We can’t kick the carbon can down the road…
I’ve recently started facilitating Sustainable Business seminars with students at Newcastle Business School. One of the main things I’m getting out of it is being forced out of my usual routine and into activities I wouldn’t normally dabble in. On Friday, we were using Climate Interactive’s En-ROADS model which allows you to play with global carbon policies to see how you can limit average climate emissions. While the interface is very simple, the model has been calibrated against a whole series of scientific models and studies, so the output you get is pretty realistic.
In the game we played, the students were split into six stakeholder groups: land-based industries, heavy industry, traditional energy companies, green/social NGOs, the clean tech sector and, to trigger the tin foil hat brigade, “World Government”. Each group were given a brief of their vested interests and were challenged to meet the Paris Agreement targets of limiting global warming to 1.5-2.0°C. Of course this is vastly simplified as the latter group is made up of 196 countries/bodies all with their own agenda.
One of the complexities of the model is that underneath each headline policy you can tweak a number of other parameters including the delaying and/or phasing in of a policy. I did the exercise with two different groups of students and the second World Government team really immersed themselves in their ‘character’ and kept putting off difficult decisions for later. And guess what? No matter how hard they went on carbon reduction measures later on, they could not meet the target. We pulled the implementation dates closer to the present and success became decidedly easier.
I would love to run this game with all those in politics and media who deride”the ideological headlong rush to Net Zero” so they can see how ‘ideological’ their own stance is. As we look at press reports from around the world, the waters of climate change are almost literally lapping around our ankles. In a decade will those ‘common sense’ sages be left like the Mayor from Jaws gibbering “I always acted in the town’s best interest” as reality bites?
But ranting aside, there is a fundamental principle here. Early action is key to tackling climate change. Dither and delay could be fatal.
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