Dread or hope at COP27?

Ask two different climate experts at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt (COP27) to characterize their feelings about the future, and you may get quite different answers. “We are seeing more progress than we ever imagined,” says one, while the other laments that we are heading full-tilt like lemmings over the cliff. They can’t both be right, can they?

In fact, both have ample evidence on their side, and only by balancing the two perspectives will we muster the sense of urgency that the climate crisis requires.

To inspire hope, the first expert might point out that the cost of solar energy has fallen by 99% since President Jimmy Carter put panels on the White House roof in 1979, and that 2022 is shaping up to be a record year for renewables. Sales of electric vehicles are growing so fast that the internal combustion engine is already in permanent decline. In Indonesia, the rate of primary forest loss has fallen for five years in a row, owing to an innovative partnership between the government, business, civil society, and technology experts.

Moreover, nearly 100 countries – representing over 75% of global emissions – have committed to achieving net-zero emissions by mid-century. And the United States just made a massive down payment on its green future with the Inflation Reduction Act, which could mobilize an estimated $800 billion or more in climate-related investments.

But lest we come to think that we are almost out of the woods, our gloomy expert would point out that with just 1.1° Celsius of warming, climate change is already generating unprecedented costs. Disastrous flooding across Pakistan this summer left one-third of the country underwater, and southwestern North America is suffering its worst drought in 1,200 years. In China, drought has crippled hydroelectric power production and forced factories to shut down. The Great Barrier Reef has now suffered six mass bleaching events since 1998. And in East Antarctica, where temperatures one day this year were a whopping 38.5°C above normal, a massive ice shelf has just collapsed – the first such event in at least half a century.

Making matters worse, Russia’s war in Ukraine has triggered a scramble for fossil fuels, and corporations, banks, and governments are finding it harder than expected to deliver on their climate promises. We are heading toward temperature increases well above the Paris climate agreement’s 2°C threshold. A planet that hot would be scarcely recognizable to us today.

An important new report from the Systems Change Lab – an initiative organized by the World Resources Institute, the Bezos Earth Fund, and its partners – sheds light on both these realities, and points toward a new way of thinking about change. On the side of pessimism, the report shows that none of the 40 sectoral transformations required for addressing the climate crisis this decade is yet on track.