Overshoot and the 1.5- degree celsius warming target

I wrote this shortly after participating in an historic HM Conference in London, only days after having heard the election result in the U.S. while in the UK. We now face the increasing threat of reaching dangerous climatic tipping points simultaneously with an incoming climate-denialist Trump administration with virtual control of Congress. So, given this very sober outlook, should we assume, as media pundits tell us, that the 1.5-degree Celsius warming target is dead, or is there still a window of opportunity to avoid breaching it?

What made the HM discussion historic for me was a big focus on the climate struggle of several panels and the closing plenary, with Malm and Carton’s new book Overshoot featured in a book event. As a climate scientist, biogeochemist and ecosocialist myself, I will now try to bring out the critical issues posed in this book, without this being a comprehensive book review. First, a suggestion for future conferences. HM conferences offer so much already from the social sciences and left culture, but participants would greatly benefit from a lot more insights from panellists with natural and physical science backgrounds, recognising that the energy, agricultural and biodiversity challenges entail the technologies of renewable energy, agroecologies, recycling etc. which must replace the unsustainable modes we now live with, are informed by the sciences of climate science, thermodynamics, ecology, and biogeochemistry.

Malm and Carton make an important contribution to the struggle for climate protection in their book, emphasising that overshoot breaching the 1.5 degree Celsius warming target must be avoided as much as possible.¹ There must be a fierce struggle to avoid every 0.01, 0.1°C of additional warming over the 1.5°C target, as the climate scientist Richard Betts recognised. Betts concludes that to have any chance of limiting warming to below 1.5 degree Celsius we have to bring emissions to zero or Net Zero by the middle of the century at the latest.² Note that the very problematic details of Net Zero, like the invocation of overshoot by allies of fossil capital, are thoroughly analysed by Malm and Carton’s book.

How much above this warming target and for how long overshoot persists will determine the likelihood of emergence of dangerous tipping points in the climate system. Since there is uncertainty in predicting just when these tipping points kick in, the precautionary principle strongly supports no overshoot as Malm and Carton argue (on the issue of uncertainty see³).

In their assessment of nuclear power in Overshoot, they say that nuclear fission energy expansion is “neither the problem nor the solution”.⁴ But it should be viewed as a problem on multiple grounds, including the issue of its diversion of funding from implementation of faster and more potent per investment onsite wind/solar power.⁵ “Further, significant expansion of nuclear fission power will add incremental heat to the Earth’s surface which could contribute to exceeding the 1.5 degree Celsius warming target.”⁶ For example, China has plans to build hundreds of nuclear reactors.⁷

The same impact will result from significant implementation of geothermal energy supplies, burning hydrogen from subsurface reservoirs, future onsite fusion power, and solar power from space, all with the potential of triggering tipping points with even small increments of heat.

Malm and Carton lucidly explain the threat of continuing new investment in fossil fuel infrastructure freezing in fixed capital for coming decades, a big component of the stranded assets challenge. Nevertheless, the immediate shutdown of fossil fuel extraction, notably of conventional oil, is not only impossible to realise but ignores the fact that we live in a world that still derives 80% of its energy needs from fossil fuels, which will be the main energy supply for society and the energy source to create renewable energy technologies, until its replacement by the latter dominating the global energy infrastructure. And the priority for climate protection is to strongly accelerate this replacement with complete termination of fossil fuel consumption in the next two decades to have any chance of not exceeding the 1.5-degree Celsius warming target.

In our modelling of a 20-year transition to global 100% wind/solar supplies, in scenario I, we phase out coal and natural gas in the first in the first 10 years, depending on conventional oil to avoid energy poverty and as an energy source for creating renewables. The phase-out of conventional oil is slow at first, but then more rapidly declines to zero in the 20-year transition. Conventional oil has the lowest greenhouse gas footprint of the fossil fuels (natural gas has the highest, followed by coal). But the extraction of conventional oil must strongly limit the continued leakage of methane, the main component of natural gas, to the atmosphere. “Keep the Oil in the Ground” should include using conventional oil to do away with itself as an energy source to create renewable energy technologies. This is still possible if a robust solar transition starts very soon coupled with rapid termination of fossil fuels with using less than one-third of proven reserves, limiting warming to no more than 1.5 degree Celsius.⁸ This scenario is relevant to the issue of developing new oil fields versus continued extraction from existing oil fields. Thus, the minimally necessary continued investment in extraction in the next decade can be consistent with the goal of not exceeding the 1.5-degree Celsius warming target with overshoot, recognising that the challenge of stranded assets must be solved with the political destruction of fossil capital, as Malm and Carton argue. Thus, the state oil/energy sector in Middle East, Venezuela, Mexico is a potential strategic ally in a renewable energy transition in the context of the defeat of fossil capital.

The challenge of stranded assets emphasised by Malm and Carton is a potential opportunity for Green Enclosure ⁹ or better “the political destruction of fossil capital”.¹⁰

Carton and Malm say “there is the dubious feasibility of planetary-scale carbon removal.”¹¹ However, planetary-scale carbon removal from the atmosphere will be needed to bring down the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide below 350 ppm and keep it there, but only after there is a global commitment for and implementation of a programme for a rapid and complete termination of fossil fuel combustion and only when enough renewable energy capacity is in place to drive this removal. A promising site for this drawdown is in Oman, where highly reactive ultramafic rocks are outcropping.¹² I look forward to Malm and Carton’s follow up book, The Long Heat, which, Wim informed me, would consider the subject of atmospheric carbon dioxide drawdown. I also anticipate a discussion of strategy to defeat fossil capital in the same volume.

To confront the critical challenge of strategy, to create the capacity of the global working class and its allies in time to defeat fossil capital, I organised a panel with the theme ‘Eco-Leninism Confronts Climate Change’, with my own contribution being ‘An Eco-Leninist Strategy to Defeat Fossil Capital, of course inspired by Andreas Malm’s invocation in 2020’.¹³ In this Jacobin interview, Malm says “The whole strategic direction of Lenin after 1914 was to turn World War I into a fatal blow against capitalism. This is precisely the same strategic orientation we must embrace today–and this is what I mean by ecological Leninism. We must find a way of turning the environmental crisis into a crisis for fossil capital itself.”

I submit that making this crisis for fossil capital will require building a transnational countervailing force to defeat fossil capital and move forward with an ecosocialist agenda. This objective will require uniting the broadest coalition possible, one led by the working class and its allies, notably indigenous communities around the world, a coalition which includes sections of capital, so-called green capital, while vigorously confronting the latter’s agenda of extractivism. I point to Lenin’s advice:

The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost effort, and by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skilful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the enemies, any conflict of interests among the bourgeoisie of the various countries and among the various groups or types of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by taking advantage of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. Those who do not understand this reveal a failure to understand even the smallest grain of Marxism, of modern scientific socialism in general.¹⁴

I take the analyses of Carroll and Harris seriously in their arguments for precisely the approach of utilising the contradictions among capital, fossil and green, while recognising their overlap in the big corporate and the finance sectors.¹⁵

WHAT IS “GREEN” CAPITAL? “THE GOOD, BAD AND THE UGLY”

My definition of the “Good” is capital which implements wind/solar power and complementary energy storage technologies, invests in agroecologies and restoration of natural ecosystems providing carbon sinks. And, in the late phase in a solar transition, this will include direct air capture of carbon dioxide with permanent storage in the crust. China has the biggest renewable energy-creating sector in the world, with its government playing a critical role in financing.¹⁶

“The Ugly”

While fossil and green capital overlap especially in big oil companies, they continue to invest heavily in new oil/gas extraction projects, with much smaller funding into renewables to capture profits when their prices are inflated.¹⁷ Since the consumption of fossil fuels must peak very soon and then fall rapidly with the phase out of coal and natural gas being prioritised, as Malm and Carton point out, this massive new investment is a huge threat to the climate protection agenda.

“The Bad”

Further, sections of “green” capital are simply parasitic on the financing provided by the state ostensibly set aside for clean energy creation, “the rentiers of the low-carbon economy”.¹⁸

“The Good”

Existing examples of Green Capital include:

Iberdrola SA (IBDRY) the largest renewable energy company in the world (Revenue: $50.68 billion), a Spain-based multinational electric utility company. The company engages in the generation, distribution, and trading of electricity. It specialises in clean energy, including onshore and offshore wind, pumped hydro, solar photovoltaic, and battery storage. Iberdrola operates in the U.S., UK, Spain, Mexico, and Brazil and has an international presence in Portugal, Greece, Japan, and Australia.

Vestas Wind Systems (Revenue: $16.58 billion), a Denmark-based wind energy company. It develops, manufactures, and installs wind turbines. The company also operates a service segment that provides service contracts, spare parts, and related activities. The company has installed wind turbines in scores of countries across the globe.

Jinko Solar Holding Co. Ltd (Revenue: $16.29 billion), a China-based solar power company. It manufactures solar energy products, including silicon ingots and wafers, solar cells, and solar modules. The company also provides solar system integration services. Jinko sells its products to customers in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.¹⁹

CONFRONTING THE CHALLENGE OF EXTRACTIVISM

There are two extractivist challenges, the mining of fossil fuels and of metals used in renewable energy technologies driven by “green” capital. The complete phasing out of the Military Industrial Complex, including its fossil-fuel infrastructure will liberate vast quantities of materials, especially metals, for the creation of a global wind and solar power infrastructure. The throughput in closed industrial ecologies in a fully solarised physical economy will be limited by the level of renewable energy being supplied to drive it. Recycling rates of the rare earth metals are currently very low. Increasing these rates, as well as implementing alternative technologies, could greatly reduce mining for these and other metals used in renewable energy and its storage technologies (e.g., the much more abundant sodium for lithium batteries).²⁰

State policy regarding regulation and financing now and in the future will be a site for class struggle to accelerate both the phase-out of fossil fuels and the creation of renewable energy capacity.²¹ A critical goal will be to shift subsidies from fossil fuel to the good green sector. In 2022, the direct subsidies (undercharging for supply costs) to fossil fuels was 18% of total subsidies (direct and indirect) equal to $7 trillion, i.e., $1.3 trillion. The indirect subsidies amounted to $5.7 trillion of health and environmental costs not accruing to fossil-fuel producers.²² The huge and growing global military expenditures which totalled $2.44 trillion in 2023²³ represented the burden on humanity and nature driven by the imperialist agenda of fossil capital, but also the potential funding freed up by global demilitarisation.

I close on a mention of COP29 held in Baku, Azerbaijan. While modest gains resulted in addressing financing to address the climate crisis in the global South, its outcome will not challenge the ongoing domination of fossil capital. A future for 2.7-degree Celsius warming based on current policies is projected.²⁴ Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels will reach a record high in 2024, according to just published research from more than 120 scientists now under review. They report that there is still no indication that the world has reached a peak in fossil CO2 emissions.²⁵ The assessment of David Wallace-Wells of the New York Times is similarly alarming, and he does cite favourably Malm and Carton’s Overshoot book.²⁶

  In conclusion, meeting the goal of defeating fossil capital requires, in the very near future, organising a transnational movement strong enough to demilitarise the global economy, with the dissolution of the Military Industrial (Fossil Fuels Nuclear State Terror) Complex. This will be a key objective in the implementation of a Global Green New Deal, increasingly guided by an ecosocialist agenda. So little time, such a formidable challenge, but dare to struggle, dare to win!

We owe this commitment to the children of the world. My optimism (or wishful thinking) is informed by the global upsurge of the movement to end Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people, with growing ties to the climate justice struggles and organised labour. In 2011, I wrote an article entitled “The Path to Climate Justice Passes through Gaza”, including “The path to climate security must pass through Gaza, i.e., climate security for humankind will only be achieved with the end of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, termination of Israeli apartheid regime, and the full realisation of the individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people.”²⁷ Little did I know then how powerfully this connection would burst into reality.

Notes:

1. ↩ Malm, Andreas and Wim Carton 2024, Overshoot, London: Verso.
2. ↩ Retallack, Simon 2023, ‘The 1.5C challenge: How close are we to overshooting, triggering critical climate tipping points, and needing to go beyond Net Zero?’, The Carbon Trust, November 9, https://www.carbontrust.com/news-and-insights/insights/the-15c-challenge-how-close-are-we-to-overshooting-triggering-critical-climate-tipping-points-and- needing-to-go-beyond-net-zero.
3. ↩ Ben-Yami, Maya, Andreas, Sebastian Bathiany, and Niklas Boers 2024, ‘Uncertainties too large to predict tipping times of major Earth system components from historical data’, Science Advances 10, eadl4841, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adl4841; https://global-tipping-points.org.
4. ↩ Malm and Carton 2024, p.338.
5. ↩ Schwartzman, David 2019, ‘Monbiot’s Muddle’, Capitalism Nature Socialism 31(1): 103-106; Schwartzman, Peter and David Schwartzman 2019, The Earth is Not for Sale: A Path Out of Fossil Capitalism to the Other World That is Still Possible, Singapore: World Scientific.
6. ↩ Schwartzman, David 2023, ‘Nuclear Power, Degrowth and the Working Class’, Historical Materialism Blog, 15 August. Accessed 17 October 2024. https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/nuclear-power-degrowth-and-the-working-class/.
7. ↩ Ferris, Nick 2021, ‘Weekly data: China’s nuclear pipeline as big as the rest of the world’s combined’, Ener Mon, 20 December, https://www.energymonitor.ai/power/weekly-data-chinas-nuclear-pipeline-as-big-as-the-rest-of-the-worlds-combined/.
8. ↩ Schwartzman, Peter and David Schwartzman 2021, ‘Can the 1.5 °C Warming Target Be Met in a Global Transition to 100% Renewable Energy?’, AIMS Energy, 9, no. 6: 1170—1191, doi:10.3934/energy.2021054. This citation’s reference 41 has removed its estimate of the global proven oil reserves. I conclude the value cited in our paper is incorrect. Likewise, the same is true for natural gas, with the corrected estimate being 27% of global proven reserves for Scenario II, 14% for Scenario I. In 2023, the world’s proven crude oil reserves was around 1.57 trillion barrels, excluding oil sands (Statista 2024). Therefore, the corrected amount of oil consumed in our scenarios is 28% of the global proven oil reserves, which would allow a significant role of oil-producing countries in a wind/solar transition. Our estimate for coal in Scenario II is consistent with the original citation, one-half this value for Scenario I. Cited: Statista 2024, ‘Global crude oil reserves 1960-2023’, Statista Research Department, 23 July. https://www.statista.com/statistics/236657/global-crude-oil-reserves-since-1990/.
9. ↩ Knuth, Sarah 2017, ‘Green devaluation: disruption, divestment, and decommodification for a green economy’, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 28(1), pp. 98—117; Schwartzman and Schwartzman 2019, p. 110-113; pp. 110-113, Schwartzman and Schwartzman, 2019.
10. ↩ 10 Malm and Carton 2024, p. 111.
11. ↩ 11 Carton, Wim and Andreas Malm 2024, ‘Overshoot-and-return: A dangerous climate change illusion’, Climate and Capitalism, 14 October, https://climateandcapitalism.com/2024/10/14/overshoot-and-return-a-dangerous-climate-change-illusion/.
12. ↩ 12 Schwartzman David and Peter Schwartzman 2024, ‘Scenarios for combating global warming: China’s critical role as a leader in the energy transition’, AIMS Energy 12(4): 809—821, http://www.aimspress.com/article/doi/10.3934/energy.2024038.
13. ↩ 13 Mealy, Dominic 2020, ‘To Halt Climate Change, We Need an Ecological Leninism’: An Interview With Andreas Malm’, Jacobin, 15 June, https://jacobin.com/2020/06/andreas-malm-coronavirus-covid-climate-change.
14. ↩ 14 Lenin V.I. (1999, 1920), ‘Left-Wing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder, Resistance Books, p. 23.
15. ↩ Carroll, William K. 2020, ‘Fossil capitalism, climate capitalism, energy democracy: the struggle for hegemony in an era of climate crisis’, Socialist Studies / Études socialistes, 14,1: 1-26; Harris, Jerry 2016, Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy, Atlanta: Clarity Press; Harris, Jerry 2021, ‘Green capitalism and the battle for hegemony’, Science & Society, 85, 3: 332-359.
16. ↩ Zhang, Jing, Ziying Song, and Christoph Nedopil 2024, China green finance status and trends 2023-2024, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University (Brisbane) and Green Finance & Development Center, FISF Fudan University (Shanghai), DOI: 10.25904/1912/5205.
17. ↩ Toke, David 2024, Energy Revolutions: Profiteering versus Democracy, London: Pluto Press; Urgewald, 2024. ‘Investing in Climate Chaos 2024: Institutional Investors $4.3 Trillion Deep Into the Fossil Fuel Industry’, July 9, https://investinginclimatechaos.org/media/pages/reports/ed622ba9ca-1721910411/pr.iicc-2024.pdf; As You Sow 2023, ‘General Electric Co: Adopt a Climate Transition Plan’, 22 November, https://www.asyousow.org/resolutions/2023/11/22-general-electric-adopt-climate-transition-plan.
18. ↩ Knuth, Sarah 2021, ‘Rentiers of the low-carbon economy? Renewable energy’s extractive fiscal geographies’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 1—17. doi: 10.1177/0308518X211062601; Knuth, Sarah, Ingrid Behrsin, Anthony Levenda, and James McCarthy 2022, ‘New political ecologies of renewable energy’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 5, 3: 997—1013. doi: 10.1177/ 25148486 221108164; Huber, Matthew T. 2022, ‘Resource geography III: Rentier natures and the renewal of class struggle’, Progress in Human Geography, 46, 4, doi.: 10.1177/ 03091325221074006.
19. ↩ Johnston, Matthew 2024, ‘10 Biggest Renewable Energy Companies in the World’, Investopedia, 19 July, https://www.investopedia.com/investing/top-alternative-energy-companies/.
20. ↩ Schwartzman, David 2022, ‘A Critique of Degrowth’, Climate & Capitalism, 5 January. Accessed 17 October 2024. https://climateandcapitalism.com/2022/ 01/05/a-critique-of-degrowth/.
21. ↩ E.g., Harris 2016, 2021; Carroll 2020; Toke 2024.
22. ↩ Black, Simon, Antung Liu, Ian Parry, and Nate Vernon 2023, ‘IMF Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data: 2023 Update’, Working paper, IMF, Washington, DC.
23. ↩ SIPRI 2024, ‘Global military spending surges amid war, rising tensions and insecurity’, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 22 April, https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2024/global-military-spending-surges-amid-war-rising-tensions-and-insecurity.
24. ↩ Taylor, Matthew 2024, ‘Cop29 live/ Planet on course for 2.7C temperature rise, report warns, with “minimal progress” in 2024’, The Guardian, 14 November, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2024/nov/14/cop29-live-can-the-climate-summit-find-a-way-to-raise-1tn-a-year.
25. ↩ Friedlingstein, Pierre, et al. 2024, ‘The 2024 Global Carbon Budget’, Earth System Science Data. Preprint, Discussion started: 13 November, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-519.
26. ↩ 26 Wallace-Wells, David. 2024, ‘Climate Change Is Losing Its Grip on Our Politics’, New York Times, November13, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/opinion/climate-change-politics-trump-cop29.html.
27. ↩ Schwartzman, David 2011, ‘The Path to Climate Security Passes through Gaza: a Prologue to Rethinking Strategy’, Jewish National Fund—Colonizing Palestine Since 1901 Greenwashing Apartheid: The Jewish National Fund’s Environmental Cover Up, JNF eBook, Volume 4, Edited by: Jesse Benjamin M.B. Levy S. Kershnar M. Sahibzada, pp. 38-41, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN)).