World leaders decided that global warming should be limited
to 2 degrees Celsius. Achieving that target, though, would take nothing less
than a miracle. It is becoming increasingly clear that mankind has failed to
address its most daunting problem. Since 1880, when global temperatures began
to be systematically collected, no year has been warmer than 2014. The 15
warmest years, with one single exception, have come during the first 15 years
of the new millennium. Indeed, it has become an open question as to whether
global warming can be stopped anymore -- or at least limited as policymakers
have called for. Should greenhouse gas emissions continue as they are today,
the world will likely reach the 2 degree Celsius maximum within 30 years.
Indeed, in order to have any chance at all of stopping global warming at 2
degrees Celsius, emissions would have to fall by 10 percent per year starting
in 2017 at the latest, says Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy
Agency.
Take Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. He’s extremely
proud of his country's wonder of the world, the Great Barrier Reef. At the same
time, though, Abbott believes that burning coal is "good for
humanity," even though it produces greenhouse gases that ultimately make
our world's oceans warmer, stormier and more acidic. In recent years, Australia
has exported more coal than any other country in the world. And the reef, the
largest living organism on the planet, is dying. Half of the corals that make
up the reef are, in fact, already dead.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also wants the best for
his country and is loathe to see it damaged by droughts, cyclones and storm
surges. Nevertheless, he is planning on doubling India's coal production by
2019 in addition to importing more coal from Australia. It is necessary to do
so, he says, to help his country's poor. India is already the third largest
producer of greenhouse gases, behind China and the United States. But climate
change is altering the monsoon season, with both flooding and drought becoming
more common.
The US under Obama has become one of the world's largest
producers of oil and natural gas. When he steps down in 2016, his country will
likely produce more fossil fuels than even Saudi Arabia. And that's a
development Obama is indeed proud of. During a campaign appearance in Oklahoma
in 2012, he said: "We've added enough new oil and gas pipelines to
encircle the Earth and then some."
And who would accuse the majority of US Senators of being
insensitive to the extreme shortage of water afflicting California? Yet the
law-making body recently brushed aside everything science has learned about
global warming and voted down two measures that attributed the phenomenon to
human activity. For Americans and foreign tourists alike, California is a
magical place, famous for Yosemite National Park, its Pacific coastline, its
golden light. The state also grows around a third of all US produce. For now.
An historic drought that has been ongoing for over three years has forced
farmers to abandon their fields and to slaughter their animals. Yet Jim Inhofe, the new Republican chairman of the
Environment and Public Works Committee, has said. "God is still up there. The
arrogance of people to think that we human beings would be able to change what
He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous." Louisiana governor, Bobby
Jindal, said last September that climate change is nothing more than a
"Trojan horse" for the left.
The sheer scope of the destructive effect the production of
fossil fuels already has today is visible when you visit places that provide
the world with its supplies of coal, oil and natural gas. Louisiana, for
example, an oil-rich US state whose coast is sinking into the sea and which is
threatened by hurricanes. On the coast of Louisiana, a piece of land the size
of a soccer field disappears into the sea every hour. The Pointe-au-Chien
Indian tribe has lived on Louisiana's coast for generations, 50 miles southwest
of New Orleans. The tribe today counts some 45 families, and they have had to
move several times in recent years. Following Hurricane Lili in 2002, they
built wooden houses on high stilts to avoid the storm surges.
A three-star general, Russell Honoré, led the army's relief
mission following Hurricane Katrina. Since then, Honoré -- is considered a hero
around these parts. "You know who gets rich in Louisiana?" he asks
with a dismissive laugh. "Oil and gas companies. And the lawyers who sue
oil and gas companies." In 2013, he formed an alliance of environmental
groups, dubbed it the Green Army, and began recruiting supporters. People took
notice, in part because of Honoré's military past. "I spent 37 years,
three months and three days in the army," Honoré says. "I didn't come
back to my home state to see it run by oil and gas companies." The
companies, he says, pollute the air and water and destroy the land while
politicians who depend on their donations allow them to do as they please.
"The governor is a smart guy," Honoré says. "But he sold his
brain to the oil and gas industry. He goes with the dollar."
In frequent public appearances, Honoré encourages people to
protest against the destruction of their environment. He also threw his support
behind a lawsuit filed against 97 oil, gas and pipeline companies that, should
it be successful, will overshadow even the multi-billion dollar proceedings
against BP following the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. The Southeast Louisiana
Flood Protection Authority-East (SLFPA-E), a local flood protection authority
that was founded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina came to the conclusion
that oil and gas exploitation in the region is the primary cause of the
coastlands sinking into the sea and that the companies involved should pay to
protect the coast to the degree possible. The plan to provide that protection
is called the Coastal Master Plan, but between $50 billion and $100 billion
dollars are necessary to implement it, depending on which calculation you go
by.
In the Chinese coal province Hebei, whose 70 million
inhabitants would be better advised not to leave their homes on many days of
the year because levels of fine particulate matter go far beyond those
considered to be safe. The scale of China's coal consumption is historic in its
dimensions: The country is the world's largest producer and consumer of coal
and it emits more greenhouse gases than the United States and Europe combined.
The cities of Beijing and Tianjin as well as the Hebei and Shandong provinces
alone burn more coal than all of Europe. Hebei is to China what China is to the
world: a coal-consuming monster. The province surrounding Beijing has more than
70 million inhabitants and is half as big as Germany. It produces more than
double the amount of steel created in the US each year. Seven of China's 10
most-polluted cities are located in Hebei. Among the most polluted is Xingtai,
a city two hours away by high-speed train from Beijing. In 2013, Xingtai had a
daily average level of 150 micrograms per cubic meter of fine particulate
matter, six times the maximum amount suggested by the World Health
Organization. Visitors arriving at the city's train station are greeted by an
acrid burning smell and the other side of the station is blurred by a gray
haze. One of the biggest polluters is Kingboard Cokechem, a coking plant in the
northeastern part of the city. It's a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based, publicly
traded Kingboard Chemical Holding, whose shareholders also include major
international investors like JPMorgan Chase & Co. A study by the Global
Commission on the Economy and the Climate concluded that air pollution was
linked in 2010 to the premature deaths of 1.23 million people in China.
On the Arabian Peninsula, which is almost entirely covered
in desert, ground water levels are falling dangerously. In Africa and Central
Asia, deserts are expanding. In Israel, Australia and Brazil, lakes and rivers
are drying up. Soon, climate change could result in shortages of such goods as
coffee, chocolate and wine from southern France.
Politicians around the world have repeated the number like a
mantra: Average global temperatures should not be allowed to increase by more
than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) relative to pre-industrial
times. A "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate
system" is to be prevented, reads the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change. In 2014, around 60 percent more greenhouse gases were pumped
into the atmosphere than in 1990, the year against which most reduction targets
are measured. There is little to indicate that the trend might soon change. And
if it doesn't, if emissions continue at today's rate, the World Bank calculates
that average global temperatures will increase by 4 degrees Celsius by the end
of the century. The consequences of so much warming, the World Bank says, would
be "extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems
and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise."
The choice of 2 degrees Celsius as the maximum limit was
largely an arbitrary one. Indeed, the 44 members of the Alliance of Small
Island States (AOSIS) believe that, in a world that is 2 degrees warmer, many
of their islands would disappear. They are demanding that the upper target
limit be reduced to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But as things currently look, the
2-degree target is hopelessly utopian. It is supposed to sound reassuring, but
it is little more than hot air. Since 1880, average global temperatures have
already increased by 0.8 degrees Celsius, and the consequences have become
widely evident.
Destroying the environment is by no means a law of nature.
Rather it is a law of economics…
SPIEGEL: You
don't appear to be counting on the collective reason of politicians and
entrepreneurs.
Naomi Klein:
Because the system can't think. The system rewards short-term gain, meaning
quick profits. Take Michael Bloomberg, for example ...who understood the depths
of the climate crisis as a politician. As a businessman, however, he chooses to
invest in a fund that specializes in oil and gas assets. If a person like
Bloomberg cannot resist the temptation, then you can assume that the system's
self-preservation capacity isn't that great.
SPIEGEL: A
particularly unsettling chapter in your book is about Richard Branson, CEO of
the Virgin Group…Branson has sought to portray himself as a man who wants to
save the climate. It all started after an encounter with Al Gore.
Klein: And in
2006, he pledged at an event hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative that he
would invest $3 billion in research into green technologies. At the time, I
thought it was truly a sensational contribution. I didn't think, oh, you
cynical bastard.
SPIEGEL: But
Branson was really just staging it and only a fraction of that money was ever
spent.
Klein: He may
well have been sincere at the time, but yes, only a fraction was spent.
SPIEGEL: Since
2006, Branson has added 160 new airplanes to his numerous airlines and
increased his emissions by 40 percent. What is there to learn from this story?
Klein: That we
need to question the symbolism and gestures made by Hollywood stars and the
super rich. We cannot confuse them with a scientifically sound plan to reduce
emissions.
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