United Nations climate summits are dizzying affairs. At the core are the diplomatic negotiations between the official country delegations about an evolving and increasingly complex international framework for addressing climate change. Surrounding that core is the world’s largest climate change trade show: a circus of side events, pavilions, announcements, deal making, protests and press briefings, (almost) all about actions to address climate change.

To capture it all, I present to you the COP27 Awards.

These awards recognizing highlights and lowlights of this year’s conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Like the Oscars, the Coppies (still work-shopping that) included awards for overall achievement, individual performances and technical merit. Also like the Oscars, the Coppies are highly biased, as without human cloning and an all-access pass to closed negotiating rooms, no one person could possibly track even a tenth of what transpired.

The envelopes please…

Best part of COP27: the climate solutions “trade show”

We’ll start with a big award. In contrast to the ever-frustrating and underwhelming diplomatic negotiations, the surrounding events featured detailed discussions of ongoing and planned efforts to reduce emissions, adapt to climate change, develop early warning systems, invest in a just transition and address systemic inequalities. Yes, it was chaotic and crowded, but maybe it should be! Climate change is, after all, the largest collective action problem in the history of the humanity.

Best moral victory: A loss and damage funding mechanism

After years of the United States and many other developed countries resisting calls to provide compensation for climate change impacts in the developing world, the parties agreed to establish a system for providing “new and additional” funding for countries that are “particularly vulnerable to climate change, with a focus on “addressing loss and damage”. This award is for a moral victory because the details on the operation of the funding mechanism, and which countries will contribute, has been delayed until next year’s summit in the United Arab Emirates (more on that to come).

Worst omission from the final text: phase down of fossil fuels

The final text emerging from Sharm el-Sheikh calls for the phased own of “unabated coal power” rather than all fossil fuels, due to objections from the oil and gas producing nations of Saudi Arabia, Russia and other nations.

Best motivator for climate activists: COP2028 is in the United Arab Emirates

If you thought getting agreement on a phase down of fossil fuels was difficult this year, the incoming COP presidency is the United Arab Emirates. It will take a lot of work to change that next year.

Best conspiracy: It is all Saudi Arabia’s fault

Rumours swirled in the hallways that Saudi Arabia was behind the Egyptian presidency’s odd management of the cover text, including the strange choice to delay work on that text until the very end and resistance to mention of a fossil fuel phase down. This wins “best” conspiracy in that it was the most repeated (to me) not necessarily the most correct.

Most consequential term (tie): “unabated coal” and “clean energy”

The use of these deceptive terms in the final cover text opens the door for expansion of fossil fuel production, particularly coal and gas. They imply that a country can invest in coal or gas plants provided those plants use carbon capture and storage technology or have plans to later install such technology. Even if installed, and with advances in technology, carbon capture and burial does not capture 100% of emitted carbon dioxide, often far below. The consensus of experts is that such technology is best reserved for emissions sources that cannot be realistically eliminated, not to allow expansion of fossil fuel electricity when zero-emissions options exists (and are cheaper).

Michael Myers from Halloween award for the debate that will never die: Apportioning responsibility

At the heart of virtually all COP27 debates is the same issue that has plagued UN climate summits for decades: how to apportion responsibility for climate change. Thirty years after the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” was enshrined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, we are still fighting about which countries should be considered developing, who should give and receive finance, and when different countries should achieve deep emissions cuts.

Most quietly important text: Reforming multilateral development banks

Deep in the finance section of the cover text is a call for the shareholders of entities like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and others to “define a new vision and commensurate operational model, channels and instruments that fit for the purpose of adequately addressing the global climate emergency”. Countries all recognizes that reform of the multilateral development banks is necessary to scale up climate finance without saddling the developing world with more debt.

Best area of agreement: Failure of $100 billion/year climate finance pledge

During the negotiations, I heard to countries of all sizes and levels of wealth agree that the pledge of $100 billion per year to the developing world was poorly conceived, planned and executed. For more, see here.

Worst lie: “I am following the Article 6 negotiations”

Article 6 refers to the provision in the Paris Agreement to create a carbon credit trading system. Given the potential pitfalls of such a system, including accurate measurement and double-counting, it is of great interest to countries, companies and activists alike. However, the task at COP27 was to determine some of the technical details of how the system will work. Unless you devote your career to this subject and/or are a lawyer at an emissions trading organization, good luck following most of what is said during the negotiations. For a summary of what was comprehensible to outsiders, read Simon Evan’s summary for Carbon Brief.

Best new word: “predictable”

The loss and damage text recognized the need for “new, additional, predictable and adequate” funding. The unpredictable and project-based nature of climate aid makes it hard to maintain effective early warning systems, disaster relief and adaptation programs in vulnerable nations (see this paper for an in-depth case study of a small island states).

Worst complaint from delegates: It is hard to get lunch

(this may not win me friends) It was difficult get lunch and even water at the meeting, especially in week one. The food that was available was very overpriced. I only had a proper lunch on two out of my nine days at the conference centre. Regardless, climate change has contributed devastating droughts and floods around the world, leaving families struggling to feed themselves. While I am sympathetic to those at the conference who had serious health concerns, for the rest of us, scrounging for lunch at a conference for a few days is an object lesson, not a hardship.

Most bold adaptation plans: Pacific atoll nations

All three Pacific atoll nations (Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu) released long-term adaptation plans that involve building higher islands. This is less crazy than it sounds – the Chinese government has done the same on reefs in the South China Sea, as has the Maldives. The question is less whether it is physically possible, and more whether the countries will receive the support necessary to make this happen.

Best trend to eliminate: each host country creating a new program

Each year, the host country creates some international climate mechanism that bears the name of the host city. While some are certainly critical, like the Paris Agreement, the proliferation of new mechanisms makes the COPs and pre-COP work increasingly unmanageable, especially for small countries. It also scatters the attention at COPs. I wonder if it would be better to keep new negotiating items underneath existing frameworks and limit the number of different concurrent work items at the COPs.

Best line during a speech: “red or brown life raft”

An i-Kiribati delegate spoke of his country being asked whether it wants a “red or brown life raft”, alluding to how the COPs focus on modalities and technical issues rather than concrete solutions.

Best attempt at a grand deal: European Union offering loss and damage money in exchange for agreement to peak global emissions by 2025.

This late offer essentially aimed at getting China to advance its target of peaking emissions by the year 2030.  Didn’t work, but nice try.

Best lesson for climate scientists: Be careful making more greenhouse gas metrics

One area of negotiation was the common metrics for emissions reporting. The issue is how to sum all gases in the same units, given that they have different radiative effects and different lifetimes in the atmosphere. The common method is to use the global warming potential (GWP) of each gas, which compares radiative effect of each gas to that of carbon dioxide. Here’s where it gets political. Advances in science have led to a higher GWP for methane in recent IPCC reports. Countries with a lot of cattle have pushed to keep the older value for methane and to use another metric entirely, called global temperature potential, which would give an even lower value for methane. The compromise proposal was to keep GWP, but let countries report using GTP too if they want, as long as they document the methods. The proliferation of new metrics in the scientific literature is likely only to further feed what has become a political debate.

Most crowded negotiating rooms: Loss and damage negotiations

Civil society observers came out in droves for these negotiations. Several dozen of us were thrown out of one because security was uncomfortable with people sitting on the floor.

Best speech: Nakeeyat Dramani

This 10-year Ghanaian poet and Climate Vulnerable Forum ambassador received a standing ovation for her moving speech to the plenary on the final official day of the meeting.

Worst effort to learn from the past: The Energy Transition Accelerator

This U.S. initiative announced by climate envoy John Kerry would encourage investment in emission reducing activities in developing nations in exchange for voluntary carbon credits. Countries keep trying these systems, despite ample evidence that they do not contribute to net decrease in emissions, as companies end up getting credit for emissions reductions which would have occurred anyway.

Worst reaction to a protest: Oil Sands Pathways to Net-Zero panel discussion

Five minutes into this panel discussion, a group of activists raised protest signs, and walked out of the small, crowded Canadian pavilion. After they left, people filed in to take the open seats, and the conversation continued on stage. The protest and reaction was, as the person next to me whispered, very “respectful” and very “Canadian”. It was also strange. There was no recognition from the panel that the protest even happened, let alone that the companies and their plans do not have the support of a large proportion of people, young and old, at the conference. Even a quick “we hear you” might have sufficed!

Best unintentional comedy: Egyptian security contractors standing alone in the desert

It seemed like every time the bus turned a corner, you could spot a fit Egyptian man in a suit standing 20 metres off in the desert, guarding the rocks and sand. I was told not to approach them. I just hope someone was bringing them water.

(In all seriousness: security was omnipresent in Sharm el-Sheikh. Guards, passport checks, metal detectors, police checks, and gun-shaped bulges under suit jackets abounded, a reminder of the value of tourism to the Egyptian economy, the number of foreign dignitaries in town, and the ongoing terrorist threat on the Sinai peninsula)

Best presentation of a nationally determined contribution: Kiribati

In true Micronesian style, the Kiribati delegation had a woman in traditional dress dance to the stage carrying a hard copy of the NDC. President Maumau danced along, then received the document, and then presented it to a very uncomfortable looking representative of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Best corporate presentation: Uber

There were only ten people at a presentation in the “Pathways to 1.5 C” pavilion about the company’s plans to shift to entirely zero emissions vehicles in North America and Europe by the year 2030. Most interesting was how a new program that rents Teslas to carless drivers was unintentionally leading to greater electric vehicle use in lower income neighbourhoods where affordability has been a central concern.

Best recommendations: High-Level Expert Group on the Net-Zero Emissions Commitments [of Non-State Entities]

This expert group released ten recommendations for companies and other folks setting net-zero commitments, including not continuing to build or invest in new fossil fuel supplies. If widely adopted, these recommendations will eliminate the greenwashing present in many supposed net-zero commitments.

Best patience: The oil company representative that politely nodded while I argued that his company’s net-zero goal must include producing oil only for uses other than combustion (e.g. plastics, solvents and other products that keep the carbon out of the atmosphere)

Best line in the text: “stressing that the severity of impacts will be reduced with every increment of global warming avoided”

This line in the “second periodic review of the long-term global goal” made my scientist’s heart sing. It is an important reminder that the Paris temperature limits like 1.5°C are as much a product of geopolitics as of science, and that the true message of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that the more we reduce emissions, the less the planet warms, and the less people suffer.

Best commitment to a protest: The person walking around in what has to be an uncomfortably hot and heavy dinosaur costume

Best slogan: “Show me the money,” from African youth activists calling for loss and damage support

Best Egyptian impersonation of a celebrity: The Egyptian Lionel Ritchie

Some of the local shops go to extraordinary measures to stand out. Near my hotel was a local store called the “Egyptian Lionel Ritchie Supermarket”, run by a friendly chap who claims to be the “Stuck on you” singer’s North African doppelganger. There was some resemblance. Honourable mention goes to the Egyptian George Clooney, whose store I spotted from the bus, but, alas, I did not get to meet.

Best memories: different perspectives on climate issues

My personal highlights of COP27 were one-on-one conversations with delegates from different countries. Given the location of the conference, I made a point of meeting delegates from across Africa in particular and asking their impressions. I heard about the lack of trust in financial promises from the developing world, the mismatch between donor desires and recipient needs, the unintended consequences of seemingly progressive decisions around international aid in North America, the trade-offs between increasing energy access and reducing electricity emissions, and the brain drain to western universities and institutions. I appreciate how much people were willing to share, and hope to incorporate those perspectives in my teaching, research and advisory work.

Which party has the best climate policy?

This question has been central to the brief federal election campaign. Climate experts and commentators have offered perspectives and report cards, most of which point to the all-around strengths of the Liberal Party platform, with the occasional kind words about the feasibility and mere existence of the Conservative platform, or the vague ambition of the NDP platform. I’ll be upfront: I agree with Mark Jaccard, Katharine Hayhoe, Andrew Leach, and my colleague Kathryn Harrison that the Liberal plan appears the strongest.

I am, though, concerned that too much of the policy discussion focuses on the 2030 target. Climate change is all about the long-term. When you take a longer view, the criteria for a feasible or an ambitious plan changes.

To explain, I’ve calculated national emissions pathways which are consistent with a likely (2/3) chance of avoiding different levels of global warming. The analysis is based on the latest global carbon budget data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 6th Assessment Report published in August. My methods follow that of a similar analysis conducted in 2019 with older data. Also, huge thanks to Eric Leinberger from UBC for help with the graphics!

The first analysis uses an equitable distribution of the global carbon budget, in which Canada receives 0.5%, in line with our share of the global population. Why such a small portion of the global budget? We could assign portions based on emissions, rather than population, but that implies that a low-emitting developing nation has to cut emissions at the same rate as a wealthy, high-emitting nation. That would be unfair, and also untenable.

According to this analysis, the party targets for 2030 fall in between the < 2°C pathway and the more moderate < 3°C pathway. Granted, these are just the targets. Whether the policies are sufficient to meet the targets is a separate question, addressed in part below.

Being Canadian, I find it helpful to think of the pathways as ski slopes. The < 3°C pathway is like a blue intermediate run with some black diamond difficult stretches. The < 2°C pathway is a challenging double black diamond full of moguls. If navigated successfully, it brings the country to net-zero around 2050.

The < 1.5°C pathway, unfortunately, is a cliff surrounded by fences and caution signs. This is because the budget remaining for < 1.5°C is equivalent to less than three years of current annual emissions. As much I want deep emissions cuts, to reduce emissions that quickly, if it were even possible, would be unconscionable given how our current energy system works; we’d need to shutter some industries, transportation, power generation, and home heating.

If we chose a less equitable division of the global carbon budget – an intermediate portion (1.1% of the remaining global budget) between the equitable (0.5%) and even (1.6%) portions – the emissions pathways look slightly more realistic. In this less equitable scenario, the parties’ targets fall between the < 1.5°C and the < 2°C pathways, as does the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

These results paint a stark picture, as I noted in the 2019 analysis. It is likely impossible at this point for Canada to achieve its full “fair share” of emissions reductions to avoid 1.5°C warming, absent large investment in effort in other parts of the world.

I present this for context. The truth is that every action still counts. The more we reduce emissions, the less the planet warms, and the less people suffer. Even if we can’t do our fair share to achieve a selected level of warming, we can still do as much as is feasible to reduce future harm. Given that, the shape of the emissions pathways points to three key criteria for evaluating the party climate plans.

1. Does the plan put Canada on a path to net-zero?

The year 2030 should not be the endpoint in climate policy discussions. The steep pathways show that rather than ask whether the plan achieves the 2030 target, we should ask whether the plan helps Canada accelerate past the 2030 target. To use a baseball analogy, we can’t slide into the first base. We need to round the base and head for second.

This, to me, is where the Conservative Party plan clearly fails. Like others, I’m pleased to see the party release a detailed plan that includes both pricing and regulatory proposals for the first time in its history. The moderate grades in other assessments (5/10 from Jaccard, B/B- from Hayhoe), however, read to me like awards for participation. Too much credit is given for feasibility, and too little attention is paid to sustainability.

First of all, the plan invests in expanding the fossil fuel industry, and features no plan to transition workers from the industry. Given that net-zero pathways show sharply reduced demand for Canadian heavy oil, the plan is the inverse of accelerating beyond 2030.

Second, the plan would not increase the carbon price beyond $50, which means by 2030, the price will be far behind what’s necessary to incite deeper emissions cuts [yes, the plan has a possible increase to $170/ton but that is only if the US also adopts the price, which any casual student of the US Congress knows is not going to happen]. For consumers, the effect of carbon price would also be largely deadened, by converting the price into a feeder for a “low carbon savings account.” Here’s an example how this perverse system would work (my math). At the proposed peak carbon price of $50/ton, a Honda Civic driver would get ~$130/year in the account to spend on things like electric bikes (based on average distance Canadians drive in a year). In other words, it would take 19 years of driving your car to buy a $2,500 e-bike. To get more money, you need to drive more, or drive a less efficient vehicle, and put more greenhouse gases in the air. To use my colleague Kathryn Harrison’s word, the account is a “gimmick,” not a climate policy.

Finally, the Conservative Party appears to be pushing for a return to the previous 2030 target of a 30% reduction below 2005 levels. The above analyses show it is least likely to be in line with achieving Canada’s fair share to avoiding < 2°C warming. Changing the target could also lead to international embarrassment. The new target of -40 to -45% has already been officially submitted to the United Nations, which means a Conservative-led government might arrive at the upcoming climate summit in November asking to weaken the national target, and Canada might win more “fossil of the week” awards.

2. Does the plan feasibly build on existing initiatives?

To feasibly achieve net-zero by mid-century, emissions reductions need to start now. That means we should build on momentum of existing policies and systems, lest we waste even more time. Presuming the government follows democratic norms, new regulatory systems can take years of consultation and planning.

This is my central concern about the NDP plan. While I appreciate the ambition of the plan, it is surprisingly weak on details, and it is very hard to understand how that ambition could be met. The proposal to develop regulations for each sector, and to change the output-based pricing system used to protect Canadian industries, will take years of consultation and risk stalling ongoing progress. The output-based pricing system, in which the carbon price is only charged above an average emissions rate for that industry, may look from the outside like a way to “protect polluters” but is actually an elegant way to create an incentive for reducing emissions without risking loss of jobs and business to other countries. Given how long it has taken for the federal government to take tangible action on climate change, it seems wiser to build on all the work of the current government, rather than to start from scratch on new systems.

Note: This concern can also be applied to aspects of the Conservative plan, especially the low carbon savings account, which could take years to establish.

3. How does the plan help the rest of the world respond to climate change?

Given the rapidly shrinking carbon budget for avoiding 1.5°C warming, the next government needs a plan to help more vulnerable nations prepare for a warmer world. Elections tend to focus on domestic policies, so it is not a surprise that none of the parties capable of forming a government have been vocal about international initiatives. Here, we can at least hope that the next government represents the country well at COP26, the upcoming and pandemic-delayed climate summit, and supports more climate finance for the developing world and greater efforts of adaptation capacity building.

Whatever happens in this election, I ask that all Canadians keep pushing their representatives, whatever the party, to keep their eyes on the long-term goal of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions. We need plans that are feasible and ambitious. Interim targets are there to help build momentum to the ultimate objective – rounding the bases and heading for home.

Cities under lockdown. Tens of thousands dead. People wearing masks and avoiding their own family. Millions joining the unemployment rolls. Only essential stores and businesses operating. Demand for oil so low that producers have to pay to get rid of it. No schools, no sports, no movies.

Imagine walking into a time machine on New Year’s Day and walking out a mere 100 days later. It would be like dropping into a zombie flick at the one-hour mark. Who would believe it? What could possibly have happened? You’d get back into the DeLorean and ask Doc to smack the flux capacitor with a wrench.

That is the thing about crises. They are hard to believe until they happen. And when they happen, it is hard to believe we didn’t see them coming or better prepare ourselves.

Experts are not immune. I remember stepping into a small boat in Kiribati eight years ago, thinking I was a little fatigued from three weeks of the equatorial heat. I spent the next week barely conscious, stranded on an outer island with no medical care, using the few lucid moments made possible by my local friends feeding me coconut water wondering how I missed the very early signs of dengue fever. Signs I knew, signs that I had learned in grad school.

Even with the evidence right in front of us, our imagination often fails. You know on paper that something can happen, but you don’t imagine that it really will.

Failure of the imagination is, to me, the central thing that unites climate change and the novel coronavirus pandemic.

To be clear, the two global crises have different problem dynamics, in terms of the type of fear they inspire, their time scale, and the link between cause and effect. The pandemic represents what risk perception experts call a “dread” risk. We see it as an immediate, catastrophic threat to our health and to that of our family. Tracing of cause and effect is possible. The direct impact of pandemic decisions we make – or do not make – can be apparent within 14 days. Practicing physical distancing not only helps protect the entire community, it directly protects you and your family from the virus.

Climate change is different. It is a crisis not because of the immediate impact of our actions, but because the actions we choose over the next decade or so will have impacts for decades and centuries beyond. The temporal lag decreases the sense of dread and immediacy for many people. It is about our legacy as much as it is about us. Like with the pandemic, our actions influence the system as a whole, but an individual action cannot be linked to an individual impact. Climate scientists can estimate the contribution of human-caused climate change to an extreme event, but your neighbour choosing to drive an old-school Hummer cannot be directly blamed for the heavy rainfall on your street last week.

Because of these differences in the problem dynamics, we have to be careful drawing lessons from the successes of the pandemic response for the fight against climate change. The political will to take dramatic action (albeit late), the public willingness to sacrifice personal freedoms and comforts, and the overall speed and scale of the response are related to the immediate, catastrophic fears brought on by the pandemic and the greater ability to see cause and effect.

The collective failure to imagine the extent of the pandemic and the extent of our response is, however, very instructive for climate change.

Only public health experts were prepared to envision our current scenario, and even public health experts were slow to warn of this scenario becoming a reality. We were all slow to act because we couldn’t imagine this would really happen. Now that it is happening, it is hard to imagine not taking the precautionary measures. How were we that dense? How didn’t we see this coming, despite the clear warnings from experts and from the parts of the world exposed first?

Sound familiar? People say that climate change is a failure of our politics, of our market, of our technologies, of our morality. To me, it is a similar failure of the imagination. At first, a failure to imagine it could happen or happen soon. Now, a failure to imagine we can really do something about it.

Like the pandemic, we’re not learning enough from the vulnerable places that have experienced severe impacts, nor from the proactive places that took early action to limit the impacts. Every severe coastal flooding event, every severe heat wave, is a Wuhan-level early warning to the rest of the world. And every company that reduces reliance on fossil fuels, every town that prepares for sea-level rise, is a South Korea-level early example for the rest of the world.

We are so rooted in a certain way of powering our lives, fueling our movement, and heating our homes that we have been slow to imagine and embrace a different future.

Change is a threat to those in power and those unable to envision a transition to an alternative world. Fossil fuel interests are scared of losing power, losing ‘market share,’ and losing money, and many of the rest of us are scared of losing jobs, losing livelihoods, or losing what we know. Those with power, whether in government or in industry, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and quashing imaginations. It is a worldview of constraints, not possibilities.

Take my home of Canada as an example. The government, the banks, and others have struggled to imagine a future without oil and gas as a major industry. They have been stuck in a centuries-old British view of Canada as a source of raw extractable resources: the new colony, existing residents be damned, was a place to extract resources, not a place to develop. First trees, then crops and fish, then minerals, then oil and gas. We now threaten to keep doubling down on the past, investing in fossil fuel projects that are incompatible with a low carbon future.

At the same time, Canada is rich in other natural resources: wind, water, and sun. Canada in principle has the resources to power all of North America’s homes, factories, and businesses, all using renewable electricity. We also have the educational system to train people to, for example, develop and spread energy storage and transmission technologies. What we’re missing is the collective imagination, the willingness to see that a different future is possible, and the guts to chart a different course.

This matters because people chronically underestimate our capacity for change. How many of us would have imagined, just fifteen years ago, that we would carry a device in our pockets that functioned as a phone, library, general store, newspaper, music repository, movie theatre, radio, alarm clock, health monitor, global map, tour guide, homing device, and, if you live in Vancouver, the key to hundreds of cars in a shared network? In January, who would imagined that in three months people would be quarantined in their homes, or that the oil supply would have outstripped demand?

Imagination alone will not save us from climate change. We need to be realistic. We are highly likely to see continued impacts from climate change for decades to come. We are unlikely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to avoid 1.5°C of global warming, the lower temperature threshold in the Paris Climate Agreement. Avoiding 2°C of global warming will also be a tremendous challenge. Regardless, the more we do to reduce emissions, the less the planet will warm, and the less that people will suffer. That’s the key message from the scientific community.

My instinct as a scientist is to talk about those numbers and data and equations. After all, I came to science as a vocation because I liked math and physics, and thought I could apply it to the world. Granted I also came to science, and I’m not the only one, as a way to hold onto my inner child, the one who looked up at the sky and wondered what was out there, and what was possible.

We need those imaginations now. We need to envision what the solutions will bring. Imagine a future with quiet and clean downtown streets, not because of a pandemic, but because electric vehicles produce little sound and little pollution. With cleaner and clearer skies, because we have eliminated smog generated from burning coal and other fossil fuels. With birds chirping, because we have restored landscapes to uptake carbon from the atmosphere.

Most of the solutions to climate change also happen to make the world a healthier place for people. A safe, healthy place is what we all want right now.

The previous post explained the methods used in the estimates of Canada’s fair share of the remaining global carbon budget under different levels of global warming. Here I answer five frequently asked questions about the remaining budget that I received from representatives of the federal parties, students, colleagues, journalists, television hosts, camera operators, friends, family, angry eggs on twitter, etc. For more on this subject, I recommend my interview with BNN Bloomberg.

I start with a very important question that no one explicitly asked me.

Do you think the Canadian government should propose emissions targets consistent with avoiding 1.5°C of global warming?

No, I do not. I say this even though my scientific research provided part of the argument for the 1.5°C limit. I’ll explain.

The most common reaction I heard to the Policy Options article was that I was criticizing the federal parties for not setting targets and policies that help the world avoid 1.5°C or 2°C of warming. If you only read the headline, or only looked at the graph, that would be a fair reaction.

In the article itself, I was making a much more nuanced argument. The take-home is that, realistically speaking, it is too late for Canada to do its fair share to avoid 1.5°C of global warming. Doing so would take an incredibly sharp reduction in greenhouse gas emissions: a 96-99% drop below current levels by the year 2030.

No reasonable political party is going to suggest that. Nor do I think any party should. That dramatic of a drop in emissions would require upending the economy, not to mention our ability to power our homes, get around, and to grow food – agriculture is 10% of Canadian emissions. It could end up doing more harm than good. This is the same reason why many climate experts are uncomfortable with Extinction Rebellion’s call for net zero emissions by 2025.

If I had one core criticism of the Liberal, Green Party, and NDP platforms,* it was not that their policies and targets needed to be more aggressive. It was the repeated claim that they would make sure Canada does its fair share to avoid 1.5°C of global warming, despite scientists and others repeatedly showing that doing so is next to impossible for Canada (I wrote about this in Policy Options in 2016).

The claim betrayed either a weak understanding of the issue or a preference of symbols – 1.5°C as a symbolic goal – over reality. I would prefer that parties serious about addressing climate change be more transparent about the challenge that lies ahead.

* The Conservative Party platform was not serious enough about climate change to even quality for this criticism. I’m not being partisan: the plan did not have any numbers. Imagine preparing a financial budget, but without any numbers. Would an economist take it seriously?

Why is the emissions decrease in your 1.5°C scenario so much greater than what the IPCC reports?

The 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR1.5) reported that the world would need to reduce net emissions by 45% from 2010 levels by the year 2030 (with an uncertainty range of 40-60%). My estimated reduction for Canada (96-99%) is greater for two reasons: I use an equitable distribution of the carbon budget, and I do not consider negative emissions.

First, in order to estimate Canada’s fair share, I assigned Canada a share of the remaining global carbon budget pie based on our fraction of the world’s population. Since Canada is among the world’s highest emitters per person, an equitable slice of the future pie is much smaller than the mega-slice we are currently eating. That means reducing emissions much faster than developing countries with lower than average emissions per person.

Second, my analysis is based on total cumulative emissions remaining (for a two-thirds chance of limiting warming to a certain level). The 45% reduction often quoted from SR1.5 is based on net emissions, which refers to the actual emissions minus negative emissions – carbon dioxide permanently removed from the atmosphere by human activity. If Canada is to successfully deploy negative emissions techniques and technologies, the remaining budget would be larger and the rate of actual emissions cuts could be less steep.

These two differences notwithstanding, my analysis is actually conservative in that it uses a generous interpretation of the carbon budget. The SR1.5 provides an uncertainty range for the remaining global carbon budget (see Chapter 3, Table 2.2). As mentioned in the methods post, the values I used represent the high end of that range. If I had used the middle of the range, the budgets would all have been smaller (e.g., the remaining budget for a two-thirds chance of avoiding 2°C of global warming would be 8% smaller).

Are there any ways to increase Canada’s carbon budget?

Technically, yes. As mentioned above, the estimated remaining carbon budget for Canada could be increased through negative emissions, including land carbon uptake or direct air capture technology.

We can also increase the budget through purchasing credits on an international carbon market. The cost would not be trivial. For example, the gap in the year 2030 between Canada’s emissions target and mean trajectories consistent with a likely chance (66%) of limiting warming to 1.5°C is 495 Mt CO₂e. If Canada made up the difference by buying credits at a price of $50/t CO₂e, the cost in the year 2030 alone would be $25 billion, excluding inflation. Using the 2030 emissions gap for 2°C of 260 Mt CO₂e, the cost would be $13 billion in the year 2030 alone.

While that outlay of money may be unrealistic, some purchasing of emissions credits is likely to happen. There is not, as of yet, a carbon trading method under the Paris Climate Agreement, but there are other carbon markets. The federal government expects to achieve some of the planned emissions cuts for 2030 through credits purchased from the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), a carbon market created by western U.S. states of which Quebec is a member and pre-Doug Ford Ontario was a member. The 2018 modelling estimated 13 Mt CO₂e of credits from the WCI.

What if Canada claimed a larger share of the remaining global carbon budget?

To answer this question, I took an intermediate approach to determining Canada’s portion of the remaining budget, halfway between the population-based approach I used in the past analysis (0.49%) and one based on today’s fraction of the world’s emissions (1.59%). With this intermediate approach, the estimated future emissions budgets and trajectories shift such that the 1.5°C case is similar to the previous 2°C case (from the population-approach), and the 2°C case is similar to the previous 3°C case. For example, the 1.5°C trajectories using the intermediate approach involve reducing emissions by 65-72% by the year 2030.

Keep in mind, as I argue in the article and is apparent in the latest UN Emission Gap Report, it is hard to envision how the world could realistically avoid 2°C or 3°C of global warming, let alone 1.5°C of global warming, if countries like Canada claim a portion of the budget very disproportionate to their population.

How confident are scientists in the global carbon budget numbers?

There is a substantial uncertainty in budget estimates and new research is published every month or two that revises previous estimates. Glen Peters wrote a helpful perspective in Nature Geoscience on the nuance of carbon budget analyses, and the implications for policy.

On a most basic level, the uncertainty comes from the basic irreducible uncertainties in climate science. Due to the complexities and the path dependence of the climate system, science can provide a range, not an exact value, for how responsive the global average temperature is to an increase in carbon dioxide concentrations. It makes sense that there is no one correct estimate of the remaining carbon budget.

The SR1.5 carbon budgets used here were larger than in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, because the SR1.5 used recent observations of warming to inform models. There was “high agreement” in SR1.5 that the remaining budget is larger than estimates presented in that earlier report. At the same time, the SR1.5 may overestimate the remaining budget, because constraining the budget based on observations will omit the effect of carbon feedbacks like permafrost melting on the relationship between carbon emissions and eventual peak warming. In addition, all CO₂-only emissions budgets tend to be overestimates because they don’t account for projected decreases in aerosols, which will increase future warming. For the latest on estimating the remaining carbon budget, I recommend this accessible article by scientists Joeri Rogelj and Piers Forster.