Toronto 350.org stated in 2015 that governments of the world — including the governments of Canada, the United States (U.S.), the United Kingdom (U.K.), China, Brazil, and the 27 European Union (EU) members — have agreed we should avoidraising global temperatures to more than 2 ËšC above pre-industrial levels. This is the threshold at which the major governments of the world have agreed that climate change becomes “dangerous”. In 2009, an article in Nature warned that failing to constrain warming to below 2 ËšC “would threaten the ecological life-support systems that have developed in the late Quaternary environment, and would severely challenge the viability of contemporary human societies”.
In the Summary for Policymakers from their Fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explains:Without additional mitigation exports beyond those in place today, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally. Based on hundreds of thousands of years of evidence on how the climate responds to greenhouse gases (GHGs),we can calculate the total quantity of all fossil fuels we can burn, adding the carbon they contain to the atmosphere, while still giving ourselves a good chance of avoiding a 2 ËšC increase. To do so we must keep future GHG pollution to no more than 565 billion tonnes (gigatonnes) of carbon dioxide (CO2). At the same time, we know that burning the world’s proven reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas would produce 2,795 gigatonnes of CO2 — nearly five times as much as it would be safe to burn.
The University of Toronto (U of T) can play a role in helping humanity stay within these planetary limits by choosing to sell its investments in fossil fuel companies.Climate change is a defining example of social injury. Firms that produce fossil fuels do not bear any economic burden as a result of the many forms of harm they are imposing on other people, including agricultural impacts, sea level rise, damage to human health, and more severe extreme weather. Likewise, those who use fossil fuels enjoy the benefits while imposing these costs on others. In order to avoid severe global injury, the total quantity of fossil fuels burned by humanity must be capped far below the level of fossil fuels available to be burned.
As The Economist explains: “[C]ompanies and governments already have far more oil, gas and coal than they need…assuming temperatures are not to rise by more than 2 ËšC”. The International Energy Agency supports this assessment; in their “2012 World Energy Outlook” they explain that: “[n]o more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2°C goal”.
Research published in Nature in 2015 concluded that: “80%, 50% and 30% of coal, gas and oil reserves, respectively, would need to remain below Earth’s surface if the world is to limit an increase in global mean temperature to 2° C”. Other research in the same journal found that: “development of resources in the Arctic and any increase in unconventional oil production are incommensurate with efforts to limit average global warming to 2° C” and that: “85% of [Canada’s] 48 billion of barrels of bitumen reserves thus remain unburnable if the 2°C limit is not to be exceeded”.
The business plans of fossil fuel companies do not take this reality into account. They assume they can burn all of their proven reserves, along with any additional reserves they discover in unconventional areas like the arctic, the deep ocean, and Canada’s bituminous sands.
Right now, we are adding over 35 gigatonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere each year, and the global quantity of that pollution is rising by three percent per year. That means that we are on track to exceed the 565 gigatonne limit within 15 years.Two implications arise from this. First, we need to meet the world’s energy needs while leaving 80 percent of the planet’s fossil fuel reserves unburned.
As NASA climatologist James Hansen explained: “Rapid reduction of fossil fuel emissions is required for humanity to succeed in preserving a planet resembling the one on which civilization developed”. This requires a massive redirection of investment from funding fossil fuel energy sources to deploying different energy sources that do not alter the climate.
Second, the stock market value of fossil fuel companies is based on the outdated assumption that fossil fuel extraction and use can continue without limit. If they are allowed to do this, the global effects will be catastrophic. As such, much of the value of these companies is illusory, based on the outdated assumption that we can forever use the atmosphere as a free dumping ground for CO2 and other waste gases.
The energy sources of the future need to be compatible with a stable climate: a fact the investment community has not yet generally accepted, but which it will be confronted with increasingly as the severity of climate change becomes more obvious. It’s time for the ‘smart money’ to start investing in energy sources that are compatible with a prosperous future, rather than those that threaten to afflict the world with frightening and avoidable harms.
Also see the list of articles to the right ....
Managed & Built by I2M Consulting, LLC | © 2010-
