You can tell that something's shifting, because a variety of leaders -- in politics and business -- have begun making new promises. "2050" has become a rallying cry, as in, "by 2050, we'll be net zero" or "by 2050, we'll be carbon-neutral." China made such a pledge this fall and, though it chose 2060 as its deadline, that was nevertheless a huge change in policy. But both timelines are too slow. Since physics sets the terms of this debate, we need scientists, not politicians, to tell us the pace we need to hit, and here the numbers are stark. In Paris, in 2015, the world committed to trying to hold the increase in global temperature to as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Last week, the World Meteorological Organization said that the current rise stands at 1.2 degrees, with at least a one-in-five chance that we will see an annual average above 1.5 degrees before 2024.
Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that, to have any chance of meeting that Paris target, we'd need to see a "fundamental societal and systems transitions and transformations" of energy systems by 2030, which it defined as cutting emissions by half. 2030 is now nine years away. That's 36 quarters of a business cycle, one-and-a-half Senate terms in Washington, or nearly two five-year plans for Beijing; new data show that to meet that target our fossil-fuel production has to drop at least six percent a year. But our leverage over where the earth's temperature will eventually settle dwindles with each passing year, because feedback loops beyond our control are starting to intervene. For example, America's emissions from transportation fell sharply during the pandemic, but that entire decline has been erased by the carbon released in the brutal fires in the West.
So the right metaphor for where we are now is a race -- one that we are losing. We can't actually win it, in the sense that we've already done so much damage, and far more is locked in for the future. But, if we act with daring and haste in the decade ahead, we can still achieve a world in which the temperature rises by two degrees Celsius or less, instead of by three or four or more -- and that could easily make the difference between a civilization that survives and one that collapses.
The key contestants in this race are the fossil-fuel industry and the movements that have arisen to stop it. The balance of power between them determines how bravely politicians will act and how fast investment will switch to renewable energy. There's no doubt about the eventual outcome: economics will dictate a switch to renewable power. But waiting for economics to take its course guarantees that we will not make our deadlines. That's precisely why activists have been fighting so many battles on so many fronts. Some of the most important, I think, include the fights to prevent new fossil-fuel infrastructure, such as pipelines. There was a win on that front last week, as Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, joined other officials in opposing the North Brooklyn fracked-gas pipeline. And there was a setback, as the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission gave the go-ahead for the Canadian Line 3 tar-sands pipeline crossing the state; campaigners led by indigenous activists blockaded that work last Friday.
There are also crucial fights to cut off the financing to the fossil-fuel industry: Stop the Money Pipeline (a campaign that I helped launch) has had some initial success in pressuring big banks, asset managers, and insurance companies to cease underwriting coal and oil and gas. (Bank of America just became the last of the major U.S. banks to declare the Arctic off-limits for oil lending.) The fossil-fuel divestment campaign has seen some major victories, too: on Wednesday, the New York State comptroller announced plans to divest the state's pension fund, one of the largest in the world. There are also campaigns for a "fossil-fuel non-proliferation treaty," which just last week scored a success, when Denmark announced that it would not license any new drilling in the North Sea. And there are efforts to persuade ad agencies and public-relations firms to stop green-washing the industry. All these campaigns are most pointed in Europe, but they are spreading around the world.
Frontline communities and indigenous groups are in the lead, and the surge of youthful energy has defined this push: from the Sunrise Movement to the Fridays for Future student strikes, it is those whose future is fully on the line who have emerged as the most talented spokespeople -- and the most demanding. (Greta Thunberg greeted Denmark's news that it would forgo future North Sea oil wells by pointing out that the country is going to keep pumping the ones already in place; many of her colleagues issued a manifesto proclaiming, "World leaders have no right to speak about net-zero by 2050 targets as if this is the height of ambition. Limiting our ambition to net-zero by 2050 is a death sentence for many.") This pressure aims, at heart, to do one thing: to shift the zeitgeist, so that the sense of what is normal and natural and obvious changes and, with it, the decisions of politicians and investors.
There are signs that it is working. This summer, BP said that it would cut its production of oil and gas by 40 percent over the next decade. That amount won't be enough (and the announcement came with endless caveats), but the decision still represents a new outlook for an industry that had grown steadily since the first oil well was drilled, in the 19th century. Last week, Exxon announced that it will write down the value of its oil and gas fields by 20 billion dollars, essentially conceding that those fields will never be pumped. It also said that it would cut spending on fossil-fuel exploration each year through 2025: instead of the 30 billion dollars it planned to spend in 2021, it will budget 16 to 19 billion. As recently as 2013, Exxon was the largest company in the world; this year, its market cap was briefly topped by Next Era Energy, a Florida-based renewables company.
There are a thousand other battles underway, of course: from arcane fights about carbon-accounting rules to plans for helping farmers sequester more carbon in soils; from writing new building codes requiring energy efficiency to schemes for assisting coal miners and oilfield roustabouts in finding new jobs in renewable power. But the central battle, at least for the next few years, is between Big Oil and Big Hope and Anger. We'll get a better read on the state of play next November, when nations gather in Glasgow. The pledges on the table will reflect, with unflinching accuracy, the balance of power between the fossil-fuel industry and the movements that challenge it.
Passing the MicMaria Lopez-Nuà ±ez is the deputy director for organizing and advocacy at the Ironbound Community Corporation, working for local development in a working-class neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, and a leader in the successful fight to pass S232, the strongest environmental-justice measure in the United States. Signed by Governor Phil Murphy in September, the law protects overburdened communities by requiring the state's Department of Environmental Protection to evaluate permits based on cumulative impacts of pollution. Lopez-Nuà ±ez and her colleagues' advocacy is also the subject of a new documentary, "The Sacrifice Zone." (Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Describe what it was like growing up in your part of New Jersey. When did you realize that Newark was overburdened with polluting industries?
One day, at the Ironbound Community Corporation, we smelled something pungent. Wherever you pass over the Ironbound, the main sight will be smokestacks. My whole life, I had smelled this smell. It was nauseating if I stopped to think about it. My colleagues said we had to call it in to the Department of Environmental Protection. That was when I started realizing that I've known that smell my whole life but never thought of it as a problem. That smell made me realize the difference between neighborhoods like Newark and the suburbs, where there are all these trees and the air actually smells clean. Racial justice has always been a part of my life, but at that moment I realized how insidious environmental racism truly is.
It's taken a long time to get this new law passed. What made it worth the fight?
The New Jersey environmental-justice law is the first such law with rejection powers built into it. If an industry is coming into a neighborhood that is already overburdened -- as in the case of Newark's Ironbound district, which has a sewage-treatment plant, a fat-rendering plant, two power plants, a garbage incinerator, and a Superfund site -- the state rejects that permit. This law mandates that protection, which is what makes it groundbreaking. Giving the state the power to say no -- and, by extension, our community the power to say no -- to dirty industry is hope for a better future. Without it, we continue being sacrifice zones. We continue being dumping grounds for what privileged people will not accept in their own neighborhoods.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
