Front Burner - ‘A code red for humanity’

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres is calling a major new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "a code red for humanity." Today on Front Burner, we break down what's in the report, its potential impact and why there might be reason to feel hopeful about it.

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Floods have inundated the Eiffel region. Seattle, three consecutive days of triple-digit temperatures for the first time on record. From B.C. to Germany to Siberia, the extreme weather events of this summer have made the threat of climate change very real for a lot of people. Now, a long-awaited report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is underlining just how urgently we need to deal with this crisis. Secretary General Antonio Guterres calls it a code red for humanity. It's the IPCC's first major report on the science of climate change since 2013. And governments around the world have agreed to use this as the basis for their climate policies going forward. So it's a really big deal.

Today, we're going to make sense of the report with Jeff Dembicki, a Canadian investigative climate journalist based in New York, and talk about how, as terrifying as many of these findings are, that there may be good reason to feel hope too. Hi Jeff. Hi, Jeff. Hi, thanks for having me on the show. All right, let's start by breaking down some of what's actually in this report. So what for you would you say is the most important finding? I think the big finding, and it's a pretty scary one, is that basically under any global scenario of fighting climate change, even some of the best case ones, we're pretty much guaranteed to hit 1.5 degrees of warming by around the year 2040.

And 1.5 degrees is kind of the best case scenario. It's the target that all the world's nations agreed that they would try to hit at the 2015 Paris climate talks. And it's the basis for all of those 2050 climate promises that you may have heard governments and large corporations making. planting millions and millions of trees and making sure our rainforests stay healthy, then there is a chance later on in the century that global emissions could dip slightly and we would go below that 1.5 degrees. Okay, so you described that 1.5 degree threshold as the best case scenario. Talk to me a little bit about some of those worst case scenarios. as the best case scenario. Talk to me a little bit about some of those worst case scenarios.

Well, I think you can kind of extrapolate from what we're seeing in Canada right now and imagine that many times worse. So at the 1.1 degrees of warming that we've already hit on the planet, that we've already hit on the planet. You know, we had this crazy heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. You know, hundreds of people died in British Columbia from the high temperatures. Health officials did announce that right now the health risks associated with the heat wave outweigh those associated with COVID-19. The Vancouver Police Department can't keep up

responding to one death after another. Three to four per day is the average that we attend. Since Friday, VPD has responded to an average of 14 sudden deaths a day. The town of Lytton set all-time heat records and then burned to the ground. A video message Jeff Chapman recorded in case he didn't make it. Please help my mom and dad and my brother and my animals. Chapman was getting ready for dinner with his parents when they spotted smoke.

Minutes later fire was all around them. And we're still you know well below the threshold that many scientists consider a best case scenario. And the other thing to keep in mind, too, is that Canada, because of its more northern position in the world, is actually going to be warming faster than that number suggests. We'll experience warming potentially at two times the rate as the rest of the world. And so we're really in for some pretty profound changes unless we can get our global emissions down. You know, another thing that is quite striking about this report is the tone that it's written in.

Compared to the 2013 report, these findings are written with a lot more confidence. Like, for example, the 2013 report said it was extremely likely that humans were partly responsible for the rise in global temperatures. But the new report says it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land. And it also says much more clearly that human-induced climate change is playing a big role in extreme weather events like the ones we've seen this summer. So why can scientists be so unflinching now? Well, since 2013, one of the biggest evolutions in the climate science has been the ability to link specific extreme events to the emissions that we're pumping into the atmosphere.

And that's just a result of computer models getting better, more measurements being done, more extreme events to study and draw from. But it is quite a striking change from 2013. And to put that into a Canadian context, we saw when there was this huge wildfire in Fort McMurray in 2016, wildfire in Fort McMurray in 2016. There was all of this debate in the media about whether that could properly be attributed to climate change and a lot of people got very upset actually at the suggestion that our burning of fossil fuels could somehow be responsible for this wildfire. Anytime we try to make a political argument out of one particular disaster I think there's a bit of a shortcut that can sometimes not

have the desired outcome. Now if you look at what happened this summer during the heat wave that had people across the country sweating and in some cases dying from the unprecedented temperatures. Essentially, in the middle of that event, scientists said the heat would have been virtually impossible without the influence of climate change. And so when we say the science around attribution has changed, that's the sort of thing that we're talking about. Another big takeaway from the report is around the rise in sea levels. Like in the past, the IPCC was criticized for being too conservative in its assessments, but that's not the case in this report at all. What are the authors predicting

we could see this century and next century? Well, yeah, I think we're going to hear a bit more specifics about that in some of the coming reports from the IPCC. But with a 1.5 degrees rise in temperature, we're definitely going to see flooding in any coastal city exposed to sea level rise. So if you think about the risks that Vancouver could face even under a best-case scenario of sea level rise, the city could still experience close to two feet of sea level rise. And then you imagine that 250,000 people in the city live in homes whose elevation is only a few feet above the ocean. You can kind of get a sense of the dangers that we're talking about

here. Even under a very moderate level of sea level rise, you could still have flooding to an extent where homes that are built close enough to the water essentially become worthless because their basements are filled up with water two or three times a year. And that would have massive financial implications for the country. So, you know, so if I get what you're saying, so even in that optimistic scenario where we keep temperatures at 1.5 degree Celsius, we're still going to see significant damage and significant impact to our living environments from the rise in sea levels. We're pretty much locked into some extremely profound climate change consequences, no matter what we do. And I don't think that reality has sunk in for a lot of people, certainly not our political leaders.

Okay, Jeff, you have legitimately terrified me. But the report also argues that there might be some hope, too, out there, and that the science now is a lot clearer about what we have to do to avoid some of those really nightmarish scenarios. Can you tell me a bit about that? Can you give us a bit of hope, Jeff? I'll do my best. Well, you know, one of the big takeaways from this report, as we've discussed, is the IPCC, which needs to get the buy-in from all of the world's nations in releasing reports and projections like this, is now saying it's totally unequivocal that humans are responsible for this

climate change that we're seeing. And in a weird way, that kind of gives us a bit of agency because it says that we caused this problem and now we have the ability to help fix it. the ability to help fix it. And so even though we are likely to hit that crucial 1.5 degrees threshold potentially within the next few decades, the report does say that we have the potential to lower emissions to the point where temperatures would kind of dip up and then come down slightly. So no matter how bad things look, the report is saying essentially that we still have a lot of agency to make the types of changes to the world energy and food systems that we need to see. One of the interesting things that the report suggests is that there are some cheaper or easier solutions when it comes to reducing emissions. And one of the things that it points out is methane reduction.

What do you think of that and what hope can we place in methane reduction? Well, the IPCC report says that methane has been a potent contributor to the climate change that we've been seeing. I believe about 0.3 degrees temperature rise. And from what I understand, these emissions can be addressed feasibly. The technology is there. And there was research not too long ago that said methane emissions are being underestimated in both Canada and the US. And a lot of it is coming from abandoned oil and gas wells.

So we know that a lot of those abandoned oil and gas wells are in places like Alberta. And there actually is a bit of political momentum right now to employ laid off oil and gas workers to help plug those wells, clean them up. So you see there an example of a solution that would create jobs, could be achieved relatively quickly, and as this new report suggests, have a significant impact on climate change. So it's possibly one of the fastest and more doable ways to slow global warming. Well, it's something we could start doing tomorrow if we wanted to. So this report, Jeff, it's obviously a huge deal. It's going to be one of the key documents at this big UN climate summit in November, COP26. This is where governments typically announce their

climate targets. But there have been a lot of alarming climate change reports in recent years, and a lot of people listening may be getting pretty jaded about whether this report will actually lead to action. How likely do you think it is that this IPCC report will motivate real change? It's always difficult to predict what the impacts of something like this will be. But I do think it will have an impact and most likely a positive one. So right now, the European Union is moving forward with something it's calling the European Green Deal, which is basically a program of governments making huge investments in clean technology. And it's considered one of the more aggressive climate change frameworks in the world. They're calling it the Fit for 55, slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent by 2030.

The 27 countries of the EU still have to green light the ambitious plan but if they do, sales of gas and diesel cars will be banned by 2035. The cost of carbon emissions will spike and carbon heavy imports will be met with tariffs. And if you look at some of the early documents around this new deal, they directly cite the 2018 IPCC report. I also think without that report, you wouldn't have climate change become such a large political issue in the United States that virtually every person that was running in the Democratic primaries supported some version of the Green New Deal, which would also involve trillions of dollars of spending on climate change and an accelerated timeline for reducing emissions. And you're seeing President Biden right now start to put some of those ideas into action. And so I think the arrival of this report in the lead up to

countries having this crucially important climate change meeting in Glasgow, the timing in my opinion is perfect because it's going to put climate front and center on countries' agenda as they gather to figure out what we can do next. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. through Angel Investment and Industry Connections. income. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. All right, Jeff, now let's talk about where Canada fits in here. UN Secretary General Guterres said that, quote, this report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels. The federal government is already walking this tightrope and trying to support Alberta's oil sands industry while also fighting climate change. So what kind of pressure does this report put on the federal government? this report put on the federal government? This report essentially says to the federal government in Canada that unless it takes aggressive steps to halt the expansion of fossil fuels and the country's oil sands industry, then the Liberal government's rhetoric about climate change will be seen as

completely hollow. Because Canada, as you know, has declared a climate emergency. And yet at the same time, Canada continues to be one of the 10 biggest emitters in the world alongside places like the European Union, Brazil and Indonesia. And to a large extent, that's because of our oil and gas industry. We're still building the Trans Mountain Pipeline to the West Coast. There's billion-dollar liquefied natural gas plants being proposed in northwestern BC. There's old growth logging taking place on Vancouver Island. So on one hand we have this science that is better founded than ever telling us what we need to do, but it's almost like the people in power haven't internalized that reality yet. I want to end, Jeff, by coming back to this idea that there are things to be hopeful about here.

On a personal note, what's giving you reason for optimism when it comes to climate change? So I know we've talked about a lot of scary stuff. And sometimes people ask me as a climate change reporter, like, how are you able to sit with this all the time? Like, why aren't you just freaking out constantly? And I have kind of a framework that I use to think through some of all of this. And with climate change and with the science, we often talk about these negative tipping points. But in addition to those negative tipping points, there's lots of evidence that we see positive tipping points as well. And an example of that would be the exponential decrease in the cost of renewable energy over the past decade, or the fact that we went from people mainly seeing climate change as this abstract far-off issue about a decade ago, to there being a massive global climate

change movement led to a large extent by young people like Greta Thunberg. And so these are the positive things that are hard to predict, but also lead to pretty aggressive action in a short period of time. And so I wouldn't say that I necessarily feel hopeful, but in trying to look as objectively at this emergency as possible, I do see a lot of cause for greater progress on climate change than I think seems the case to a lot of people. Jeff, thanks so much for joining us and leaving us on a note, on a more hopeful note. Well, thank you for having me to discuss this. I appreciate it.

Before we go today, another bit of climate-related news. There are about 270 wildfires currently burning in B.C., mostly in the southern interior. One of the most concerning has been the White Rock Lake fire between Kamloops and Okanagan Lake, which has already forced thousands of residents from their homes. The rain in recent days has allowed some areas to lift their evacuation orders, but that respite isn't expected to last long. Scorching temperatures are coming for huge swaths of the province, which means more risk of fire starting or spreading. That's all for today. I'm Jonathan Mopetze. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. I'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.