The IPCC Report and Its Connection to War
I was one of hundreds of Expert Reviewers who volunteered time and energy to comment on the latest version of the IPCC report, which deals with impacts, adaptations and vulnerabilities to climate change. This new report, Assessment Report 6 from Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was released a couple of weeks ago, and I would like to highlight some things that are missing. There is no mention of illicit crops, for example, such as marijuana, coca or opium, and how the changing climate will impact these cropland ecosystems as weather patterns and demands shift. But really such things are small potatoes.
In fact, the most significant thing I suggested in my review was to include a strong focus on military emissions. It may not be obvious. The use of aircraft and missiles during war operations releases more greenhouse gases than any other sector of the global economy. We are currently witnessing our last best chance at climate stability disappear rapidly with the conflict in Ukraine.
I do want to point out that there are other, related omissions from the latest IPCC report. For example, in Chapter 18: Climate Resilient Development Pathways, I suggested adding nuclear war as a key risk to be avoided. Nuclear war is especially likely as more countries get access to nuclear materials, technology, and knowledge via new nuclear power programs. The number of countries with nuclear power will double (from 30 to 60) in the near future, and the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is not up to the task. For example, Saudi Arabia is developing a fuel enrichment facility for its new nuclear power program, and perhaps for a nascent nuclear arms program. A new treaty is needed to replace the NPT, and mandate the most proliferation-resistant pathway.
This type of pathway, that constrains nuclear power development in new countries and puts it on the best possible pathway, could have been included to make the chapter stronger. Small modular nuclear reactors are likely the only type that a new treaty might allow for new countries, and restrict experimental and research reactors, fuel enrichment, and also the need for technical expertise.
The above is very close to what I’d written in my review. It is one of more than a hundred comments I sent in. Obviously, I’m happy that some of my suggestions were taken up. But being cognizant of nuclear war, and the connection between nuclear power development in new countries is an important thing that is missing from the report.
Another omission has to do with the pathway for transformation. I repeatedly suggested that the authors of the report write a stronger treatment of governments and other bodies using the profit motive to transform the various sectors, especially the energy and transport sectors. The profit motive in peacetime can clearly drive innovation and transformation.
As an example, government subsidy of deep well geothermal energy could attract the oil/gas sector to abandon fossil fuels and work in the geothermal energy sector instead. This is a new technology that uses very deep wells as the heat source for steam to run turbines, and can be done even in places where there are no shallower geothermal resources.
As another example, the shipping sector is highly polluting. Governments could subsidize companies to use synthetic biofuels or nuclear powered shipping and make a higher profit, and thereby transform that part of the transportation sector rapidly via subsidy. Likewise, air transport could be run on biofuels, or electric for short flights, and with government subsidies, these companies could profit by transforming their fleets. Further, modifying existing road transport to run on hydrogen fuel sourced by electrolysis of water is much easier on resources than creating new electric vehicles; and governments could subsidize the effort such that various parts of this new sector could make the change and gain economic profit.
The profit motive in all of these examples helps to get private industry to do the work of transforming the various sectors. The subsidies that governments would need to provide are not trivial. But government does have a duty to step in. These funds could also be seen as a matter of historical equity, in addition to being a pathway that would speed the global economic transformation in a way that lower RCPs are more likely. To be fair, there is a decent treatment of transportation in the new report. But the pathway for transformation is missing.
Historically, industrialization has coincided with resource gathering from various parts of the world, and continues in a fashion today with trade in fossil fuels and many other raw goods. There is a balance of power that countries maintain so that they can continue to develop their economies. The main stumbling block that governments have had for the past several decades is related to this. Climate negotiations are essentially stalled.
One way to determine the global allocation of subsidies and new zero emission power stations would be based on known fossil fuel reserves, a trade off that is reasonable. Another could be based on population and demographics, as a proxy for current or historical or projected future usage. The amount of funding needed is immense, but there is a kind of poetic justice involved in developed countries taking charge of these outlays of financial resources following their historical ties to various nations, i.e. based on their colonial history.
Ok, so maybe that’s not such an easy thing to conceive of, and maybe such an open admission of responsibility will be difficult to achieve. But there is a certain elegance to the idea that reparations to colonization might take the form of funding the power transition to address climate change. I don’t necessarily expect the IPCC report to have taken this up, but it does highlight one other issue.
The impact of military emissions on the climate crisis is very troubling, and a stronger mechanism for international cooperation is needed. Such a mechanism would not just be for maintaining peace, but also for addressing the petty rivalries of nation states have thrown the kibosh on any substantive negotiation on climate finance. How much is the developed world willing to fund power production in developing countries? The main issue is political power, and how cheap or free energy resources will change the global interplay of nation against nation.
One can see that there are a few very important ideas that are missing from the IPCC report, but I think the most important and topical is the omission of military emissions. If world leaders can start actual negotiations for climate finance, for installing zero-emission power capacity at scale globally, and for building up the world economy, that might be enough to end the current hostilities that the world sees right now. This really should have been in the report.
Daniel S. Helman, Ph.D., is a faculty member at the College of Micronesia-FSM in Yap, an insular area of the United States, known for its use of stone money. His degrees are in geology and sustainability education.
