Global Heating

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Sheehan]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of recent reports that global heating is likely to pass the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold this year, and how they intend to cooperate with international partners to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who will be contributing to this debate; their participation is much appreciated. I also draw attention to my role as a director of Peers for the Planet and to the excellent briefing produced by it for this debate, entitled Why UK Action Matters. My own contribution will focus primarily on the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, its significance, and why breaching it matters.

Let me take us back to the last day of the Paris COP in 2015, when euphoria broke out because, against all the odds, 196 nations had signed up to the common intent of keeping global temperature rises well below 2 degrees Celsius, and to pursue efforts for a rise of no more than 1.5 degrees higher than pre-industrial levels. This agreement was important because it reflected the acceptance of the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that greenhouse gas emissions from the industrialisation of western economies since the 1800s are heating our planet to unacceptable levels. The evidence was incontrovertible then and it is even more so today.

I will just say a few words about the Keeling curve, named after its creator, Dr Charles David Keeling, who first started to plot the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere in 1958, taking measurements at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory. Keeling was interested in the seasonal variation of the concentration of carbon dioxide, which showed, if you like, the respiration of our planet as a living, breathing organism. However, as measurements accumulated, he noticed something odd: the annual trend in the concentration of global carbon dioxide was upwards, rising from about 360 parts per million in 1959 to about 370 parts per million in 2000 and around 420 parts per million today. The more numerically inclined noble Lords among us will notice that the rate of change is increasing. When taken together with measurements of concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide from Antarctic ice cores, and plotted on a graph, as NASA has done on its website, a frightening picture emerges. In the span of the 800,000 years for which we have data, there is an exponential spike in the concentration of carbon dioxide since the start of the Industrial Revolution—a comparatively tiny speck of time.

We also know that there is a direct link between atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and global warming, which is manifesting itself as the climate chaos and threat to nature that we see today. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was created to provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, its implications and potential future risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and mitigation options. Through its assessments, the IPCC determines the state of knowledge on climate change. IPCC climate scientists are urging political leaders to do all they can to keep within the l.5 degree Celsius target because, in a world with a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius, many of the deadliest effects of climate change are reduced—some of which we heard addressed in the previous debate on infectious diseases. Beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, the catastrophic, irreversible melting of ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica is likely to be triggered, meaning that sea levels would continue to rise well beyond 2100.

There are signs that this is happening already. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that NASA studies show that Greenland is shedding 20% more ice than previously estimated. The loss of the ice sheet could mean that the associated albedo effect would be lost—that is, the reflectivity of the ice would disappear with the ice sheet, and the newly-exposed bare ground would absorb the sun’s heat instead and release methane into the atmosphere, exacerbating heating even further. In addition, melting freshwater would reduce the salinity of the surrounding ocean, with consequences for the system of ocean currents that govern our weather, including the Gulf Stream. We would quite literally be in uncharted waters.

The year 2023 was the hottest by far ever recorded—shockingly, even hotter than scientists had predicted. Despite that, we have not yet breached the IPCC 1.5 degrees Celsius target, which is a longer-term average, but are we going to overshoot it? The answer to that question has to be yes, very probably, but what matters is by how much and how we deal with it. That is still within our control. Indeed, COP 28 has instilled hope that we can limit the damage. The early success of COP 28 on day one, when the loss and damage fund was announced, boded well.

I cannot overstate the importance of the fund. Small island nations and low-lying nations are already suffering the consequences of the climate emergency. To ask them and other developing countries to pay to reduce emissions that they were not responsible for, and to put in place costly adaptation measures for their very survival, is to rub salt into the wound and unjust. In any case, they simply do not have the resources to do so. Yet research from Oxford University tells us that cumulative emissions from small emitting countries, ourselves included, add up to a significant 31% of total development global emissions. We are all in this together.

The fact is that, unless we get smaller developing countries on board, we cannot transition away from fossil fuels—a phrase that is now in the world lexicon thanks to the final agreement document of COP 28; although in my view, and I believe that of the Government’s team of negotiators at COP 28, “phase out” would have been the preferred term. Nevertheless, finally, after 26 or so COPs, we have a mention of fossil fuels—a belated but welcome recognition globally of the cause of the climate emergency.

However, even if we were to stop emissions from fossil fuels tomorrow, according to the Royal Society and other esteemed sources, it would take many thousands of years for atmospheric CO₂ to return to pre-industrial levels, due to its very slow transfer to the deep ocean and ultimate burial in marine sediments. What is needed today is global leadership to move us away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible. We must stop adding to the inventory of greenhouse gases while ramping up energy from renewables, because the world needs more energy.

For many years, the UK has been in the vanguard, particularly in generating renewables. Where we have led, others have followed. However, the world is aghast at this Government’s recent actions to give the go-ahead to a new coal mine in Cumbria and their insistence on pushing ahead with the unnecessary Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill to issue new annual licences to oil and gas companies. My own view is that both measures are gesture politics and neither will ultimately matter. The real damage is the loss of our powerful voice on the international stage, helping the world to move away from the precipice of climate breakdown and the associated collapse of our planet’s natural ecosystems.

I will leave noble Lords with one very important example of why our presence on the world stage matters. Action on methane is essential because methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and responsible for a whopping 30% of global warming since pre-industrial times. However, it is much shorter-lived than carbon dioxide and achieving significant reductions would have a potentially rapid effect on atmospheric warming. In Glasgow at COP 26, we led the world on getting a global methane pledge signed. I ask the Minister: where is our leadership on the issue today? What action have we taken?

In conclusion, hope has always sustained humankind and experience has shown that, when the global community acts as one, we can move mountains—and move mountains we must to safeguard our planet. Britain’s place must be at the forefront of that effort.