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A new climate report says we must phase out fossil fuels — and ramp up CDR.
COP is always awash in new policy reports and scientific studies. It can be hard to figure out which are the most important. So I want to draw your attention to a particularly interesting report that came out in Dubai over the weekend. On Sunday, a consortium of climate science groups released this year’s "10 New Insights in Climate Science," a synopsis of the most recent climate research.
The report was written at the invitation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and it’s meant to keep negotiators up to date on climate science in between major reports from the larger Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Some IPCC authors also work on the "10 New Insights" report.) But it does something interesting that I want to highlight. Here were its top three insights:
A. Overshooting 1.5 degrees Celsius [of global temperature rise] is fast becoming inevitable. Minimizing the magnitude and duration of overshoot is essential.
B. A rapid and managed fossil fuel phase-out is required to stay within the Paris Agreement target range.
C. Robust policies are critical to attain the scale needed for effective carbon dioxide removal (CDR).
The big news here, of course, is the continued message that we are on track to rapidly exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of temperature rise, the level at which climate change will become especially disastrous. And probably the second biggest news is how the report — which was written before this week — appears to directly contradict recently surfaced remarks from Sultan Al-Jaber, the president of this COP and the head of the U.A.E.’s national oil company. In a video from November 21 first reported by The Guardian, Al-Jaber said that there was “no science out there, or no scenario out there” to support the idea that fossil fuels must be phased out to stay within the 1.5 degree Celsius limit.
While Al-Jaber denied saying those remarks this morning, the remarks have been a huge deal at COP for the past few days, as they drive at the tension of an oil executive leading an international climate conference.
But I wanted to focus on one more aspect of the report: its endorsement of carbon dioxide removal. The report says steadfastly that carbon dioxide removal is essential to meeting our climate goals, and that we need to invest more in CDR technologies to scale them up fast enough. But it pairs that insight with the idea that we also need to phase out fossil fuels.
Instead of treating carbon dioxide removal as a tissue to cover up emissions — which is the role it can sometimes play in public discussions — it pairs it with the need to phase out fossil fuels.
I asked Oliver Geden, an author of the new report and the head of climate research at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, about that pairing — and about whether mentioning CDR at all would seem to apologize for future fossil-fuel emissions. Here’s what he told me:
“The report directly says that CDR can only be seen as a complement to emissions reductions, not as a substitute to emissions reductions. Of course in the general climate debate, it often appears that proponents of some continued fossil fuel use then evoke CDR. But if you look at the IPCC scenarios, and then you look at national net-zero emissions scenarios, it usually comes only on top — counterbalancing a net-zero pathway, often on hard-to-abate residual emissions from industrialized sectors.”
I think this pairing — a phaseout of fossil fuels and a get-serious moment about CDR — is promising.
In non-COP news, it’s now official: More than 1 million electric cars and light-duty trucks were sold this year in the United States, the largest number ever.
This is Robinson Meyer’s fourth dispatch from Dubai, where he is attending COP28. Read the first here, the second here, and the third here. You can also sign up to receive the next one in your inbox with Heatmap Daily:
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When then-President-Elect Donald Trump nominated then-Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency in 2016, everyone right, left, and center knew exactly what that meant: The top law enforcement officer from one of the nation’s most conservative states and largest oil and gas producers would take aim at environmental rules implemented by the previous administration — rules he had often sued to overturn — and pave the way to increased fossil fuel production.
Trump’s pick this time around, former Long Island Congressman and New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, is more distinguished by his personal closeness to and support for the President-Reelect than he is by anything to do with the environment.
“It is an honor to join President Trump’s Cabinet as EPA Administrator. We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI,” Zeldin wrote on X soon after the New York Post broke the story. He added for good measure: “We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”
So, who is Lee Zeldin? In his four terms in Congress as the representative from New York’s easternmost congressional district on Long Island, Zeldin did not cut any particular profile on climate, environment, or energy issues, and was best known for his hawkish foreign policy position. His surprisingly close run against Kathy Hochul for New York’s governor’s mansion in 2022 was largely defined by crime, public safety, and the effect of Covid-19 restrictions on the state’s economic recovery.
To the extent Zeldin has defined himself on the environment beyond standard-issue Republican opposition to restrictions on fossil fuels and car purchasing, it’s been in the context of issues specific to his coastal Long Island constituency. During his 2018 congressional campaign, he pointed to his membership in the “shellfish and national estuary caucuses,” as well as federal programs for estuaries and his opposition to expanded offshore drilling exploration at an event hosted by the League of Conservation Voters.
Throughout his gubernatorial run, Zeldin assailed New York’s ban on fracking, which had been implemented by Hochul’s predecessor, Andrew Cuomo. He also criticized New York’s planned phase-out of sales of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035, as well as the proposal to institute congestion pricing in Lower Manhattan (an effort that died but may be brought back to life as part of Hochul’s scheme to protect Democratic congressional candidates on Long Island).
Cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder spent millions supporting Zeldin’s gubernatorial run, which The New York Timessuggested was motivated in part by the billionaire’s opposition to a cable from an offshore wind project that was planned to land in Wainscott, in the Hamptons, where Lauder has a home. The project, South Fork Wind, has been delivering power to New York since March of this year. Trump’s opposition to wind and offshore wind energy specifically has been a hallmark of his climate and energy policies.
“Congratulations! By saving the whales, you and @realDonaldTrump will establish a legacy for which Americans will feel grateful, decades and centuries into the future,” Michael Shellenberger, the anti-offshore-wind activist, wrote on X.
Since August, climate policy optimists have pointed to a letter sent by 18 Republican members of the House of Representatives to Speaker Mike Johnson imploring him to preserve the energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act.
As of January, however, some of them will no longer be Johnson’s problem.
Two signatories from newly redrawn House districts in New York, Marcus Molinaro and Anthony D’Esposito, are out of a job already, beaten by Democrats Josh Riley and Laura Gillen, respectively, each of whom received an endorsement from the New York League of Conservation Voters. Also definitively leaving the House is Utah Republican John Curtis, founder of the Conservative Climate Caucus, who is headed across the hall to the Senate.
Of the remaining 15 Republicans, four are in races that still have not been called, and three look to be in moderate-to-severe jeopardy. The current chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus, for instance, Iowa’s Mariannette Miller-Meeks, is leading challenger Christina Bohannan by just 0.2% — i.e. 799 votes — with all precincts reporting. The state has no automatic recount law, but candidates can request one at little to no expense when the margin is within 1%; a spokesperson from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office told a local TV network that if a request comes in, it’ll likely be after the results are certified early this week. As Heatmap’s Jeva Lange wrote in our climate election tracker, “Bohannan has attacked Miller-Meeks for slow-walking action on addressing climate change through her soft hand with the oil and gas industry,” and as of the final weeks of the race was out-raising Miller-Meeks by a 2-to-1 ratio, E&E News reported.
Another seat Democrats saw an opportunity to flip was Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, where letter signatory Juan Ciscomani has, as of this moment, squeaked out ahead of Democrat Kirsten Engel by 0.6% after appearing to trail for much of last week, though that could change again as more votes are counted. The news is worse for Oregon’s Lori Chavez-DeRemer, however, who with 87% of precincts reporting is behind Democrat Janelle Bynum in the vote by close to 3%.
If all these races were to be certified as they currently stand, that would leave 14 of the original group of 18 representatives still in Congress. If all the House races with results still outstanding fall into line per their current leanings, then Johnson will have just an 11-vote majority. That means this group of lawmakers can still derail the House’s agenda if they so choose, though just barely.
As for the three House seats Republicans have flipped so far, two are in Pennsylvania and one is in Michigan, both states Biden won in 2020. The victors in the two Pennsylvania races, campaigned against the “radical climate agenda” and the “climate crazies,” respectively. Yet the new representative from Michigan’s 7th district, Tom Barrett, has earned a score of 32% from the Michigan League of Conservation Voters during his time in the state Senate, making him a potential Conservative Climate Caucus recruit. The group’s current chair, Miller-Meeks, has a LCV score of just 12%.
So where does that leave us? About where we started, with the politics of repeal teetering on a wind turbine blade-edge. It’s one thing to campaign against the IRA, but the actual business of gutting is another thing entirely. On election night, my colleague Robinson Meyer cited a Washington Post analysis showing that Trump 2020 districts have received three times as much funding from Biden’s signature climate law as those that went the other way. Though that won’t necessarily convince every voter to welcome solar developments in their backyard, when the margins of victory are this slim, every tenth of a percent of the vote counts.
Voters don’t hate clean energy, but they also don’t want to work for it.
The re-election of Donald Trump all but assures that the next four years of climate policy will have to unfold at the local level. With a climate change denier who previously wreaked havoc on longstanding environmental regulations, opened wildlife refuges to drilling, and put the U.S. at odds with its international partners now set to return to the White House in January, the country will almost certainly fall far short of its 2030 emission reduction targets. But state and local policies can still achieve meaningful progress on their own: On Wednesday morning, green organizers like Climate Cabinet were already stressing that “it will now be up to state leaders to hold the line against Trump and to ensure continued progress toward clean energy.”
Will Americans defend and advance that progress, though? The results of several climate-related ballot measures that were put to vote Tuesday night are giving mixed signals.
On the one hand, there were a number of victories worth celebrating. Most significantly, Washington voters confirmed their state’s cap-and-invest carbon trading program, which pumps millions of dollars into local transit, environmental, and decarbonization projects. Voters across the country also signed off on creating climate- and conservation-related bonds and funds, including in Honolulu, Louisiana, Jefferson County, Iowa, Minnesota, and (likely) the state of California. Local transit-related measures also, on the whole, had a good night.
But there were some concerning rejections, too. Two counties on the southern Oregon coast expressed overwhelming (though non-binding) opposition to offshore wind development in their region, with some 80% of voters in Curry County signaling their objection. Two-thirds of voters in Berkeley, California — one of the most liberal cities in the country — also rejected what would have been a first-in-the-nation tax on natural gas in large buildings. In Washington, early results on an initiative that is still too close to call show voters on track to approve a measure that would bar cities, towns, and the state from “prohibiting, penalizing, or discouraging” gas appliances in buildings — “discouraging” being the operative, ill-defined, and all-encompassing word — threatening Seattle’s 2050 net-zero emissions target.
South Dakotans also rejected a bill that would have smoothed the permitting process for a carbon dioxide pipeline that would carry CO2 from ethanol plants to an injection well in North Dakota as a means of dealing with planet-warming emissions. Though CO2 pipelines are controversial and have “strange politics,” as Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo has written, the citizen-led backlash was often couched in the language of opposing out-of-state interests who were “going to make a buck from the future energy transition.”
My read of the night’s referenda and ballot measures is that voters largely seem willing to do the passive work of supporting climate and environmental policy (for instance by directing the use of property taxes or reconfirming a law already in place) and less willing to voluntarily take on some of the burden themselves, in the form of hosting new development in their communities or opting into transitions away from climate-polluting fuels. This isn’t terribly surprising — local battles over the energy transition are common and frequent enough that we have a whole weekly newsletter here at Heatmap addressing them — but it also suggests that there isn’t nearly enough momentum to prevent potentially catastrophic backsliding under four more years of Trump.
There is good news, though. Local policy is often nimbler and more responsive than state- or federal-level policy. It’s also something anyone can get involved in, and there is presently a wide-open opportunity to convince Americans to embrace a clean energy economy and build things. The seemingly total failure of the current administration to capitalize on the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act, however, does mean that climate, transit, environmental justice, decarbonization, and conservation organizers and activists will have their work cut out for them in the next years to come.
But it isn’t impossible, even if it is uphill sledding. As Climate Cabinet’s Caroline Spears put it in her Wednesday morning note, “It’s time to go back to our roots, dig deep, and rebuild our democracy and climate progress from the local level up.”