The first step to stopping emissions? “Go vegan.”
The following article is a precis of a discussion between IPCC expert reviewer Dr Peter Carter and co-founder of Animal Rebellion Dora Hargitai. Watch the full interview here on YouTube.
On November 19, 2022, the penultimate day of COP27, Dr Peter Carter, founder of the Climate Emergency Institute and expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tweeted a link to the Global Monitoring Laboratory’s latest Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. “Atmospheric greenhouse gas levels and rates of increase are unprecedented. Continued emissions make the future unsurvivable,” he messaged. Abrupt, precise, the syntax is constructed to express rage and grief. As it should be. Despite tentative wins on loss and damage, activists - and anyone who cares about the planet basically - are in despair. As Alok Sharma, the British president of last year’s climate talks, put it: “Emissions peaking before 2025. Not in this text. Clear follow-through on the phase down of coal: not in this text. A clear commitment to phase out all fossil fuels: not in this text.”
The climate now
As we write, Carter has not tweeted since and it may be interesting to know whether that is via a surge of work in response to COP27 or concern. Because Carter is one of a growing tranche of scientists, including Peter Kalmus, climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, who, in the face of multiple systems failures, are ridding themselves of the shackles of scientific dispassion. You can almost feel his relief: that he can finally speak the truth. When, in September, Carter spoke via zoom with Dora Hargitai, co-founder of Animal Rebellion, about the depth of the climate and ecological crisis and the role of science in accelerating conversation and solutions-building, you could feel it again. “Because of our self-induced disruption of the climate and oceans, we - humanity, as a species - are [facing] the greatest challenge in the whole history of the species - and it is absolutely extraordinary that we are doing nearly next to nothing about it.” [6:53]
As the decisions from COP27 revealed, the pace of change is glacial because fossil fuel companies, corporations and linked media outlets are holding it back. “Just this month, there have been three monumental impacts projected by the models of climate change,” says Carter. “[The reports] make terrifying reading.[1:04] And the reason we are in this horrendous situation is primarily because of what governments are doing with emissions: still subsidising the fossil fuel industry, still subsidising the agriculture industry [and, in particular] the meat industry. It seems governments subsidise all activities and industries that are the worst for humanity right now which is insane, criminally insane.” [14:02] I think,” he says, “it’s time to regard these industries, these corporations, even these governments as enemies.”
Sleeping with the enemy
“Corporations have changed our world in such a way that governments are reluctant to legislate,” he continues. ‘[Under the Energy Charter Treaty], corporations have managed to give themselves an undemocratic power to sue governments if those governments are talking about regulating particular issues, such as environmental pollution. Because the only answer to this is legislation. You have to legislate to stop the subsidies. We’ll go on burning fossil fuels as long as government provide subsidies. We’ll go on eating meat as long as government provide subsidies. Corporations will fight to the nail [against] any attempt of government regulation. Governments are not representing the people any longer; governments now represent money, the economy, corporations.” [52:30 to 52:40]
Saving nature, saving the planet
It’s not just about climate. “If you are going to do anything about climate change, you must include biodiversity. There is an adverse negative synergy between the two. The worse climate change becomes, the more creatures are forced out of their home and forced to adapt - but, of course, they can’t make it because they need their own accustomed habitat.” Even the best scenario will increase the rate of species extinction, says Carter. “We’re in the 6th extinction of life on this planet. Specialists think it’s probably the fastest rate of extinction ever, already. And, if you are not protecting biodiversity, you are not protecting the land and ecosystems - which you have to do, of course, to preserve species – and you are making climate change worst because you are damaging the carbon sinks.”
The planet has always relied on two carbon sinks: forests and oceans. “In climate science, it’s always been our greatest fear [that] if we pushed things long enough and far enough, there will come a point when carbon sinks would not be able to sink the carbon that they have been doing, that carbon sinks would become saturated and switch to [becoming] sources of carbon. Today, that’s happening. Today, the Arctic is switched from carbon sink to source. The great Amazon rain forest - because it’s been cleared and burnt for animal agriculture - has become a carbon source. Even the mightiest forest in the world, the largest carbon sink on the planet apart from the oceans, the Boreal forest is drying out, simply because of global warming.” [56:30 to 59:30]
All or Nothing
Speaking of the IPCC 6th assessment, Carter says: “When you realise, that the highly conservative, scientific process of the IPCC says the issue is now a liveable planet, you know we are in horrendous situation,” he says. “To avoid total climate catastrophe, it’s not been realised even by the scientist, that you have to stop all your emissions essentially. You can`t just choose one – which is what we have done which is CO2 and say we can get that down to near zero and then we will deal with the others. That’s bad science. In order to have any chance at 2 degree, all our emissions have to be cut by 50% by 2030. That’s all our emissions: CO2, methane, nitrous oxide. Mitigation to climate change is all or nothing; it cannot be less than every single source of GHG emissions.” [01:15:15]
Methane is an issue. “Last year, the WMO said all three main greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide - had each increased faster than ever before. Carbon dioxide lasts for hundreds of years, methane for 12 years, nitrous oxide couple of years. We might be able to remove a bit of carbon dioxide in a net way but there are no ways to remove methane or nitrous oxide at all. And methane is a gas with far greater warming potential than CO2. We have compelling reasons to get ourselves off of fossil fuels and replace them with 100% renewable energy but, if methane stays where it is, we are done for. We have so much heat in the climate system already. As the IPCC said in 2014, each GHGs must be dropped to “nearly zero”.” [15:00]
Individual action matters.
Carter offers three key calls to actions to citizens to address planetary and ecological collapse. “Go vegan. Right away,” he says emphatically. “It creates an immediate reduction on emissions for which you don’t have to rely on politics, governments and corporations [23:16]. Secondly, get politically involved. Lobby all representatives - not just the ones you like - and tell them we are taking the planet down and most of the life with it. Tell them they promised stop subsidising fossil fuel industries in 2009 - and they have to stop it now. The same applies to the driver of most of our methane emissions, the meat industry. We are not [addressing our current food production systems] even though that’s an essential switch to prevent climate catastrophe, and even though it’s also the best switch for health.”
“Lastly, look at where your money is – whether it is investments, stocks, bank accounts. Because the vast majority of those investments will be going to fossil fuel industries. Become a responsible investor, get all your investment out of the fossil fuel industry, and put that into the clean renewable energy industry.” While individual action may not feel enough in itself to address the emergency, it matters because “we obviously cannot rely on the government. The government is basically trying to kill our future. And we certainly can’t rely on the corporations. They will not act to prevent climate catastrophe. So we are entirely dependent on our own activism in order to do the most possible now to protect the future for the children of the world.” [52:30 to 54:30]
Animal Rebellion activists pour milk on the floor at Harrods to protest the impact of the dairy industry on the climate crisis.
Of Animal Rebellion’s high profile autumn campaign to shut down the dairy industry, which saw milk distribution centres blocked and rebels pouring milk on supermarket floors, Carter says to Hargitai: “You started your campaign [against the meat and dairy industries] at the right time. Dairy is a huge emitter of methane. And it’s a hard nut to crack because the idea we have to drink milk and eat cheese in order to be healthy has been fed to us as a society for so long. Of course, it’s absolutely not true. So, in order for the individual to play their part in avoiding the looming planetary catastrophe, climate and oceans destruction, they can, on an immediate basis, stop eating meat and dairy. It’s the easiest and more readily available and most effective lifestyle change that individuals and families can make.” [25:00]
“We can’t sort of do less meat,” he continues. “Less is not good enough. Less intense is not good enough now. Same applies to everything. We have multi-system failure on the planet,” he continues. “These are shocking, monumental, planetary findings. We are on track to biosphere collapse, two degrees by the middle of this century. Unprecedented droughts in Africa, in the southwest of the United States, in Chile. In China. This is rebounding on our ability to produce food - and we’ve known for decades that extreme weather events are guaranteed to cut back crop yields. The Global North always thought it would get away with climate change, but we are all in the same boat now.” [45:00]
Since the end of COP, Dr Carter has - obviously - tweeted several times. None of the tweets are easy reading. On November 29th, he wrote: “RUNAWAY METHANE EMERGENCY Explosive increase atmospheric methane on accelerating methane 2007, with feedback emissions. 2.6 fold increase industrial. Current accelerated increase can only continue. STOP FOSSIL BURNING THE FUTURE https://methanelevels.org #methane #climatechange.” On the next day: “BOREAL FOREST TO BURN EMITTING FEEDBACK CARBON Boreal largest forest most carbon. Warming this century, increases fire-prone regions (29%) Boreal (110%) & Temperate (25%) zones. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28835-2 #wildfire #ClimateChange #globalwarming.” The insanity continues.
