As delegates returned home from the climate summit in Glasgow, we received yet another warning about the threat that climate change poses. Two days of torrential rain across British Columbia touched off major flooding and landslides and shut routes operated by Canada's two biggest rail companies. All rail access to Canada's largest port in the city of Vancouver was cut off, Reuters’ Artur Gajda and Rod Nickel reported.
Some areas of British Columbia received eight inches of rain on the final day of COP26, the amount that usually falls in a month. Earlier this year, BC dealt with a major drought, which sharply reduced farm output, and during the record-breaking “heat dome” that hit BC, Washington, and Oregon in June, wildfires all but wiped out Lytton, BC.
As the planet experiences more intense storms with historic amounts of rain, such calamities are putting us in increasing peril. In his 2021 book Moving to Higher Ground, Rising Sea Level and the Path Forward, oceanographer John Englander updates the science of sea level rise, driving home the point that excess heat already stored in our oceans guarantees that sea levels will continue to rise for centuries to come. Many people around the globe, Englander maintains, will be forced to move to higher ground.
In Charleston, South Carolina, sea levels have already risen by 10 inches since 1950, according to estimates from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Earlier this year, city leaders endorsed a $2 billion federal proposal to build an eight-mile-long sea wall to protect the city’s historic district. In Miami, where sea levels are expected to rise by 15 inches in the next 30 years, the Army Corps of Engineers is researching the feasibility of an estimated $8 billion, 13-foot-high sea wall, Xander Peters reported in The Christian Science Monitor.
Englander, a recent addition to our Advisory Board, has served as the CEO of the International SeaKeepers Society, The Cousteau Society, and The Underwater Explorers Society. He’s the founder and president of the Rising Seas Institute, a Florida-based nonprofit think tank and resource center created to advance the understanding of potential solutions to future flooding.
As delegates in Glasgow struggled to tackle these problems, The Washington Post ran a page-one story on its investigation finding that, in their reports to the UN, a number of countries were grossly exaggerating the emission reductions they had achieved. “An examination of 196 country reports reveals a giant gap between what nations declare their emissions to be vs. the greenhouse gases they are sending into the atmosphere,” a team of six reporters wrote. “The gap ranges from at least 8.5 billion to as high as 13.3 billion tons a year of underreported emissions — big enough to move the needle on how much the Earth will warm.”
That troubling news was accompanied by a new analysis released by Climate Action Tracker, a nonprofit that keeps tabs on nations' pledges to cut emissions and calculates the climate change that would result if those voluntary commitments are met. The group concluded that the world is still on a course to be emitting twice the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 than would be consistent with the Paris Agreement's more ambitious temperature target. Based on a continuation of current policies (i.e., what's happening in the real world), Climate Action Tracker found that, by 2100, the globe will likely warm by about 2.7°C (4.86°F) compared to preindustrial levels.
While there is plenty of disappointment that COP26 didn’t produce agreement to move more boldly to counter climate change, there was progress, including on the reduction of methane emissions. John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, called the conference “a starting gun,” acknowledging that there are still numerous variables to consider before declaring the world on track to stop climate change. But at least “I think we're going to get closer and closer as a result, provided we implement and follow through."
One encouraging sign was increasing discussion of pricing carbon and establishing border carbon adjustments. Those steps would speed up the transition to a world economy built on clean energy.