Kielda.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. We're edging closer to exceeding one point five degrees celsius of warming globally and scientists will gather to understand the implications of missing our climate change targets. The world's best will descend upon Austria this week for the first ever Overshoot conference. It's while Winston Peters delivered a truth bomb at the un recently singling out four countries for being the world's
largest emitters. So what happens if we don't meet our climate targets? Today on the front Page, Victoria University climate scientist Professor James Renwick is with us to delve into climate overshoot and why we should care about. First off, James, can you tell us what climate overshoot actually means?
Sure?
So.
The Paris Agreement, which was drawn up in twenty fifteen, said that the countries of the world would do what they have to do to reduce emissions fast enough to stop at a global warming of well below two degrees above pre industrial or but a mouthful, and that the countries of the world would pursue efforts to stop at
one and a half degrees of warming. So the Paris Agreement ranges between one and a half and two degrees of warming, and overshoot refers to the idea that the countries of the world have not done enough and that warming is going to exceed one and a half degrees or maybe even two degrees. So the idea there as well, Yes, all right, that could happen, but provided we can call things off again fairly quickly, it may not be the
end of the world kind of thing. So it's all about what is the actual trajectory that the Earth's line in terms of temperature arise, and what can we do about cooling things down again. US temperatures do get above the thresholds and the Paris Agreement. Now you'll be aware probably that the bottom of the Paris Agreement one point five degrees.
Has already been breached one year.
Last year was the first year more than one and a half degrees above free industrial But that's not quite the end of that story. You really need to say ten years average of ten years above one and a half before you could say for sure that yes, we've broken through that limit, and we're not quite there yet. We're at about one point three degrees in the ten year average, but all our things are going we will be there by the.
End of this decade.
So what more can be done?
Oh well, everything, We're not doing anything. The thing that needs to happen is we have to stop emitting greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. And the main way we emit carbon dioxide is we burn fossil fuels, So burning coal, burning oil, burning natural gas all release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And we've been putting more and more and more of this stuff into the air every year, with one or
two little blips than ever. Half of the total emissions of greenhouse gases humans have managed to do since you know, the seventeen hundreds have happened since nineteen ninety, so really, you know, putting our foot on the gas literally, and we're changing the climate faster and faster. In the thirty years the work been talking about fixing this problem, they've made it twice as bad and we're just accelerating in the wrong direction. So the world's doing nothing apart from talking.
So it would be great to see a big rollout of renewal energy and a big reduction in the burning of coal and oil, especially lots of ebs and solar panels, all that kind of stuff is really what the world needs. And it's happening, you know in places China are leading the world solar panels and win tair of once, but they're also leading the world and building coal fire past oceans such. Yeah, a bit of a double edged sword there. So, Yeah, what we need is just a reduction and emissions across
the globe. And I guess that's been the theme of or that will be one of the themes of the Overshirt Conference and certainly has been talked about at the UN Climate a week in New York.
When do you think the world is going to get serious? What a great question, because I mean, you've been in this game for a long time, James, you're probably sick of you know, warning, And I mean as soon as everyone says, oh this is going to happen, that's going to happen, it happens, but nothing's done about it.
No, And I really don't have an answer to that question. When is the world going to get serious? It should have happened thirty years ago, forty years ago even was possible. It was already plenty of warning back in the nineteen eighties. But the status quo has an awful lot of power behind it. The fossil fuel industry is one of the most profitable in history. You know, there's a lot of power and many title and doing things the way we have done them for the last two hundred years or so.
So governments are reluctant to really act, and I think, you know, government's policymakers don't quite believe or they don't feel it.
You know, they might know the facts, but they don't have the you know, the emotional response that you really need before you take something important on board. So when is this going to happen. I hope it's in the next five years, but it's going to take some major extreme events and some I guess well resourced, rich countries and you know, maybe a whole lot of death and destruction before government's really taken on board that, oh gee,
this actually is important. It actually is affecting our economy and our lifestyles and everything. So, you know, I don't want to wish extremes and death and destruction on people, but it doesn't seem as though anything else, any of the science really tells the story, and so a lot of people are trying to tell the stories in different ways through the arts and so on, and maybe that's
making a difference. But the pace of change has been so slow it's been just impossible even see in the last few decades that I really wonder when we'll get onto it. I suppose the good news, you could say, is that humans have all the power. You know, we are the one species doing this. We're releasing all the in housecases into the atmosphere. Whenever we stop doing that, we will stop climate change within a year or two. This is now well known, so we'll always have all
the power. But it's really it really comes down to when do we use how bad do we let things get in the meantime, And that's the trade off. I suppose that policy makers around the world think about if they think about it at all, you know what about short term profit versus long term sustainability. That doesn't take much thinking about from my perspective. But if you're trying to turn a buck this year, I suppose it does take a bit of thinking about. And this year's buck just always seems to win.
So yeah, So China recently pledged for the first time to reduce total greenhouse gas emissions to seven to ten percent below peak levels by twenty thirty five. This includes expanding wind and solar capacity, increasing non fossil fuel energy share, and ramping up electric vehicle sales, but it still falls short of the thirty percent of cuts that some observers say are needed for that one point five degrees. What does China's new pledge mean for global climate negotiations.
Well, it is a step forward. It's great to see that China is actually pledging to actually reduce emissions, not just the intensity of emissions or the things they've come up with before. So yes, that's a step forward. That's great, But as you've just said, it's it's a bit weak,
it's a bit slow. You know that there was a report from the Untergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that came out nearly ten years ago now twenty eighteen, on what do we need to do to stop at one and a half degrees of women And that document said fifty percent reductions in emissions by twenty thirty and China's talking about maybe ten percent by twenty thirty five. So it's it's going in the right direction, but it's way slow. China is the biggest committer globally, so if they did that,
it would still be a win. But we need every other bigger money and smaller amount of for that matter, to do the same. And like I said before this, there's not really any country that's really managing to do that. The UK, yes, this one I can think of, has reduced its submissions significantly. Well that's you could argue that's by exporting those emissions. You know, all the manufacturing that used to happen in Britain probably nowhattans in China and
other Asian countries. So the global effect has been well pretty murdered, to put it mildly.
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters recently made headlines at the UN by stating that the world's four biggest emitters that's China, India, Russia and the US bear the brunt of responsibility, comprising about sixty percent of global emissions. He urged leaders to quote face the elephant in the room and describe the situ as a battle we can't possibly win. It's been described as a truth bomb. How has that been received?
And first of I mean what was your first reaction to seeing that, because it is a bit of a different change in tax for Winston Peters.
Yes, indeed, and you could well or a truth bomb. And he's quite right in the sense that those four countries are the biggest emitters in the world, and we won't have solved the problem until those nations really get
on board and reduce their emissions substantially. But you know, those countries account for sixty percent of global emissions, which means that if you put all the other countries together Supfairs in New Zealand, you get the other forty percent, and there's nothing to stop the other countries of the world doing what they need to do. And if we could produce global emissions by forty percent while all of
those countries get into zero, fabulous. You know, that would be a great step forward, and maybe you would shame the bigger metis into doing the same thing totally hope. Yeah, I mean, I'm sort of sympathetic to what he's saying, and he's quite right, but he's also kind of trying to sidestep any responsibility in this country and in other countries that only emit one percent of global emissions or less,
and every country has to play their part. We've got to get the zero global emissions of carbon dioxide and that means zero country is still emitting CO two. So yep, okay, And I'd love to see the big countries respond to that appropriately, But it doesn't absolve us. And his comment that it's a battle we can't win us absolutely wrong.
And like I said, we have all the power.
We are the ones emitting these greenhouse gases. We can stop whenever we like I wish it was saying that, so we can absolutely win. We being the global community. So that's not anyone country, even just China got zero missions. That wouldn't fix it. It will be a stick love step forward. But all countries have to act and all countries can contribute to winning. We will definitely win if we do this.
Another unofficial stated in nineteen eighty nine that within a decade, entire nations could be wiped off the map by global warming not happening. You know, it used to be global cooling. If you look back years ago, in the nineteen twenties and the nineteen thirties, they said global cooling will kill the world. We have to do something. Then they said
global warming will kill the world. But then it started getting cooler, so now they could just call it a climate change because that way they can't miss climate change, because if it goes higher or lower, whatever the hell happens, is climate change. It's the greatest job ever perpetrated on the world in my opinion.
Well, speaking of the Big Four, it's all while Donald Trump told the UN that climate change was and I quote, the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, what does the rest of the world and New Zealand I suppose do when the US president doesn't play ball?
Oh boy, it's a good question.
And you know, Donald Trump's a bit of a special cases and he says all sorts of crazy things, and this is as crazy as anything else I've heard him say recently. Of course, it's not a conjob. You know, there's so much of so many mountains of scientific evenents and understanding. You know, we've got the observations, we have the understanding of the physics and all the rest of it. We have the models. What's happening. There's no rome for uncertainty, and it was not it's definitely not a con job.
But when the president of the US is something like that. It does, of course, it kind of gives license to people in other countries that are maybe uncertain about what they should do, to say, oh, well, okay, the US is treating it.
Like a joke, why don't we do the same. So it's not good for the global conversation, of course.
But I really wonder these days how much Donald Trump, you know, how much weight he carries in terms of these international conversations. He's sort of said so many strange things and passed off the countries that I wonder whether the US is just being a bit sidelines and you know, the world can carry on and do what it has to do without the US joining in, and of course that will hurt the US economy, and Trump won't be the president forever, so the US can get on board
at some stage. In the meantime, a a number of you as states are doing what they need to do anyway, reducing missions. It's not as though the federal government controls what all of the states do.
So it's a bit of a mixed big It's not good globally to.
Have one of the world's most prominent political leaders saying these things, But you know, I think most people take Donald Trump's statements with the big grown or starved.
Actually, well, you've been a climate scientist for decades now, I hope you don't mind me giving away your age. What kind of conversation has the conversation shifted from when you began looking into climate change to now.
Yes, those conversations have shifted, but they started happening at the very least. You know, you do hear a lot more conversation around action on climate change. And you know, in this country, the policy landscapes quite different. Here's the Climate Change Commission, we have the Zero carbonac the government and principle at least has focused on taking action on climate change. So that's that is quite a change over the decades that I've been looking at all this. But
I think, well, it's a strange. It's maybe not unexpected really when you think about it. But back in the day, back last century, the end of last century, there was a fair bit of hope around I guess, and the idea that we have time and we can take action and you know, we'll get on top of this problem. So I had some faith that governments countries around the world would actually step up and really start to reduce their emissions over the time I've been working on the problem.
As time's gone on, that hasn't happened. And like I said, actually the missions have continued to go up. It's become sort of more and more desperate, I guess, And in the science community there's a lot more desperation and worry, anxiety, anger even about the lack of action, because the problem has become clearer and obviously more dangerous, but the action still isn't there. So everything's become a bit more fractureous. And I suppose this is what I'm saying. Maybe it's
not too surprising. As the climate changes, that puts stresses on natural systems, that puts stresses on food security, water security, even where people can live. You know, sea level rises are already affecting that. So things are becoming gradually harder. Life's
becoming a bit harder. And when that happens, people generally turn onwards, you know, circle wagons and look after their own and nationalism and you know, countries looking after themselves rather than cooperating, which is really what we need, has become the prevalent story. And I think countries want to protect their own economies. They don't want to be spending money on what they might see is some possible problem in fifty year's time or something like that. Of course,
that is absolutely not what it is. It's happening right now. So it's maybe to be expected that things have gone the way that Donald Trump describes. And that's not something I anticipated back in the nineteen nineties. I genuinely thought countries would see what needed to be done and do it.
But you know, that's that's a very naive thought.
And it reminds me of a statement that Al Gore made in his movie An Inconvenient Truth that twenty years ago, and he said, you know, he studied the climate system and what was going on with greenhouse gases and all the rest of it, and he went to Congress in the nineteen eighties and he said, oh, I just need to tell Congress what's happening and they'll get onto it. And you know, that was forty years ago, and he did tell Congress and they listened and then went back
to worrying about the economy. So it's yeah, human nature is the big problem, you know, and when how much it will take to break through that kind of thinking. I dorn't no worries, mate, how much it'll take. It'll it will cost a lot of money, and I suspect a lot of lives before we see reelection.
Thanks for joining us, James, sure thing. That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who is also our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.