Predictably Unpredictable

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Earth Overshoot day was a couple of days ago, i.e., the day of the year when we have consumed all the resources the earth is expected to regenerate over the whole year. Here’s a graph depicting how EOD has changed over the years.

The trend is dismal. We were already overshooting the earth’s yearly capacity by 1970, but there’s been rapid worsening since the mid 70s - around the time that China was integrated into the world economy and globalization took off. The good news is that this year the overshoot day retreated three weeks into August. The bad news is that even a global shutdown moves the needle only by three weeks.

We have to do better.

In other bad news, scientists think the Greenland ice sheet is melting for good. No wonder climate circles tilt towards apocalyptic scenarios.

Climate Lexicon: Unpredictably Unpredictable

It’s very hard to predict, especially the future. So why not imagine it instead?

Imagination and prediction are two poles of a temporal axis. When the world is predictably predictable, we don't need imagination for we can tell exactly what’s going to happen. Even when the future is predictably unpredictable like a coin toss, we don’t need much imagination, because the options are known in advance: the coin is going to land heads or tails. Imagination shines when the future is unpredictably unpredictable, when even the possible outcomes are yet to be determined.

Unfortunately, since we are surrounded by predictive systems, even our imaginations are trapped within the predictably unpredictable. Our dreams and nightmares come packaged into familiar utopias and dystopia. We need to scrape off that rusty imagination before fresh ideas can surface. That is the purpose of the collective exercise shown in the video below.

The task: close your eyes, imagine life in 2070 and share a word or phrase that captures the image.

Lot’s of dystopic images! How do we unsettle the dystopia without falling into an equally problematic optimism which thinks technology will save us or believes things aren’t so bad after all?

Research Updates

If you prefer the text version with references, notes from the video are????. Thanks to Aprajita, Tarun, Chhaya, Kavya for sharing their ideas and to Neeraj G for excellent note-taking!

Aprajita Singh talks about the origins of the Green New Deal, a phrase coined in 2000’s and then adopted by British activists and the United Nations Environment Programme. Though there was very little political traction in the 2000’s Aprajita notes that several thinkers, politicians, industry leaders and various other stakeholders had proposed the seminal UK Green New Deal, the first comprehensive climate proposal in Britain.

References:

1. https://d1h1wqtygap0e8.cloudfront.net/uploads/2019/08/GNDDoc.pdf
2. https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/green-deal-20-activists-revitalise-uk-climate-change-plan-190703211214881.html

Tarun Gopalakrishnan talks about various fudge factors in Corporate emissions reductions commitments and why the recent announcement by BP might be a departure. Common sense suggests that emissions from corporations fall into one of three buckets:

1. Bucket 1: Emissions due to their own operations (direct impact), like delivery trucks burning fossil fuels.
2. Bucket 2: Emissions coming from the corporation’s energy consumption - electricity, steam, heating, & cooling produced or purchased for their own use. Which is to say, the internal and upstream carbon emissions due to the corporation’s energy needs. Both direct and indirect impact.
3. Bucket 3: Emissions coming from consumer use of the corporation’s products. This accounts for the biggest chunk of corporate emissions - up to 90 percent of the emissions in certain cases. Like the emissions coming out of the cars and trucks we own.

Corporations make announcements about reducing emissions without being explicit about which of the three buckets they are reducing, which gives them plenty of room to fudge the data. For example, an oil company could become much more efficient at extracting oil and therefore reduce its impact under buckets 1 and 2 but then sell a lot more oil and have a much bigger total impact as a result of bucket 3.

Case 1: British Petroleum’s climate responsibility : 

British Petroleum made an announcement in February 2020 publicizing the net zero emission target deadline being changed from 2050 to 2030. In addition the corporate giant also has added commitments of reducing the production of fossil fuels by 40 Percent and no exploration in new countries. This announcement seems ‘real’ because it will impact all three buckets.

These policies come at an unusual time when the entire world economy is struggling with COVID and a crash in oil prices. The general consensus is that the oil companies need to cut production to have profit.

Keeping the circumstances into consideration, we need to look out for British Petroleum's original projections for the year 2030 pre COVID times and learn how British Petroleum factored COVID into their projections.

Case 2: 

Other announcements by oil majors are in the jargon of the net zero language , with IPCC in 2018 creating guidelines for netzero emissions. British Petroleum in the year 2005 started a campaign named “Beyond Petroleum” and made additional investments in renewable energy, though there was no reduction in investment in fossil fuels and natural gas. The company announced its targets in terms of emission intensity of products which can be calculated as follows: 

Emission Intensity = Total amount of Energy generated by products / Total Emissions 

The total amount of Energy generated by products consists of two factors one being renewable and the other natural gas . The numerator sum could increase with an additional factor of extra energy from renewable sources but the denominator would approximately remain the same as the emissions are being accounted only from fossil fuels. Emissions intensity can change for the better without emissions decreasing.

Moral of the Story: Keep an eye out for bucket 3 when it comes to parsing corporate announcements.

References: 

1. https://www.ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/files/ghgp/standards_supporting/Diagram%20of%20scopes%20and%20emissions%20across%20the%20value%20chain.pdf
2. https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/news-and-insights/press-releases/from-international-oil-company-to-integrated-energy-company-bp-sets-out-strategy-for-decade-of-delivery-towards-net-zero-ambition.html
3. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/nov/20/fossilfuels-energy
4. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/climate-emergency-what-oil-gas-giants-say
5. https://shareaction.org/analysis-of-totals-net-zero-ambition/
6. https://verra.org/disney-expand-voluntary-carbon-offset-buying/

Chhaya Namchu talks about how indigineous communities in Sikkim have been at the forefront of climate change, standing up against construction of a dam on Teesta river belonging to the Dzongu region.

The article gives an understanding of how people from different ideologies and political groups came together to stand against the construction of the dam as Dzongu belongs to all of Sikkim.

There's no single voice though: for example some people in Sikkim see the need for jobs, development and catching up with national growth. Keeping in mind the aspirations of development, the people of Dzongu have started looking into alternatives like home stays and other tourism based activities for income, instead of having the dam being built on the Teesta river. 

Chhaya also points out there's need to have an overall outlook for communities in the north east and It should not just be confined to climate change. We should consider the aspirations of the people leading to development and equitable climate burdens. 

References: 

1. https://www.indiawaterportal.org/articles/village-heads-come-together-save-dzongu
2. https://www.eco-business.com/news/fossil-fuel-funding-by-worlds-biggest-banks-has-grown-every-year-since-the-paris-agreement-report-finds/
3. https://www.indiawaterportal.org/articles/act-one-anti-dam-pro-people

Kavya Gopal critiques the Global Green Growth Institute which sees an optimistic future where nations would be pivoting more towards green recovery post COVID. Their report claims that the largest opportunities in a green recovery lie in cities and particularly in the areas of building renovation, energy efficiency, waste management, and electric mobility. It also points to an observation where the present policies were a rehashing the old green new growth policy and an evident disparity in the numbers of green elements (less) vs the brown elements (more) in the policy making. It should be noted that green elements in new deals should outweigh the brown elements to push towards greener economies.

References: 

1. https://www.devex.com/news/q-a-the-road-to-greening-the-covid-recovery-97815

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