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I counted at least 10 articles on climate change in one recent edition of the local paper, writes Amanda Cole. And that was without including those that referred to climate change within a wider piece. This suggests we really don’t need any more information about climate change and the devastating impacts it will have.
So why do I, as a psychologist, think there is room for another article? Psychologists have something to offer because we spend time trying to understand and make sense of human behaviour. We know around 80% of people are concerned about climate change. And yet, an average of only 10% of us is doing anything effective about it.
One reason for this is that we are much more motivated to do things that are likely to make us feel good than stay with bad feelings. Knowing that climate change is happening, and that governments aren’t doing enough about it, is bound to make us feel bad. In response, most of us either stop thinking about it, reassure ourselves we are doing all we can, such as recycling and reducing waste (and that this is effective and will reduce our carbon footprint), or believe that others (governments, businesses) are solely responsible for the solutions.
Unfortunately, that leaves us in the difficult position of being bombarded with facts about climate change, and experiencing the effects, like huge storms and flooding, but believing there is nothing more we can do about it. Understandably, and quite reasonably, this can lead us to feel anxious, hopeless, and sometimes depressed. There is evidence this is happening, especially, but not exclusively, among young people.
Is there a solution? Yes, more than one. For a start, we know that doing something new about climate change will lessen the emotional effects of doing nothing. Even more importantly, we are more likely to change our behaviour if we choose to do so rather than being told to by someone else. We are also more likely to stick with a change if we choose it ourselves.
Our choices need to fit with our circumstances, our lifestyles, and our values. We need to feel good about helping to make a difference, rather than seeing changes we make as a sacrifice or a loss of something. Feeling good makes it more likely we will go on to choose something else to change. It doesn’t matter if changes we make are big ones (switching to an electric car, investing in a heat pump) or small ones (driving less and more slowly, buying unpackaged and local food). What matters is that it makes us feel good.
Making changes can lead to unintended positive consequences, like being fitter or saving money. You may have experienced this when you changed your behaviour due to the pandemic. It may seem that being asked to think about the climate is yet more unwelcome pressure in tough times. And yet the things we can do to help generally tend to make the cost of living less, and will keep us healthier and happier. And it’s great to know for the future that renewable energy is now less expensive than energy generated from coal and gas.
Another powerful point is that we sometimes can’t see or measure the impact we are making, so we may go back to old habits. However, there is evidence from social scientists that our communities and our culture are changing as we move towards a more sustainable future.
Changes in society take time to document so don’t imagine your little bit is not making a difference. It is subtle, but just below the surface, our thinking, our behaviour and our values are shifting. We are moving towards ‘positive tipping points’ where ideas like eating fewer meat meals or flying less are becoming normal instead of ‘alternative’. These tipping points can be hugely influential on businesses and politicians, as well as on more vulnerable communities and societies where the freedom to choose is more limited.
So here is the main message. Don’t do nothing. Choose something you really WANT to change. And talk to people about it. Climate change won’t wait for us. The time to act is NOW.
This month the UN’s IPCC published the first part of its 6th Assessment Report (AR6). Entitled The Physical Science Basis (for Climate Change) it was written by the IPCC’s Working Group l (WG1), comprising 700 authors from 66 countries, and involving the assessment of 14,000 peer-reviewed studies up to 31 January 2021.
Quoting the IPCC, the report; “assesses the current evidence on the physical science of climate change, evaluating knowledge gained from observations, reanalyses, palaeoclimate archives and climate model simulations, as well as physical, chemical and biological climate processes”.
There is actually no new science in AR6, it confirms what we already know and are seeing, but with more advanced methodologies and comprehensive data than was available for AR5 (2013). Consequently, there’s more granularity on the consequences and geographical impacts and its opinions are more robust, with greater degrees of certainty, and without the cautious language of the past.
The report itself runs to 4,000 pages but the IPCC has issued a 40 page “Summary for Policymakers” (SPM) each line of which has been agreed by representatives of the 195 member governments.
Three more reports associated with AR6 are due next year:
Working Group ll is set to publish Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability in February 2022.
Working Group lll is set to publish Mitigation of climate change in March 2022.
The IPCC will release a Synthesis Report, in September 2022, bringing together the findings of all three working groups.
Key findings
It is now unequivocal that humans have warmed the planet, causing widespread and rapid changes to Earth’s oceans, ice and land surface, with the present state of many parts of the climate system being unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years.
Many of these changes, particularly to the oceans, ice sheets and global sea levels, are irreversible and abrupt changes and “tipping points”, such as rapid Antarctic ice sheet melt and forest dieback, cannot be ruled out.
The links between human-caused warming and the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, is now established as fact.
With increased global warming previously rare “compound” extreme events, eg a heat wave followed by fire or flood, will become more frequent and intense with longer durations.
Nowhere on the Planet is safe from the impacts of global warming.
In almost all emissions scenarios, global warming is expected to hit 1.5C (The Paris target for 2100) in the 2030s and, without reaching net-zero CO2 emissions, along with strong reductions in other greenhouse gases, the climate system will continue to warm.
Near-term emissions cuts can reduce the rate of unprecedented warming, and net-zero will work for stabilising or even reducing surface temperatures.
Models & Scenarios
The report uses the output from the latest generation of about 100 global climate models run by modelling groups around the world within five distinct scenarios (pathways) that describe how global society, demographics and economics might change in the future.
These recently developed scenarios, known as Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs), have been used, with the models, to develop projections of energy use, air pollution control, land use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over this century but in the absence of new climate policies, beyond those already in place today..
For the purposes of the report the results were further categorised into bands of expected global warming effects (radiative forcing) at the end of the century, measured in Watts per square metre. This measurement represents the net amount of the sun’s energy being absorbed by the planet, ie the energy arriving from the sun, less the amount reflected back into space, say by atmospheric aerosols.
The report’s scenarios (chosen from 4 of the 5 SSPs) and their effects can be briefly described as follows, with each one showing the original SSP (SSP1, SSP2 etc) and its radiative forcing at the end of the century (1.9, 2.6 etc):
SSP1-1.9: After an initial overshoot, warming is held to approximately 1.5C above 1850-1900 in 2100 (2C is extremely unlikely to be exceeded) and implies net-zero CO2 emissions around the middle of the century.
SSP1-2.6: 2C warming is unlikely to be exceeded, with implied net-zero emissions in the second half of the century.
SSP2-4.5: Is approximately in line with the upper end of combined pledges from countries under the Paris Agreement. The scenario “deviates mildly from a ‘no-additional climate-policy’ reference scenario, resulting in a best-estimate warming around 2.7C by the end of the 21st century”.
SSP3-7.0: A medium-to-high reference scenario resulting from no additional climate policy, with “particularly high non-CO2 emissions, including high aerosols emissions”.
SSP5-8.5: A high reference scenario with no additional climate policy. Emissions this high are only achieved within the fossil-fuelled SSP5.
Whilst the authors are sceptical about the likelihood of SSP5-8.5, they say the projections “can still be valuable” and that the concentrations of greenhouse gases it contains “cannot be ruled out”.
The report says warming is very likely to be within ranges for each scenario so, for example, by 2081-2100, SSP1-1.9 has a range of 1.0-1.8C, SSP1-2.6: 1.3-2.4C and SSP5-8.5: 3.3-5.7C.
Here is a graph of all five pathways, using the report’s best estimates of target temperatures:
To put these temperature ranges into perspective the SPM points out (with medium confidence) that; “The last time global surface temperature was sustained at or above 2.5C higher than 1850–1900 was over 3m years ago.”
Given the weather extremes already being experienced at just over 1C and the uncertainty over the various tipping points, eg irreversible melting of land ice, ACT and most academics now consider SSP-1.9 the only, but still worst case, scenario worth considering.
Comparisons with the Paris Agreement & 1.5C
Following the Paris Agreement in 2015, and the pledge to “pursue efforts” to keep global warming below 1.5C (over pre-industrial levels), the IPCC published a special report on 1.5C (SR15) in 2018 that looked at questions including how close the world was to breaching the limit, what it would take to avoid doing so and what might happen if those efforts failed.
AR6 WG1 examines the first question and its findings are similar to SR15 however the SPM states that the predictions on when 1.5C is first breached are far more detailed in the AR6 than the SR15 and so are not directly comparable.
Nevertheless, AR6 states that :
“In all scenarios assessed here, except SSP5-8.5, the central estimate of crossing the 1.5C threshold lies in the early 2030s.”
Carbon Budgets and Net-Zero
A carbon budget is an estimate of the maximum amount of CO2 emissions that can still be released into the atmosphere before a particular temperature increase is reached. In accordance with the Paris Agreement the two key increases are 1.5C or 2C, since pre-industrial times (around 1870). Measurements are in Gigatonnes (one billion tonnes) of CO2 (GtCO2).
Temperature increases are roughly aligned with accumulating emissions and so scientists calculate the total emissions, that will result in say a 1.5C increase, and then deduct what has already been emitted since 1870, the difference is the remaining budget that we can emit before reaching the particular temperature threshold.
An important consideration is that, as we have already accumulated so much CO2, the amount left to emit is quite small and so is sensitive to differing assumptions in the calculations. It’s a bit like filling a bath to just below the brim and trying to estimate how long, and with what force, we can leave the taps running before it overflows whilst incorporating an estimate of the loss of water from a badly fitted plug.
The modelling results and statements carry a degree of uncertainty which are expressed in terms such as “extremely likely” and associated with a % likelihood. In AR6 they calculate that a 460GtCO2 budget would give the world a 50% chance of limiting the increase to 1.5C and 360GtCO2 a 67% chance (The budgets for a 2C increase, with the same probabilities are 1,310GtCO2 and 1,110GtCO2 respectively).
The world is currently emitting about 40GtCO2 a year which is why there is an urgent need for “substantial and sustained reductions”, with the next decade being crucial.
Scenarios are increasingly dependent upon the availability of facilities for CO2 removal (CDR), ie natural or industrial methods for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, and the report covers the effects of these in detail, including some negative side effects on land use, food production, water quality and biodiversity.
The reliance on “net” emissions has grown in recent years with SR15 calling for Net-Zero by around 2050, in other words making sure that, by that date, what the world is emitting is cancelled out by what the world is removing. AR6 WG1 has not changed this.
Whilst AR6 WG1 concentrates on CO2, as the primary source of human caused warming, it also considers the effects of “non-CO2” GreenHouse Gasses (GHG) both in terms of those that warm and those that cool. Reducing some warming non-CO2 GHG will be possible but they will not be eliminated and so the report states that additional CO2 removals will be necessary to compensate for these.
Given the inherent uncertainties ACT believes that we owe it to future generations not only to strive to hit Net-Zero well in advance of 2050, by concentrating on emission reductions rather than significant CO2 removals, but also to use the carbon budget most closely aligned with achieving at least a 67% chance of limiting temperature increase to 1.5C.
Other aspects
The report goes into detail over many other effects on the climate and environment, covering rainfall, ice cover, oceans (including sea level rise), tipping points and air pollution and, for the first time, has “a far greater emphasis on regional climate change” including an online interactive atlas.
These aspects are reviewed in detail in the following links:
When Greta Thunberg met Sir David Attenborough, as shown on BBC TV recently, she asked him what he would say to young people who think there is no point in saying or doing anything about climate change because no one is listening. He replied that people are listening. “There just could be a change in moral attitude from people and politicians worldwide to see that self interest is for the past, common interest is for the future,” he said.
We all have a common interest in cutting carbon emissions and trying to keep global warming to no more than 1.5C above pre-industrial averages. But we often let our self interest stand in the way. Making that extra effort to change our behaviour can be a struggle, especially when our institutions and infrastructure fail to support our efforts
It is easy to take the view that any changes we make, whether becoming vegetarian, giving up flying, or driving less, will make little difference, so why bother.
Or there is the hope some new technology will provide the solution, and we can carry on consuming without a worry. Nuclear fusion will prove possible after all, or we will be able to suck carbon out the air and store it somewhere. We are an endlessly inventive species so surely some tech whiz will find a way.
Both those ideas are comfort blankets we need to discard. It is true that unless you are one of the super wealthy your actions won’t make much direct difference. Reports show that the world’s richest 1% produce more than double the combined emissions of the poorest 50%. They need to make the biggest changes to their lifestyles.
Per capita CO2 consumption emissions by four global income groups for 2015
If the richest 10% brought their emissions in line with the level of the average European, and the rest of us carried on as normal, global carbon emissions would drop by one-third within a couple of years, notes a report by the Cambridge Sustainability Commission.
The changes we make are just as important though. A one-third reduction in emissions is not enough. The more people who put solar panels on their roofs, insulate their homes, cut down on meat, and adopt active travel (by bike or foot), the quicker it will come to seem the normal thing to do. And once we’ve made one little change it becomes easier to make others. Of course, we need the help of the government and other institutions to make these changes, particularly where cost is a barrier. But don’t underestimate the power of individual example.
When it comes to technology, there is no doubt it can and will help. But our inventiveness has failed so far to stop emissions rising. Researchers from Lancaster University last year said climate action had been delayed for 40 years by technological promises. They called for an end to such promises and said the focus should switch to cultural, social and political transformation to tackle the climate crisis. That’s us and our communities!
The experience of the last year has shown that rapid transformation is possible. Our behaviour changed almost overnight as we went into lockdown. The vast majority of us complied with the new rules as the threat to our health was immediate and obvious. We have also participated willingly in the great vaccination experiment. We are effectively all guinea pigs, but recognise that our common interest lies in having the jab.
There is a consensus we need to Build Back Better as the pandemic subsides (fingers crossed!). That must mean prioritising actions to address the climate and ecological emergencies we face. In Teignbridge, 23 of the 50 town and parish councils, as well as the district council, have declared emergencies. Only a few have progressed to making an action plan or have consulted their communities on what they can do together. Action on Climate in Teignbridge is working with councils across the area to advise and support them. We have also recruited 64 volunteer wildlife wardens across 32 parishes, who will work to help local wildlife survive and thrive.
Every little helps, and there is often a positive benefit from such action to our own wellbeing as well as our environment.
“We have to make major changes to the way we live,” Sir David told Greta. It’s in our common interest.
In Episode 2 of the Devon Wildlife Warden Podcast, Emily Marbaix takes a look at the wide range of conservation schemes in our area and draws attention to the new National Grassroots Campaign Map. She also discusses:
The value of churchyards for conservation efforts.
A summary of what our local wildlife wardens have been up to.
Information about Wolborough Fen.
Information about bees, including an interview with local beekeeper, Gary and a closer look at our most endangered bee, the 6 banded nomad bee.
Details of the Westcountry CSI Project.
What you can do to support dwindling populations of house martins.
Information about Buglife’s new campaign – “No insect-inction”.
Emily Marbaix, a Wildlife Warden for Abbotskerswell, has created a podcast about the Wildlife Warden scheme. You can listen to the first episode here, as well as on Spotify and on Apple Podcasts. Emily talks about local wildlife/reserves, some of the things that Wildlife Wardens have been up to and explains why she got involved with the scheme. The podcast also includes some great advice on what you can do to help wildlife!
“Want to help your local wildlife but not sure where to start? You’ve come to the right place! This podcast offers guidance on what activities to do at what times of the year as well as pointing you in the direction of resources and projects that you could get involved with either by yourself or with friends, family and the wider community. Get inspired, get outdoors and do a little something to help protect the wildlife in Devon and the wider area.”
ACT is planning its strategy over the next 6 months and could really do with some help. We are looking for a few extra people to help out for perhaps an hour or two a week with either committee or hands-on work.
You don’t have to be an expert in anything; what we need is your enthusiasm so, if you’d like to get involved, please fill in this questionnaire with some information about your interests and skills and we will get back to you.
The green homes grant scheme caught my attention as soon as it was launched in September 2020. It looked worth investigating, but my attempt to use it soon came up against obstacles. It proved difficult to find either independent advice on the most important and appropriate improvements to my home, or an installer authorised to do whatever work was needed.
Hearing that there are now authorised installers and assessors in the area, I have just tried to re-engage with the scheme. It proved frustrating.
The grant covers up to two-thirds of the cost of energy efficiency improvements you make to your home, to a maximum of £5,000 (or 100% of the cost up to £10,000 if you qualify for the low income support scheme). So it’s financially attractive (although recent stories in the Guardian show there are long delays in giving out grants and money is being withdrawn).
The biggest weakness in the scheme, and why I consider it not fit for purpose, is that eligibility is not dependent on any sort of whole house assessment. Moreover, it enables, if not encourages, you to fit a new more energy efficient source of heating, at a cost of maybe £10,000, when your home insulation remains inadequate or even non-existent, which is like putting new taps on a bath without a plug.
However, if you know which of the eligible improvements your home needs, the scheme could work for you. It is currently set to run until 31st March 2022. Here’s how it went for me.
The grant scheme’s website suggests you seek advice on the improvements to make. However, when you follow the link to check your eligibility you are sent to the Simple Energy Advice (SEA) website to check out the sort of improvements that might be suitable, based partly on the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) registered for your property.
After several pages of questions and, in my case increasing confusion, you are presented with a “Now build your plan” page with suggested improvements and the likely costs. You select the improvements that take your fancy and are then taken to a “Make your plan” page enabling you to download the details to present to your installer(s).
Whether I’m just unlucky, or too picky, this process didn’t work for me. For example, you are asked what type of roof insulation you have, either pitched or flat roof, insulated or not insulated, or don’t know. I have both types of roof but as the pitched roof covers the majority of the home and is insulated I chose that option.
My EPC tells me that, at 100mm, my insulation is insufficient and that it should be increased to 270mm, but by selecting the insulated option, roof insulation doesn’t appear on my plan.
Similarly, with the wall insulation question, you are asked if you have cavity or solid walls, insulated or not insulated or don’t know. I have a couple of solid walls but the majority are cavity, but the EPC is silent on whether or not they are insulated and so I chose “don’t know”. This only put cavity wall insulation into my plan, with no mention of solid wall insulation, but it’s pointless having it in the plan as I don’t know if I need it.
My hopes for floor insulation were also soon dashed. Options for answers to “What sort of floor insulation do you have?” were: don’t know, solid floor, suspended floor or none. I have a suspended floor with no insulation, so selected “none” but, mysteriously, was only presented with solid floor insulation in my plan, at a cost of £5,000.
Finally, but not exhaustively, the plan suggested a new condensing boiler (when I said I already had one) and upgrading my double glazing, neither of which qualify for the grant.
If and when you are lucky enough to be happy with your plan, you are directed to the SEA site to find an authorised installer for each of the 30 eligible improvements. In other words, you have to choose a home improvement measure before being shown appropriate installers.
It doesn’t, however, offer you authorised advisors to help you decide what sort of insulation or heating improvement you need and in what order. For this I referred to the Trustmark website, where all authorised people are registered, and where you can search in your area for retrofit assessors or coordinators under standard PAS 2035.
So, in my case, “The Plan” is to contact one of these to help work out what is best for my home and the planet, regardless of whether the green homes grant should play a part.
As the first in what we hope will be a series, we are running the above online Zoom event to cover some of the issues, relating to the climate and ecological emergencies, which are important to our members.
We want to attract as many members as possible and to get the ball rolling would ask you to complete this questionnaire to suggest topics we should cover, in the form of questions.
You’ll see we have suggested a few questions of our own that you can score and then you can add up to five of your own, in order of importance, along with any other ideas you may have.
Based on your responses we will select questions for this first forum for a panel discussion and will also give you the opportunity to participate in a question and answer “chat” session.
If you can’t make it, don’t worry, we will record the session and no doubt follow it up with others.
