim to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030."

However, not only is the 2060 date so far off that it might as well be meaningless, but China has not cut its coal production, even as its development of renewables has increased. Rather than work to reduce collective consumption and production in the short term, it is ramping up solar, wind, and other renewables while keeping the base of its economy the same. The country is hoping it can shift toward electrification from renewables in less than a decade while keeping current levels of consumption and production stable in the meantime, setting its date for "peak" carbon emissions to 2030 — the decade we are projected to hit an increase in warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

And listen, maybe one or two countries could attempt this strategy if every other country was radically cutting its carbon emissions, but not the biggest current CO2 polluter on the planet, and certainly not when every other country and their mother is trying the same insane strategy. Even if China meets its goal in time (a big if), the peak it reaches before wrapping down the usage of fossil fuels still matters. As a species, we are still expected to grow our emissions globally this decade, and the amount of CO2 we sign up for now will have repercussions felt centuries down the line.

When we narrow in on the United States, again, the most prominent historical polluter of carbon by a wide margin, it has likewise made significant investments in renewables (which is a good thing). However, it has achieved this goal while also, unfortunately, doubling down on methane production or "natural" gas as a transitionary tool, which, when you factor in leaks, might not be better than coal. A study from the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters has recently found that the CO2 emissions of "natural" gas are "on par with life-cycle coal emissions from methane leaking coal mines" when you factor in leaks.

And so this brings us into a dilemma because the Inflation Reduction Act — the primary vehicle the Biden infrastructure has used to channel funds into the green economy — although coming with some significant improvements, also arrived with it a "poison pill" provision to require that permits for energy projects on federal land must be offered for auction to oil and natural gas developers before they could auction them off for renewable projects, which was an unsettling compromise to many environmental activists. As one activist in an impacted community said of the law's passage:

“All of the talk of environmental justice, of being the environmental president, of doing the most for impoverished communities and impacted communities, just seem to be mere words. They see us as charity, and as fodder for them to make billions in profits, while our communities and our cities, our homes and our health are sacrificed and treated … as though they have little worth of value.”

Even before the law was passed in August of 2022, the Biden administration approved more oil and gas permits in its first year than the Trump administration did at the same time. That number went down in 2022, but it still sits above 2,000 approved permits a year. With only about 22% of our electricity production coming from renewables and only climbing at a rate of about 2 to 3 percent a year, this government seems intent on adhering to the same unhealthy holding pattern with fossil fuels as China, except with oil and "natural" gas instead of coal.

China and the US are the two biggest polluters, accounting for over 40% of the world's total emissions. I do not see how we can achieve our global goal of a massive reduction in emissions without them abandoning this strategy of hurting the future for the complacency of the now. I do not think the rest of the world's leadership is currently prepared to make the sacrifice without them either. Even the more positive examples we have mentioned are not immune from the approach of burning fossil fuels now and hoping for a more climate-friendly economy later.

For example, Japan's emissions seem to be increasing these last few years due to the "post-COVID" recovery. It remains a heavy consumer of coal and natural gas. In fact, the country remains firmly committed to maintaining robust Liquified Natural Gas reserves to meet its energy needs. While renewables are increasing, this fossil fuel-dependent reality is not going away anytime soon.

Although one of the most progressive countries on this list, Germany remains one of the largest producers and consumers of coal in Europe. In Germany, when the war in Ukraine created an energy shock back in 2022, many old coal plants were temporarily switched back on, or their lifespans were extended to meet the demand. That process has been partially reversed now, and while renewables are partly responsible for that positive trend, we also have to thank the EU's stockpiling of "natural" gas.

Meanwhile, this shock to the system that temporarily extended the life of coal — i.e., Russia's hostile advance into Ukraine — has hardly been "carbon neutral." Artillery has exploded oil depots and power plants, which have resulted in widespread fires and leaking pipes that have released methane and CO2 into the atmosphere. We don't yet have a complete picture of that pollution, though some estimates place the initial engagement of the war at 100 million tonnes of CO2. For context, according to the Anthropocene Magazine, those are the emissions of a country like the Netherlands in the same period.

It should surprise no one that Russia, the initiator of this brutal conflict, is also very bad at reducing its emissions. Like many other countries' leadership, Putin has also pledged to be carbon neutral by 2060, but his country's policies are not even attempting to reach that goal. The Action Climat Tracker describes Russia's climate change policies as: "unambitious or have an unclear expected effect on emissions," including the bizarre claim that its forests will be doing most of the work, despite not much evidence on how that would be the case or how they will address the issue of rampant forest fires in Siberia. It's a type of magical math that is even more unhinged than in the other examples we have discussed thus far.

And it's hardly surprising as their economy relies on fossil fuels to survive. The oil and gas industry is about 17% of their nation's GDP, making up a large part of their imports. The revenue from these industries accounts for upward of 33% of their Federal government's budget. No one in power is incentivized to change their behavior, especially since, despite recent sanctions, they still export plenty of coal and other fossil fuels to the European Union.

From my perspective, if Europe (and, by extension, the United States) were interested in a post-fossil fuel world, they would have both made more attempts to wean themselves off of Russian fossil fuels before a massive military conflict and also have helped to provide the country with a green off-ramp so it didn’t feel backed into a corner. It's not like we don't work with other unstable dictatorships (see Saudia Arabia). As things stand right now, we have the fourth largest polluter in the world, now ambivalent and maybe even doubling down on fossil fuels with no seeming end point in sight.

That seems to be the strategy for a lot of countries these days.

A catastrophic conclusion

From China to Germany to the United States, I see a lot of far-off pledges and no immediate steps to radically half current emissions, and certainly none to engage in strategies that reduce consumption such as Degrowth. Everyone else is just banking on being able to switch their energy grids over “in time,” which, even disregarding that electrification still has a carbon cost (see the manufacturing of lithium batteries), this strategy assumes that the pollution made to get to that point won't be enough to wreck our environment.

This strategy is insane because it is one where we are effectively abandoning staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming and settling for somewhere below or at 2, an environment that will be pretty hellish. At such an increase, we will move from 14% of the world being exposed to extreme heat waves to almost 40%. Droughts will be even more common, impacting tens of millions of more people annually. Water will become less scarce. More species will die. The list goes on.

Furthermore, achieving this hellscape (and not an even higher extreme) is assuming these countries can deliver on these longer-term transitions and won't double back on their commitments as the globalized economy destabilizes from geopolitical conflicts. The way many European countries were willing to turn back on coal power plants during the Ukraine War (if only temporarily) makes me think that even this tenuous resolve to tackle climate change can dissipate.

You should be angry over your leader's cowardice. You should not accept the lie that going "faster" is unreasonable or that methane or even coal is an acceptable transitionary tool. What is unreasonable is their hesitance: their insane holding pattern with the fossil fuel industry as they march us confidently into a more unstable world. We need to operate under the assumption that our leaders, the ones who built the system now choking us to death, are wrong. That they will need to be fought against. That we will need to march, protest, block infrastructure, as well as engage in other, more direct actions that make them uncomfortable.

The era of denialism is over, and in its place is the era of lukewarm commitments, where leaders pledge to build up solar, wind, and other renewables while simultaneously preserving fossil fuels painful, dying breathes well into the next decade, if not beyond. The question becomes, what will we do about it? For my part, I have started creating a list of those I consider responsible for this mess (entirely for satirical purposes, of course). You should check it out and do with this information what you will.

It's only when our leaders are uncomfortable and forced to listen (or even removed from power entirely) that true change can occur.