YMLADRIS:
Deep decarbonisation requires that we reduce anthropogenic emissions in the first place. In fact, we need a year-on-year reduction in emissions from now until 2050, roughly equivalent to the 7% reductions seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since zero-carbon technologies can take decades to scale up and optimise, and lock-in effects commit us to the technologies we choose now for years to come, we also need to act fast.
To study the social dynamics needed for such a rapid transformation, we looked at ten social drivers of decarbonisation: United Nations climate governance, transnational initiatives, climate-related regulation, climate protests and social movements, climate litigation, corporate responses, fossil fuel divestment, consumption patterns, journalism, and knowledge production. We studied the drivers’ current trajectories, but also the enabling or constraining conditions that influence their future development.
We found, for example, that consumption will keep growing due to a lack of regulation and strong cultural habits of consumption, “green” or otherwise. While the way in which we consume changed rapidly during the pandemic, shifting online, what and how much we consume is anchored in cultural habits and attitudes.
We found that divestment – selling investments in fossil-fuel infrastructure – is occurring to some extent, but with unexpected negative spillover effects, such as when nation states divest at home but reinvest in fossil fuels abroad. And we found that social movements have a positive effect in some countries, but it remains uncertain how their political vision will mature after the pandemic, or in key countries like China, where protests do not usually have an influence on national politics.
None of the drivers show enough momentum to bring about deep decarbonisation by 2050, and two drivers, consumption patterns and corporate responses, actively inhibit it. Our final assessment: even if a partial decarbonisation is currently plausible, deep decarbonisation by the year 2050 is not.We then combined our assessment of social plausibility with the latest set of socioeconomic future emissions scenarios and the latest physical science research on climate sensitivity – how much the climate will warm after a given amount of CO₂ emissions.
This joint physical and social assessment evaluates warming lower than 1.7°C and warming higher than 4.9°C by the end of the century as currently not plausible.Deep decarbonisation could become more plausible, but this future would also require a good deal of tenacity. Rapid cuts in emissions may take a long time to show up in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and warming trends – perhaps decades. Not only will we need to implement radical changes, we will also need to remain committed to seeing those changes through, beyond the time frame of one election cycle.