2020 is an extremely unfavorable year for climate change. Disastrous weather ravaged many parts of the world. 2016 and 2020 are the two years with the highest global temperature on record. In early 2021, Biden was elected U.S. President and the Democratic Party won razor-thin majority in both houses of Congress. President Biden declared that climate change would be one of his highest priorities. Can he turn around U.S. climate policies?
In 2020, while California forest fires were burning, Hurricane Laura hit the coast of Louisiana at a speed of 150 miles per hour, killing 25 people. At the same time, Phoenix experienced a high temperature of 110 F for 53 days, 20 days longer than the previous record. Scientific analysis [1] confirms that climate change made these disasters worse and more frequent. Many climate science reports in 2020 pointed out that Greenland’s glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, the area of Artic summer sea-ice melt continues to expand, and the permafrost layers at high northern latitudes are showing signs of thawing.
The January 2020 issue of “BioScience” [2] published warnings from 11,000 scientists from 153 countries: Unless there is global-scale change, the world will face a huge disaster brought about by the climate crisis. In order to ensure a sustainable future, we must change our lifestyles and the way humans interact with natural ecosystems. The climate crisis has arrived, and its deterioration has exceeded most scientists’ expectations, threatening ecosystems and human societies. These scientists advocate measures such as limiting population growth, reducing the use of fossil fuels, stopping deforestation, and reducing meat consumption.
President Biden put forward clear emission-reduction targets and mobilized a strong leadership team to attempt to reverse the deteriorating climate. The cumulative emissions of various countries have represented the current warming caused by each country, and the U.S. accounts for the highest share, about 27%. From the perspective of cumulative emissions and warming, the U.S. should make the greatest contribution to carbon reduction.
Warnings from climate scientists over many years have materialized one by one. Scientific research proves that increasing weather disasters are partly attributable to climate change. This type of research points out that the 76 floods, droughts, storms, and heat waves that occurred globally from 2015 to 2020 are due to climate change. Global food security is threatened by rising temperatures and frequent weather disasters. Between 1981 and 2019, the productivity of the world’s major crops fell by 1.8% to 5.6%. Scientific American [3] pointed out that climate change is fueling forest fires. In the western U.S., more than half of the land burned every year is attributable to climate change. The latest scientific results [4] point out that with further warming and drought, the annual burned area of the western U.S. may be two to six times the current area by 2050.
According to the U.S. National Climate Assessment [5], the weather across the country will get hotter in the coming decades. From Louisiana to Wisconsin, high humidity will make summer more and more unbearable. By 2040, many places west of the Missouri River will experience water shortages. In addition to the west, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama will also experience water shortages. In Texas, Florida, and Georgia, at least 28 million people will face fires like what California has now. In Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, crop production will be severely reduced due to high temperature and weather disasters. The rising sea level will inundate coastal urban areas and underground infrastructure. The 20 largest coastal cities in the U.S. (such as Miami, New York, and Boston) will undergo severe changes due to rising sea levels, affecting approximately 50 million people.
Medical journal The Lancet [6] pointed out that climate has many effects on emerging diseases. Approximately 60% of the new disease sources come from animals, and one third of the disease sources are caused by land use changes such as deforestation, agriculture, urbanization, or mining. With climate change, insect-borne diseases will increase. Climate warming can even revive viruses in thawed corpses in permafrost. Warming will also force species to push into new habitats, threatening safety of our food and water supplies.
President Biden’s emission-reduction goals include achieving net zero emissions in the U.S. by 2050 and achieving zero emissions in the power sector by 2035. Biden chose two senior advisors. One is former Secretary of State John Kerry, who helped iron out the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. Kerry’s main task is to restore U.S. leadership in the world’s response to climate change. The other advisor is former EPA director Gina McCarthy. She will assist in guiding domestic climate policies, coordinating energy, transportation, internal affairs, marine and atmospheric management, and environmental protection departments, to develop climate responses.
Biden’s commitment still lacks implementation details. A 2020 Princeton University report [7] states that it is technically and economically feasible to reach net zero emissions by 2050. But the following emission-reduction measures must start immediately.
(1) In 2020, the U.S. energy sector added 42 gigawatts of wind and solar power. In the next ten years, this annual growth rate must double.
(2) In the next ten years, the U.S. power grid needs to expand by 60% to accommodate new wind and solar energy.
(3) Currently, electric vehicles (EVs) only account for 2% of the market. By 2030, EVs need to account for at least 50% of the market.
(4) In the next ten years, houses that use high-efficiency heat pumps for heating will need to double.
(5) By 2030 at the latest, all of the 240 coal-fired power plants nationwide need to shut down.
(6) CO2 capture and store technology currently in early stage of development must begin to operate quickly.
The above emission-reduction measures have to be just the beginning. Emission reduction can slow down the pace of climate change, gaining time for the development of thermonuclear energy and make full use of carbon capture and store technologies to achieve the goal of mitigating climate change.
The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy requires huge investments. According to a Stanford University report [8], the U.S. needs to invest $7.8 trillion to reach 100% renewable energy by 2050. This investment will pay for itself in less than seven years. The reason is that decarbonization will create 3.1 million jobs, save 63,000 lives lost due to air pollution every year, and reduce medical expenditures by $700 billion. Decarbonization will also reduce climate change losses of $3.1 trillion. These losses include declining crop yields, losses from natural disasters, and flooding caused by rising sea levels in coastal cities. Over time, the cost of renewable energy will be lower than that of fossil fuels. The decarbonization plan will reduce annual energy costs by $1.3 trillion. The overall evidence shows that the future benefits of decarbonization far outweigh the future costs of business-as-usual.
But due to political polarization and the huge influence of the oil and gas sector, it is currently difficult to predict how Biden’s emission-reduction targets can be achieved. For example, Biden proposed to use $2 trillion to combat climate change. Due to the razor-thin majority of the Democrats in both houses of Congress, this proposal may be dead on arrival.
What is encouraging is that several automakers and transportation companies have made emission-reduction pledges. For example, GM—all EVs by 2035; Ford—carbon neutral by 2050; Volvo—all EVs by 2030; Uber—zero emissions by 2040; Fedex—carbon neutral by 2040, and UPS—car neutral by 2050. These pledges will bring about a transformative trend. They will promote changes in other automakers, oil and gas, and the power sectors, change the attitude of Americans toward climate change, and take away a key pillar of the fossil fuel economy.
The influential Business Roundtable also supports the fight against climate change. The forum issued a statement in 2020 [9] supporting the reduction of US net emissions by 2050 to 20% of the 2005 level. The Roundtable also agrees with carbon pricing. This statement represents the consensus of more than two hundred members from retail, finance, technology, medical, manufacturing, and oil and gas sectors.
Five years ago, the world pledged in the Paris Climate Accord to limit global warming to “far below two degrees.” Five years have passed, and global CO2 emissions are still increasing. These five years are also the hottest five years on record. In the next ten years, countries around the world will need major policy changes to enable economies and lifestyles to transition toward low-carbon. President Biden said: “In response to this climate crisis, we have been waiting for a long time.” “The time for action has come.” The key to this success lies in converting emission reduction targets into policies, investing capital, and promoting new fuel technologies. Whether the Biden administration can turn around U.S. policies to fight climate change still remains to be seen.
[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8232
[2] https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/1/8/5610806
[3] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is-central-to-californias-wildfires/
[4] https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/
[5] https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/
[6] https://www.thelancet.com/countdown-health-climate?utm_campaign=tlclimate19
[8] https://woods.stanford.edu/news/stanford-study-charts-path-green-new-deal-143-countries