Tipping Points Getting Nearer as COP28 Continues

At COP28 yesterday, Canada’s federal government announced a cap on fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions produced in the country. The plan requires the coal, oil and gas sector to reduce emissions or purchase offsetting carbon credits to meet a 38% reduction target from 2019 levels by 2030. The emissions cap for 2030 has been set at 112,000,000 tons not including offset purchases which would let fossil fuel producers emit another 25,000,000. Environmentalists are not happy. Fossil fuel producers are not happy. Governments in provinces producing fossil fuels are not happy. That’s the current state of governance when it comes to enacting effective climate change policy.

For the industry in Canada to be emission-free by 2050, the current 2030 cap will need to see rapid decreases beyond that date. The federal governing party is in the minority and could lose its mandate anytime in the next two years. Its Conservative opposition wants to eliminate Canada’s carbon pricing policy which currently sets a price for carbon pollution at $65 CDN (approximately $48 US) per ton, rising $15 per ton per year until 2030. So far, the Conservatives have no plan to replace carbon pricing, and no stated policy to reduce carbon emissions. They are an outlier when it comes to supporting the United Nations’ goal of a zero-emissions world by mid-century.

Not having a plan in the face of evidence that tipping points are getting nearer for the Earth’s climate, which is the current position of Canada’s federal Conservative Party, is negligence of the highest order and, in my book, a crime against both humanity and nature.

Climate Global Tipping Points Are Near And Now

At COP28, a report released provides a scientific assessment by more than 200 researchers, 96 organizations and 26 countries, called Global Tipping Points. In its summary, it states

“Harmful tipping points in the natural world pose some of the gravest threats faced by humanity. Their triggering will severely damage our planet’s life-support systems and threaten the stability of our societies.”

What is the common denominator to set these tipping points off?

Exceeding a rise of 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) of atmospheric warming will mean that business as usual is over, that linear incremental change, favoured by governments today, no longer cuts it.

The tipping points report says“transformational change” is needed now. It acknowledges some of this is happening now through the growth of renewables and an increase in electric vehicles. The pace of change, however, is not fast enough to stop triggering five tipping points that are already lines that have been crossed. There are three more in the offing that likely will happen in the 2030s.

So what are the ones we have already set off?

• The collapse of Greenland’s glaciers is happening now.
• The melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet is visible on satellite images.
• Widespread permafrost thaw is leaking thousands of tons of potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
• Coral reefs are experiencing massive die-offs.
• The North Atlantic Meridional Current is slowing and in danger of stopping.

Tree additional tipping points that may occur in the 2030s include:

• The widespread loss of mangroves that protect coastlines from rising sea levels and extreme weather.
• The loss of seagrass meadows that keep coastal erosion in check and provide a rich environment for marine life.
• The wholesale loss of much of our tropical and boreal forests.

Some of these tipping points are interlinked. For example:

• The collapse of Greenland’s glaciers is directly linked to what will happen to the North Atlantic Meridional Current which warms Europe. When it stops, Europe will be a much colder and inhospitable continent.
• Permafrost thaw will cause temperatures to spike temporarily even higher causing a domino effect for other tipping points.
• The melting of Greenland and West Antarctica will raise sea levels which will contribute to mangrove and seagrass loss.

Tipping points cross environmental thresholds.  Humanity has not experienced anything quite like these since the end of the last Ice Age. Yes, there have been droughts. Remember the Dust Bowl of the Dirty 30s. But the retreat of ice beginning 12,000 years ago soon led to the start of the Holocene, coincident with the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution. We owe our modern civilization’s roots to a tipping point in the climate at that time.

Are we prepared to cross thresholds that will lead to a cascade of tipping points with ecological and sociological consequences? Are we sufficiently ready to deal with tipping points that could lead to a wholesale breakdown of our economic, social and political systems?

The Global Tipping Points report wants us to have answers to these questions and acknowledges that we are doing some things right in the present. The rapid growth of renewables and the emergence of electric vehicles (EVs) may slow down climate change. But we need much more transformational change than what these two can provide.

What is so frustrating is that the solutions to stop tipping points are already known. The report lists them.

1. Phase out fossil fuels and land use emissions now.
2. Strengthen adaptation and loss-and-damage governance.
3. Include tipping points in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), a term that is readily bandied about at annual COP meetings, assessing exposure, measuring preventive actions, and managing potential impacts.
4. Coordinate and trigger more positive tipping points through coalitions of state and non-state actors.
5. Create a global forum that meets regularly to focus on tipping point threats and actions.
6. Increase our scientific knowledge about climate change and monitor the planet more closely to track the negatives and positives we do to contribute to tipping points.

The scientists behind the report recognize that the term “tipping points” may become overused. If we call what will happen something else, however, it doesn’t change what the impact of atmospheric mean temperatures rising 2.5 to 4.0 Celsius (4 to 7.2 Fahrenheit) will be.

We know what science reveals about Earth’s past through the geological and fossil record which shows evidence of dramatic changes over hundreds of millions of years that altered our planet over time. We have put placeholder names on the timeline of the planet designating these momentous and dramatic changes: Cretaceous, Carboniferous, Jurassic, Triassic, etc. The difference today is that what geology recorded over hundreds of millions of years of changing climate is happening now in decades. If that isn’t disturbing, I don’t know what is.

Here in Canada, we could face our own tipping point if a future elected government ignores what well-supported scientific research and data collecting is revealing. Science and governance need to be on the same page.