Now that warm weather has appeared in the northern hemisphere. It’s time to check on our climate’s progress. How well are we collectively doing to stop, or even diminish, global warming? I thought it might be useful to break the analysis into categories: data; government; business and the rest of us. Here are some, not necessarily comprehensive, results. As expected, they are mixed.
Data
Greenhouse gases
According to Co2.earth, the atmosphere’s level of carbon dioxide is currently (as of June 24, 2024) is 427.33 parts per million (ppm), a new record for the Human Era. In June 24, 2023 it was 423.35 ppm, an increase from June of 00.94%. This is a slight acceleration of the recent years’ trend. This equates to a global temperature change of +1.60C above the pre-industrial comparison period of 1880-1920. In short, no abatement is in sight.
Weather
The NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has released the final update to its 2023 Billion-dollar disaster report, confirming a historic year in the number of costly disasters and extremes throughout much of the country. There were 28 weather and climate disasters in 2023, surpassing the previous record of 22 in 2020, tallying a price tag of at least $92.9 billion. This total annual cost may rise by several billion when we’ve fully accounted for the costs of the December 16-18 East Coast storm and flooding event that impacted states from Florida to Maine.
Don’t forget, this is just for the United States. Here’s a map for the world, courtesy of NOAA. The intensity of the red patches shows the above -normal temperatures. Seriously red patches tend to be heatwaves.
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Governments
The record of governments, so far, is spotty at best. In the UK, for example, there was a great hue and cry about preserving the environment and stopping (not necessarily reducing) global warming. Under the current Tory administration much of that was either reversed or markedly diluted. That may or may not continue if the coming election in July 2024 is won by Labor. The same goes for most members of the European Union countries.
The United States is faring better with Federal initiatives and now it is getting down to eliminating or reducing State barriers to expanding solar power and the national electric power network. But those are just starting to take effect and be noticed.
China, on the one hand, is still building coal-fired power plants while, on the other hand it is the world leader in solar power and is producing more electric vehicles than Tesla is in the United States, although Tesla Model Ys are the best selling cars worldwide. Less expensive EVs should start appearing “real soon now” in the US. They already exist in China.
Business
Business in general, tends to be the laggard in such ventures as global warming. The fossil fuel companies are now (and have been for decades) strongly inventing new arguments about why they should continue drilling, even when there is growing evidence that peak demand for oil is already here or will emerge in the next couple of years. The temperature data will insist on it. Yet the industry continues to press governments to keep those subsidies flowing. For example, a recent article in the Financial Times covers the current situation in Guyana.
Aside from the fossil fuel companies, there is positive action from the rest of business. For example, “the latest ranking, based on 2017-2022 disclosures, there are 138 UK companies among the top 500 emission cutters across the continent. Of these, 119 are London listed.” Furthermore, these companies are giving their shareholders higher returns than those who are not cutting emissions. Slowly the word is getting around, but the pace is still too slow.
The sudden, wholesale switch to teleworking/work-from-home in 2020 appeared to have shown up in a brief reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Although the call back to the office post-Covid had some effect, even though it has been masked by other heat-generating events, the fact that office vacancies are still running n the 39% to 50% range suggests that WFH may be permanent for many information workers.
The rest of us
The clear rebound of long range summer jet travel between the US and Europe, for example, is evidence that the public is not sufficiently concerned about global warming. We’re still acting as if all the warming is caused by someone else. It’s still very important to bring the climate down to us individually if we’re going to stop, much less reduce, climate change. So keep on improving insulation in your homes; stop heating and cooking with gas, and otherwise switch to electricity from fossil fuels where you can. Each of these personal moves will help.
And don’t forget to keep pestering your representatives to accelerate their environmental activities. Keep the pressure up on the laggards. We’re all in this together because we can’t all escape to go despoil Mars.