I just read a report from the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative on whether governance structures all over the world are ready for programs that reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Such efforts might be necessary if humanity as a collective cannot lower greenhouse gases in an effort to stop the rate of global warming.
In 2015, everyone who participates in the climate change agreements brokered by the United Nations agreed to put policies in place to limit the increase to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
"The goal is to be operationalized in part through achievement of a balance between the anthropogenic emissions by sources and removal by sinks," reads the opening paragraph of the report, which is not written for a lay audience.
Admittedly, I skimmed the report. It took about 45 minutes or so. Much of the same information is repeated several times and I'm going to refer to it in the future as it contains much that is important to my current job. I study and analyze land use policies in Albemarle County and surrounding communities. This is an offshoot of eleven years of reporting for a nonprofit media organization.
I'm writing this post because I was going to tweet a link to the report, but I thought I would instead give a little summary. At the moment, I do not have any kind of a writing outlet. I used to write five to seven stories a week.
The issues I write about are still continuing, and other people are writing for the publication. I'm still attending the same meetings though now I get to speak at them. I have traded one voice for another, but so far I don't seem to be saying anything.
That will change. In part because I need to do a better job of explaining why I believe what I say when I advocate for certain policies. We need to think a complex civilization like outs interacts with the land. Increasingly we must take into consideration the impact our small choices have on the bigger picture. The stakes are high.
"In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 ºC warned that the impacts of warming at Global Warming of 2 ºC would be significantly worse than those at 1.5 ºC," reads the second paragraph of the report.
In general, the authors of this report lay out the case that reduction of greenhouse gases will likely not be enough to limit temperature rise. Additionally, a series of somethings will need to be done in order to remove carbon dioxide. There are known in the report and in the scientific community as CDR's and range from planting forests on a very large scale, using bioenergy and capturing carbon, as well as directly capturing carbon from the air.
"The rapid scaling-up of large-scale CDR options is untested and will require international governance systems capable of addressing a range of sensitive issues and challenges," reads page 9 of the report.
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| Source: Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative |
Some questions considered in the report:
- Who is responsible for paying and implementing potential CDR options?
- What accounting system should be in place to measure the details of how carbon dioxide is removed?
- What are the environmental impacts of efforts such as planting forests where none have been before?
Each of these interventions is at a different stage of development, and the report acknowledges there are other techniques as well. I'd recommend anyone with an interest in this issue to download the report and review it. I suspect we're going to be hearing more about this in the weeks and months and years to come.
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