Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, Vol. 8 No. 2, September 2017, pp. 203–216
Climate dreaming: negative emissions,
risk transfer, and irreversibility
Henry Shue*
Senior Research Fellow; Emeritus Fellow, Merton College, University of Oxford
The integrated assessment models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change rely heavily on negative emissions technologies (NETs) for scenarios that keep
global temperature rise to 2°C or lower. One favoured NET is bio-energy combined
with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Firstly, it is not established that BECCS is feasible at a scale sufficient to matter, nor that BECCS at sufficient scale is compatible with
sustainable development. Secondly, substituting the prospect of BECCS later for ambitious
mitigation of emissions now unjustifiably transfers risks from the present to the future.
Thirdly, no NET can ‘buy time’ for unambitious mitigation because the later reduction
of ‘over-shoots’ in emissions cannot reverse the passing of tipping points in the interim.
The substitution of the dream of later negative emissions for immediate mitigations is
therefore completely unjustified.
Keywords: BECCS, climate change, integrated assessment models, justice, negative emissions, Paris Agreement, risk, sustainable development
1 INTRODUCTION: SOMETHING WILL TURN UP?
Perhaps the most endearing character in the film, Shakespeare in Love, is the drama
producer played by Geoffrey Rush, who lurches from one financial crisis to the next
reassuring everyone unconvincingly, ‘Something will turn up’. Of course, since this is
a romantic film, in fact something does always turn up. But, while a certain amount of
optimism is instrumentally valuable, ‘something will turn up’ is not a good rule of
thumb for life in general – and certainly not for dealing with the dangers in climate
change. Yet, several aspects of the Paris Agreement of 2015 have the hopeful but
vaguely empty character of ‘something will turn up’. Most notably, as many commentators have recognized, the means so far adopted do not lead even close to the admirable ends officially adopted. The official goal of the Paris Agreement, ‘holding the
increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial
levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels’ (Article 2(1)(a)) is more appropriate to our plight than might have
been expected in light of previous disappointing negotiations, but the Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs) made by the signatories in 2015 cannot be expected
*
I am grateful to Pete Smith and Joshua Wells for generously providing careful readings
that both enriched and tightened the text. I also benefitted from the discussion at an outstanding
workshop sponsored by the Leverhulme Programme in Climate Justice at the University of
Reading. I of course remain responsible for any remaining errors of fact or logic.
© 2017 The Author
Journal compilation © 2017 Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd
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