Expectations of the climate conference: “We have to change taxes quickly”

Politicians are reacting too slowly to global warming, says climate researcher Stefan Rahmstorf in an interview tagesschau.de. With a view to the climate conference in Egypt, he calls for efforts to be redoubled.

tagesschau.de: At the 2015 World Climate Conference, the goal was proclaimed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times. Do you think we can still achieve this 1.5 degree target?

Stefan Rahmstorf: That largely depends on politics. The last report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was published in April, showed again that there is a way to achieve this. And the International Energy Agency, which always publishes the World Energy Outlook before these climate summits, has also said that there is a narrow but still viable way to keep to 1.5 degrees. But now it’s really, really narrow. And that means that we have to change course very quickly in order to take this path.

tagesschau.de: When you say turn things around, what exactly do we have to do?

Rahmstorf: We must halve global CO2 emissions by 2030. That’s in eight years. That sounds very drastic, but it is because emissions have continued to rise since the Rio summit in 1992, when the world community decided to prevent dangerous climate change. Politicians have continued to delay and listen to the fossil fuel lobby. That’s why we now have to slam on the brakes on emissions.

tagesschau.de: Do you think we’re on the right track, that we could do it somehow?

Rahmstorf: There are definitely positive signs, especially if you look at the report by the International Energy Agency. In all scenarios, they are now assuming that in five years at the latest the use of fossil energy will reach its peak and that it will then fall. It’s just that the current policy isn’t fast enough. We need to redouble efforts to bring emissions down fast enough.

tagesschau.de: Is it the emissions alone that we now have to reduce?

Rahmstorf: Yes, global warming is 100 percent man-made, i.e. by our emissions. And that’s good news because we can stop them. It would be bad if global warming had been caused by other factors, such as solar activity. We know that is not the case. Solar activity has even decreased slightly, slightly counteracting the warming we have caused. So it’s in our hands. Politicians simply have to react much more decisively. It is unacceptable that sectors in Germany, such as the transport sector, simply miss their climate targets and that even the simplest free measure, namely a general speed limit, is not taken.

tagesschau.de: You have already mentioned a concrete example, namely the speed limit. From your point of view as a scientist, what would be another possibility that can be implemented quickly to reduce emissions?

Rahmstorf: What needs to happen quickly now is to replace coal with renewable energy. This is a cheaper and quicker way, as the International Energy Agency shows. Renewables are growing exponentially worldwide. They have already overtaken nuclear power generation and they may overtake coal power generation within the next decade. And yes, that is of course only part of the measures in the electricity sector. There are also other sectors such as transport, industry and agriculture. But it is actually relatively easy to replace electricity generation with renewable energies. We have the technology, it’s getting cheaper and cheaper.

tagesschau.de: But here we have the problem that the expansion somehow doesn’t go as quickly as some would like, because there may be a lack of specialists who can set it up. That means it’s not going really well there either…

Rahmstorf: On a global scale it works, we just have to see it through now. And of course that becomes more difficult with exponential growth, because the absolute numbers are of course increasing more and more. We must now remove the obstacles very quickly. This includes pushing ahead with grid expansion, removing obstacles such as distance rules for wind turbines and so on. And, of course, that the relevant specialists are also trained and production capacities built up. China, for example, is currently building gigantic production capacities for photovoltaics. They are counting on this boom very much and will install significantly more photovoltaics in this year alone than Germany has in the entire history so far.

tagesschau.de: We have actually known for some time that we need to expand renewable energies. Why is it taking so long for us to understand this? Have the climate researchers perhaps not said clearly enough what will happen if we don’t do it?

Rahmstorf: In my opinion, the climate researchers have been saying very clearly what is going on for 30 years. But a very strong lobby has formed that spreads false information and bombards people with climate skeptic theses, at a very high cost, by the way, with hundreds of millions of dollars from PR agencies. And unfortunately there are also many in the media who played along and acted as if everything in climate research was controversial, even though there has been a consensus on this for decades.

tagesschau.de: As a climate researcher, do you get frustrated at any point and say, “At some point I can’t do it anymore either?”

Rahmstorf: Of course, I’m often frustrated. That’s often depressing, but I think it’s simply a question of how you deal with it professionally, not letting yourself be guided by your personal feelings, but by what is necessary. When I’m a doctor performing life-saving surgery, I can’t pay attention to my feelings either, I just have to do my job professionally and not suddenly think, “Oh my god, this isn’t going to work.”

tagesschau.de: That means, if you now look at the climate conference, what would you wish for? What do the states that come together have to achieve?

Rahmstorf: So it’s also on the agenda for this conference. The gap between what was promised in Paris, namely efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, and what the individual countries have stated as reduction targets must finally be closed. That’s the challenge now. You have to realize that the extent of global warming depends on the cumulative emissions. Because the lifetime of CO2 is so long, tens of thousands of years, it’s the total amount since the beginning of industrialization that counts.

So you can’t say: if we don’t reach the climate target this year, then maybe we’ll reach it in five or ten years. That just doesn’t work. If we don’t reach it quickly, we won’t be able to reach it at all, because then there will already be too much CO2 in the air. And like I said, that stays there for tens of thousands of years.

tagesschau.de: If we look at the general world situation, do you think the signs are good?

Rahmstorf: I believe that the states are quite willing to work together on an issue that is vital for the survival of all mankind. And interestingly, the International Energy Agency finds in its Energy Outlook that the Russian attack on Ukraine is likely to accelerate even the transition to renewable energy and the phase-out of fossil fuels.

tagesschau.de: Does that mean you’re looking forward to this year’s climate conference with hope?

Rahmstorf: Well, I don’t know what exactly one can expect from the conference. But I see positive developments – they just aren’t happening fast enough. However, the problem will not be solved by such a conference alone; there must also be the appropriate political pressure, in each country on its own government. For example, Fridays for Future has made the issue of climate a priority in many countries in recent years, including in German politics.

The interview was conducted by Anja Martini, science editor of tagesschau