Jeffrey Sachs highlights three international conferences in 2015 that may be important:
In July 2015, world leaders will meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to chart reforms of the global financial system. In September 2015, they will meet again to approve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide national and global policies to 2030. And in December 2015, leaders will assemble in Paris to adopt a global agreement to head off the growing dangers of human-induced climate change.
The fundamental goal of these summits is to put the world on a course toward sustainable development, or inclusive and sustainable growth. This means growth that raises average living standards; benefits society across the income distribution, rather than just the rich; and protects, rather than wrecks, the natural environment.
Growth that protects the natural environment – I think it’s theoretically possible, but we’re a long way from that and it’s easy to be pessimistic. But at least some leaders recognize that there is a problem worth discussing. His vision is essentially one of technological progress allowing decarbonization of the energy supply:
Back in 2009 and 2010, the world’s governments agreed to keep the rise in global temperature to below 2° Celsius relative to the pre-industrial era. Yet warming is currently on course to reach 4-6 degrees by the end of the century – high enough to devastate global food production and dramatically increase the frequency of extreme weather events.
To stay below the two-degree limit, the world’s governments must embrace a core concept: “deep decarbonization” of the world’s energy system. That means a decisive shift from carbon-emitting energy sources like coal, oil, and gas, toward wind, solar, nuclear, and hydroelectric power, as well as the adoption of carbon capture and storage technologies when fossil fuels continue to be used. Dirty high-carbon energy must give way to clean low- and zero-carbon energy, and all energy must be used much more efficiently.
Clean energy would be an enormous breakthrough. But would it end all our problems, allowing us to grow indefinitely from that point without consequences? In their book Limits to Growth: The Thirty Year Update, Donella Meadows et al. explain why that might not necessarily be the case:
in a complex, finite world, if you remove or raise one limit and go on growing, you encounter another limit. Especially if the growth is exponential, the next limit will show up surprisingly soon. There are layers of limits.
What might the next limit be? maybe depletion of the phosphorus supply, loss of fertile soil, collapse of the oceans, a catastrophic plague affecting crops or people, etc. The point is just not to think that solving the carbon emissions problem would end all the problems caused by our enormous footprint on the natural world.
