Why haven’t we ended the climate crisis yet?

The Ethical Dilemma, Part One

The ethical dilemma at the heart of climate (in)action

Would you agree that we have a moral obligation to leave our children and future generations a safe climate? Most Americans do. Yet we’re investing almost nothing in projects that could achieve that goal. It’s as if such investment is forbidden—by our outdated climate goals.

Resolving the ethical dilemma so we can swiftly, safely, affordably restore a safe climate

As climate chaos accelerated into the 2000s and to the present day, our agreed climate goals stayed stuck in the 1980s: “stabilizing” greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations (now called “net zero) and “preventing dangerous human interference in the climate system.”   But if we stabilize them at today’s levels—or worse, where they will be in 2050— the floods, droughts, wildfires, and heatwaves  are guaranteed to only intensify.   

The same outdated goal effectively forbids intentional, large-scale interventions that could actually restore a safe, healthy climate.

For humanity to have a bright future, we need to resolve the apparent conflict between our obligation to restore a safe climate on the one hand and honoring our antiquated agreements on the other.

We can create the future most of us want to see:  a safe climate restored

Did you know that to restore a safe climate we need to lower current atmospheric levels of CO2 by 40 percent?   Beyond net zero or stopping CO2 emissions…we’ll need to remove a trillion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.  That’s roughly how much has already accumulated in the air from human activities over the last two centuries. 

That “legacy” CO2 is what’s causing the lion’s share of the climate chaos.  Emissions are about 36 billion tons a year— important, especially as they build up— but only 3.6 percent of what’s already up there. 

Solutions for a safe climate exist…but we’ve barely begun to talk about them 

Over the last few decades, scientists and entrepreneurs have learned to copy and accelerate natural processes that have the potential to bring down that trillion tons by 2050.  Including zeroing out continuing emissions, that means pulling out about 60 billion tons (60 gigatons or Gt) a year.  

Large-scale climate-restoration solutions that replicate natural processes have been demonstrated. But the most promising are not yet being implemented.

Why not?  After pondering this question for years, I’ve reached the conclusion that an ethical dilemma has kept us paralyzed.  Our moral responsibility to restore a safe climate for our children collides with the ethical responsibility to respect accepted agreements. And the momentum to follow the agreements, even when they no longer serve their original purpose,  has been overwhelming.

Good intentions, outdated goals

Stabilization is enshrined in the mission and  goals of the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC):“to stabilize greenhouse gas [GHG] concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.…”

The UNFCCC treaty, accepted by most countries of the world in 1992, was based on the climate mindset of the 1980s: stop burning fossil fuels to stop raising the CO2 level. Shifting to clean energy will save us. Since then, nearly all climate action has been framed around stabilizing emissions.  Currently we call this aim “net zero emissions.” (No more greenhouse gasses should be emitted than can be removed, hence the “net.”)

Most climate activists, including Greta Thunberg, most environmental groups and most articles and policies about climate still promote net zero as our only hope.

The problem is that the CO2 level continued to climb, so we’re in a new phase of climate change that requires new solutions. The dea that stabilization will save us is 30 years out of date. If we magically hit net zero tomorrow…we’d still have that enormous pool of legacy CO2, and the climate would keep deteriorating. 

“Stabilizing” alone has turned into a recipe for ruin. Public understanding of this fact is just now starting catch up with the reality. 

Our current goals appear to prohibit restoring a safe climate 

It gets weirder: the agreement calls for stabilizing GHG at a level  “...that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system….”  Wait, what? When the agreements were signed, we’d already been dangerously interfering with the climate for at least 200 years by deforestation and burning fossil fuels.  

By 1992, CO2 levels were already higher than at any time in human experience. The highest that humans ever survived on a sustained basis was 300 parts per million (ppm) (see figure 1).We passed that limit a century ago.

To give the negotiators credit, back in the 1980s and early ‘90s, they couldn’t see what we see now. The effects of global warming were still mild enough they seemed like normal weather variations.  If we had “stabilized” GHG concentrations then, our climate just might be okay.

Meanwhile, CO2 has reached its highest levels in 14 million years 

Spoiler alert: that didn’t happen. Today CO2 concentrations top 420 parts per million.  The last time they were that high was 14-16  million years ago— before hominids, chimps and bonobos evolved from a common ancestor. 

The UN goal of net zero by 2050 will leave Earth’s CO2 another 10 percent higher still—about 450 ppm. That’s 50 percent higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years (see figure 1).   We and other current life forms  are literally not designed for such conditions.

No doubt the UN negotiators aimed to keep humanity safe. Nevertheless, 30 years on, the stabilization remedy has become a recipe for ruin.

Just as tragic is that “preventing dangerous human interference” became widely [mis]interpreted to mean that any human climate intervention is dangerous by definition. Intentional action to restore a safe climate by lowering catastrophically high levels of C02 has been dubbed “geoengineering” and quashed by scientists, officials,  activists, and environmental groups.

I admit that adhering to the UN goal is an ethical stand.  It’s a stand for international and national agreements.  For the value of tradition—staying the course. But it conflicts with the ethical imperative to leave our children a livable planet.

Resolving this dilemma would authorize policymakers, scientists, and activists to focus on actions that could actually restore a safe climate by mid-century. The UN could update the world’s goals, but its wheels do not turn quickly. In the meantime, leadership from the US Congress and President could make the difference by making public commitments to restore a safe climate for current and future generations.

In our next post, we’ll look at some of the ways that we can all empower policy makers and funders to make these commitments.

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