The 5% and the 95% problem
I nearly missed an important point in the run up to Xmas, the madness of Covid, and the dying throes of Trump’s regime, which was written up in an Axios article entitled “How to Judge America’s Climate Change Responsibility”. I think that was misleading because the matter in question is not about our historic or past responsibility for climate change. That is well captured in this graphic below of historic contributions to date:
The factoid I was impressed by and requires further consideration was stated by Varun Sivaram, who did this excellent Ted talk in October on India’s energy transition and co-wrote the Columbia University innovation roadmap “Energizing America”. He estimates that if U.S. emissions are cut by a third over the next 30 years and another half by 2100 — pretty close to the current plan plus a bit — the future U.S. cumulative emissions this century will be roughly 5% of the global total under a baseline scenario for global emissions.
US’ share of global emissions will likely decline over the rest of the century because US energy demand is relatively flat, major states like New York and California, are moving by law to 100% renewable power, a third of the country is in some kind of net zero commitment and the President Elect claims he’ll do more. “Asia” and “Africa” emissions meanwhile are growing for mostly good reasons. Folk want light at night that don’t have it. Vaccines and food need cold chain storage to get to consumers. 2 and 3-wheel vehicles that make two-thirds of vehicle miles travelled in these places need power, etc…
What this says to me is that we need to work on the 95% problem. We need to meet the legitimate aspirations of these economies to have electricity at the levels we take it for granted (a billion still live without power and 3.5 billion without reliable electricity) without fossil fuels. That is all. It does not negate the call for support based on the historic and disproportionate impact of climate change on countries that have very little past or future responsibility.
Indeed, I think it adds weight to the demands of “U.S. Climate Fair Share” coalition, who sent a letter to the transition team calling on the president-elect to cut our 5% of emissions more aggressively going forward to make up for America’s historical contribution to warming the planet. As Rachel Rose, Director of Climate Research and Policy at Corporate Accountability said: “The crisis that we’re facing now is caused by the cumulation of emissions over time from the past to the present.” But what are we doing on the 95%?
