From Mitigation to Geoengineering to Adaptation: What Happens When Our Efforts to Combat Climate Change Fail?

December 6, 2018 – The Paris Climate Agreement asked the nations of the world to implement mitigation efforts to keep mean global temperatures from rising no more than 2.0 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) and preferably 1.5 Celsius (2.4 Fahrenheit). The non-binding nature of the agreement has revealed all its warts in the latest data which shows that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, in particular, carbon dioxide (CO2), will set a new record in 2018 equaling 37.1 billion tons. It represents the second consecutive year of CO2 increases after a period between 2014 and 2016 when it seemed we collectively were understanding what needed to be done to reverse global warming.

The burning of fossil fuels in 2018 continues to rise with coal, oil, and gas the chief contributors to CO2 rise. Peripheral to the burning of these fossil fuels, CO2 from cement production has continued to rise as well although the upward curve is slowing.

In almost every country on Earth CO2 emissions are rising. But there are 19 countries who represent 20% of global emissions that have shown a declining trend in the last 10 years. That doesn’t include the United States, China, India, Australia, and Canada. Of the 19 most are members of the European Union and the soon to depart United Kingdom, post-Brexit.

So 19 countries are achieving some mitigation success by changing the energy mix and implementing programs with industry and the public to conserve energy and reduce carbon footprints. But the rest can’t even get mitigation going which is the much easier and less expensive task to get up and running than adaptation which will require considerably greater effort and financial resources.

What’s involved with mitigation?

Best mitigation practices include but are not limited to:

• reducing fossil fuel usage by replacing the energy source with renewable alternatives such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal.
• reducing transmission losses to conserve energy throughout distribution networks to reduce the need to burn more fossil fuels.
• rehabbing buildings and homes to improve energy conservation and thus lowering the demand for fossil fuels.
• reducing fossil fuel demand in transportation through electrification of rail, municipal transit, and through programs to encourage commuters to move from internal combustion engine technology to electric, fuel cell, and hydrogen-powered vehicles.
• reducing GHG emissions in waste management through recycling programs and capturing emissions at disposal sites.
• educating, training, and raising public awareness of ways to reduce GHG emissions by modifying current consumption and behaviours.
• creating economic mechanisms to reward or penalize GHG emission behaviours among business and industry.

Geoengineering to Avoid Mitigation and Adaptation

For some of us on the planet who cannot imagine having to implement mitigation strategies and programs, the alternatives are expensive and include removing the CO2 and GHGs from the atmosphere or treating the symptoms with technology rather than the cause allowing us to continue to burn fossil fuels at current levels. I call this the grey zone between mitigation and adaptation. It is a recent field of study called geoengineering and involves:

• technologies to remove CO2 and other GHGs from the atmosphere through permanent sequestration (CCS or carbon capture and sequestration), or capturing the gases to turn them into commercial products (CCUS or carbon capture and usage).
• technologies that reduce the solar energy falling on the Earth’s surface to inhibit atmospheric warming, and other technologies to rebalance the acidification of the Earth’s oceans.

If we have the means and the money to build CCS and CCUS infrastructure whether direct-air CO2 emission capture or at the smokestack or in the production cycles of energy producers and industry then we can reverse the emissions curve. But to date, the cost of the technology in pilot facilities attached to existing power plants has exceeded more than a billion dollars at every site. Energy producers and industry players have often bowed out of such projects or had governments provide loans or outright grants to complete them. And current direct-air emission capture technology works out to be economically viable if CO2 were priced at over $600 per ton. If this technology is to be humanity’s saviour then someone has to step up big time and put the dollars and time in to get it working and priced right.

Then there is geoengineering the atmosphere by spraying aerosols in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere to imitate what volcanoes do naturally. Currently, there are early efforts at experimentation going on in the United States, and China. But the only way this seeding can work is if it is repeatedly done and on a massive scale. So wouldn’t it be better to mitigate rather than do a little sidestep by trying to remain reliant on fossil fuels rather than less polluting energy alternatives?

What’s Involved in Adaptation?

The much tougher exercise is adaptation. If we do mitigation right we can avoid some of the pain that adaptation entails. Already the buildup of GHG emissions in the atmosphere requires a degree of adaptation because mitigation alone will no longer do. And since current GHG levels will be with us for several centuries even if we turn off the CO2 fossil fuel pumping station the latency effect will remain long term.

Looking at adaptation strategies means spending big bucks, far more than we would with mitigation alone. That’s why mitigation should be our first line of defense and we should be doing it at full speed. Once we are into adaptation the dollars expended globally will reach the trillions annually by mid-century with an escalation in dollars and degrees of severity as we reach century end. Here are some of the issues where we will spend those adaptation dollars:

• having to deal with climate change refugees from regions of the planet that will become inhospitable and from coastlines that will be inundated from sea level rise.
• where we cannot retreat to more livable and sustainable conditions it means building new infrastructure to survive in areas of the planet negatively impacted by atmospheric warming and sea level rise.
• shifting agricultural production from inhospitable zones to areas of the planet where we can sustain world population.
• ensuring that the health infrastructure will be able to handle changing disease vectors and threats from environmental populations are protected from insect-borne diseases
• dealing with extinctions in the animal and plant populations caused by GHG emissions including moving threatened species to areas of the planet where they can continue to thrive, or by creating a seed bank repository to eventually reconstruct species once conditions on the planet reverse to sustainable levels.