U.N. Climate Report: ‘Its Now Or Never’ If We Want To Forestall An Unlivable World

Millionaire coal baron Sen. “Masarati” Manchin demands an “all of the above” approach to U.S. energy needs, in other words, mantaining the status quo of dependence on fossil fuels because he richly profits from it.

House progressives say they may be prepared to accept policies that boost fossil fuels in the short term in order to win Sen. Joe Manchin‘s support for a party-line climate change and social spending bill to help salvage their agenda ahead of the midterm elections. ‘Swallowing a toad’: Progressives warm to Manchin’s fossil fuel demands to clinch climate package:

Joe Manchin killed President Joe Biden’s $1.7 trillion Build Back Better bill in December, a month after it had passed the House, dashing the hopes of climate hawks who championed the legislation’s record $550 billion in spending dedicated to reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

The West Virginia centrist obstructionist, who chairs the powerful Energy Committee, recently reopened the door to a smaller reconciliation package by publicly offering a framework to address climate change using tax breaks to a push a bevy of clean energy technologies while also rolling back Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts and reforming prescription drug pricing.

At the same time, Manchin is pressing Biden to restart new offshore oil and gas lease sales and expedite exports of natural gas to increase U.S. energy security and lower inflated energy prices caused by supply chain constraints and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

WTF is this damn fool talking about? Oil companies are already sitting on thousands of unused leases and wells that they capped after the price of oil collapsed in 2014. Biden Wants Oil Companies to Pay Penalties on Unused Drilling Leases:

U.S. President Joe Biden wants oil drillers to pay penalties when federal leases go unused in an effort to prod the industry into pumping more.

The White House will call on Congress to “make companies pay fees on wells from their leases that they haven’t used in years and on acres of public lands that they are hoarding without producing,” the administration said in a statement. “Companies that are producing from their leased acres and existing wells will not face higher fees.”

[T]he White House [says] the companies are plowing the windfall from $100-a-barrel crude into shareholder dividends and buybacks rather than new drilling that would help tamp down sky-high gasoline prices. 

U.S. oilfields are pumping about 11.7 million barrels a day, about 10% lower than they were prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, despite the doubling in domestic crude prices since the beginning of 2021.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has faulted oil producers for sitting on 9,000 approved-but-unused permits on leased federal lands. 

“If [Manchin] wants some increase for short-term production for the broader package of $500 billion on renewables, I am open to that,” said Rep. Ro Khanna of California, a deputy whip in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “It’s not ideal for the climate, but I am not comfortable with Americans paying 6, 7 bucks for gas.”

Manchin hasn’t explicitly said he would seek to include pro-fossil fuel policies in exchange for reengaging on a new climate and clean energy package. And many of the moves he’s pushed would come under the purview of the Biden administration and would be unlikely to be included in reconciliation legislation.

But voters’ frustration with high energy prices and the likelihood that Democrats will lose control of the House in November’s midterm elections have made progressives more open to a deal to salvage what could be their only foreseeable legislative path for climate action. The party only holds a three-seat House majority.

“The reality is we don’t have the votes to do everything we want,” said Rep. Donald McEachin (D-Va.), a member of the House Climate Crisis Committee. “So compromise is called for. Is it the compromise I would like? No. But we have a saying in the Virginia legislature. Every now and again you have to swallow a toad. And this is swallowing a toad.”

Indeed, liberals who believe the best way to prevent petrostates such as Russia from driving up U.S. gasoline prices is to supercharge spending on clean energy to replace fossil fuels realize they’ll have to accept policies to boost oil and gas production in the short term.

“If we are saying that in this moment we need to stimulate the production of fossil fuel, that has to be tied to a longer-term move to prevent this from happening again,” said Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “I am willing to compromise. I am willing to negotiate. Americans are feeling it at the pump.”

This is the same goddamn game that this obstructiomnist has played for years. Don’t fall for his crap again:

Manchin’s office declined to comment on specific elements of any bill, but said he “is always willing to engage in discussions about the best way to move our country forward. He has made clear that we can protect energy independence and respond to climate change at the same time.”

[S]ome progressives, though, are reluctant to weigh in on Manchin’s broad framework until he provides more details on what he wants. [You will jave a long wait.]

“We don’t have a proposal on the table to respond to,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Jayapal acknowledged the current problem of high energy prices presents a “complicated situation” for liberals eager to accelerate climate action, but she suggested there are lines she won’t cross to help fossil fuels.

“We are trying to do as much as we can to focus on the transition and really pushing that, and we don’t want to respond to random suggestions from people who are putting forward things that wouldn’t get the votes in the House,” Jayapal said.

Manchin last month said he is open to supporting an “all inclusive” climate policy through the reconciliation process that doesn’t specifically penalize fossil fuels, but he didn’t make any promises. [But of course.]

Progressives are optimistic he would back hundreds of billions in expanded clean energy tax subsidies that were included in the now-defunct Build Back Better bill. Those credits were aimed mainly at wind and solar, but also support other technologies favored by Manchin, such as nuclear power, hydrogen, and carbon capture for use on coal and natural gas plants.

But as Europe’s energy crisis worsened and global oil and gas prices climbed, he has made more demands for fossil fuels, like calling for Biden to use the Defense Production Act, an emergency national defense law, to help domestic oil and gas and to complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a stalled project that would send natural gas through his home state of West Virginia to the East Coast. [More self-interest.]

While “Masarati” Manchin does the bidding of the Carbon Monopoly to continue business as usual, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just issued a dire warning, UN warns Earth ‘firmly on track toward an unlivable world:

Temperatures on Earth will shoot past a key danger point unless greenhouse gas emissions fall faster than countries have committed, the world’s top body of climate scientists said Monday, warning of the consequences of inaction but also noting hopeful signs of progress.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change revealed “a litany of broken climate promises” by governments and corporations, accusing them of stoking global warming by clinging to harmful fossil fuels.

“It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track toward an unlivable world,” he said.

Governments agreed in the 2015 Paris accord to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) this century, ideally no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). Yet temperatures have already increased by over 1.1C (2F) since pre-industrial times, resulting in measurable increases in disasters such flash floods, extreme heat, more intense hurricanes and longer-burning wildfires, putting human lives in danger and costing governments hundreds of billions of dollars to confront.

“Projected global emissions from (national pledges) place limiting global warming to 1.5C beyond reach and make it harder after 2030 to limit warming to 2C,” the panel said.

In other words, the report’s co-chair, James Skea of Imperial College London, told The Associated Press: “If we continue acting as we are now, we’re not even going to limit warming to 2 degrees, never mind 1.5 degrees.”

“It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C,” Jim Skea, who co-chairs the panel that authored the report, said in a statement. “Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible.”

Ongoing investments in fossil fuel infrastructure and clearing large swaths of forest for agriculture undermine the massive curbs in emissions needed to meet the Paris goal, the report found.

Emissions in 2019 were about 12% higher than they were in 2010 and 54% higher than in 1990, said Skea.

The rate of growth has slowed from 2.1% per year in the early part of this century to 1.3% per year between 2010 and 2019, the report’s authors said. But they voiced “high confidence” that unless countries step up their efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the planet will on average be 2.4C to 3.5C (4.3 to 6.3F) warmer by the end of the century — a level experts say is sure to cause severe impacts for much of the world’s population.

Hey, “Masarati” Manchin, listen up: “The report warns that coal — the most carbon intensive energy source — is the most vulnerable to becoming stranded assets during the coming decade, with oil and gas infrastructure increasingly rendered unusable toward midcentury.  About 30% of oil, 50% of gas, and 80% of coal reserves would be unusable if warming is to be limited to the Paris Agreement’s 2°C target, the report states.”

“Limiting warming to 1.5C requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest and be reduced by 43% by 2030,” he said.

Such cuts would be hard to achieve without without drastic, economy-wide measures, the panel acknowledged. It’s more likely that the world will pass 1.5C and efforts will then need to be made to bring temperatures back down again, including by removing vast amounts of carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas — from the atmosphere.

Many experts say this is unfeasible with current technologies, and even if it could be done it would be far costlier than preventing the emissions in the first place.

The report, numbering thousands of pages, doesn’t single out individual countries for blame. But the figures show much of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere was released by rich countries that were the first to burn coal, oil and gas beginning with the industrial revolution.

The U.N. panel said 40% of emissions since then came from Europe and North America. Just over 12% can be attributed to East Asia, which includes China. But China took over the position as world’s top emissions polluter from the United States in the mid-2000s.

Many countries and companies have used recent climate meetings to paint rosy pictures of their emissions-cutting efforts, while continuing to invest in fossil fuels and other polluting activities, Guterres charged.

“Some government and business leaders are saying one thing but doing another,” he said. “Simply put, they are lying. And the results will be catastrophic.”

The report isn’t without some hope, however.

Its authors highlight myriad ways in which the world can be brought back on track to 2C or even, with great effort, return to 1.5C after that threshold has been passed. This could require measures such as the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere with natural or artificial means, but also potentially risky technologies such as pumping aerosols into the sky to reflect sunlight. [Sorry, but no.]

Among the solutions recommended are a rapid shift away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy such as increasingly cheap solar and wind power, the electrification of transport, less meat consumption, more efficient use of resources and massive financial support for poor countries unable to pay for such measures without help.

The situation is as if humanity has “gone to the doctor in a very unhealthy condition,” and the doctor is saying “you need to change, it’s a radical change. If you don’t you’re in trouble,” said report co-author Pete Smith, a professor of soils and global change at the University Aberdeen.

“It’s not like a diet,” Smith said. “It is a fundamental lifestyle change. It’s changing what you eat, how much you eat and get on a more active lifestyle.”

One move often described as “low-hanging fruit” by scientists is to plug methane leaks from mines, wells and landfills that release the potent but short-lived greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. A pact forged between the United States and China at last year’s U.N. climate conference in Glasgow aims to do just that.

“The big message we’ve got (is that) human activities got us into this problem and human agency can actually get us out of it again,” said Skea, the panel’s co-chair.

The panel’s reports have become increasingly blunt since the first one was published in 1990, and the latest report may be the last before the planet passes 1.5C of warming, Skea told the AP.

Last August, it said climate change caused by humans was “an established fact” and warned that some effects of global warming are already inevitable. In late February, the panel published a report that outlined how further temperature increases will multiply the risk of floods, storms, drought and heat waves worldwide.

Still, the British government’s former chief science adviser David King, who wasn’t involved in writing the report, said there are too optimistic assumptions about how much CO2 the world can afford to emit.

“We don’t actually have a remaining carbon budget to burn,” said King, who now chairs the Climate Crisis Advisory Group.

“It’s just the reverse. We’ve already done too much in the way of putting greenhouse gases up there,” he said, arguing that the IPCC’s calculation omits new risks and potentially self-reinforcing effects already happening, such as the increased absorption of heat into the oceans from sea ice loss and the release of methane as permafrost melts.

Such warnings were echoed by U.N. chief Guterres, citing scientists’ warnings that the planet is moving “perilously close to tipping points that could lead to cascading and irreversible climate impacts.”

“But high-emitting governments and corporations are not just turning a blind eye; they are adding fuel to the flames,” he said, calling for an end to further coal, oil and gas extraction. “Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.”

Are you listening, Madman “Maserati” Manchin?

Vulnerable nations said the report showed big polluters have to step up their efforts before the next U.N. climate summit in Egypt this fall.

“We are looking to the G-20, to the world’s biggest emitters, to set ambitious targets ahead of COP27, and to reach those targets – by investing in renewables, cutting out coal and fossil fuel subsidies,” said Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands. “It’s long past time to deliver on promises made.

Monday’s report, authored by 278 experts from 65 countries, is the third installment of the IPCC’s sixth global assessment. The second report, published in February, analyzed climate impacts and vulnerabilities, and warned that “the extent and magnitude of climate change impacts are larger” than previously known. The window to “secure a livable and sustainable future for all” is rapidly closing, that document said.

We should be talking about a Manhattan Project to rapidly move to clean energy, not “drill, baby, drill” and mañana. See, Russia Crisis Should ‘Supercharge’ Climate Efforts In Build Back Better 2.0: Memo, Climate group Evergreen Action highlights 15 investments that would reduce U.S. dependence on fossil fuels and hurt petro-dictators like Vladimir Putin.