As the US exits the Paris Agreement, what are the consequences for Planet Earth?

Donald Trump has fulfilled an election pledge and withdrawn the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change. His fans note that Trump is merely fulfilling a campaign promise, his critics argue that – by putting US interests first – he is cutting Uncle Sam’s nose off to spite his face and threatening the entire planet. The US joins Syria and Nicaragua as the only three nations not to sign up to the agreement.

Paris is no panacea to the planet’s degradation. The major commitments include reaching a global peak in C02 emissions as soon as possible, before taking active measures to bring them down, with an ambition to maintain the average global temperature increase to below 2 degrees centigrade and no more than 450ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. The agreement also proposed increased payments to less developed countries to $100bn p.a to assist the reduction in carbon emissions.

Mr Trump, president of a nation that contributes 15% of all global CO2 emissions, accused other countries of cheating the system and faking their emissions credentials. He promised to renegotiate a ‘fairer’ deal to assist US workers.

Meanwhile, the planet remains in serious trouble. Professor Stephen Hawking has said that the pace of degradation is such that we need to find another planet to colonise within 100 years.

Dividing the earth into its four boundaries, atmosphere, forest, water and land, the picture is unremittingly grim.

In the troposphere, that part of the atmosphere nearest the earth, CO2 emissions have reached 442ppm, around 150% greater than they were before the industrial revolution. The average temperature of the planet in February 2016 was 1.21 degrees above the 20th Century average for that month, of 12.1 degrees.

Turning to forests, the area of land covered by forest has fallen from 16m km2 to 6m. Rainforests have shrunk by 52% since 1950. Animal extinction rates are 1000 times faster than natural declines. Four out of six great ape species are critically endangered, and the number of elephants is down from 8m to 450,000.

For our rivers and oceans, 75% fish stocks are overexploited and 90% of whales and large fish have disappeared since 1900. There are 405 dead zones in coastal areas and 60% of the worlds 276 river basins lack any kind of cooperative management.

20% coral reefs have been destroyed and 20% degraded. The oceans contain seven great gyres of plastic, and oceanic water is slowly becoming acidic: 25-50% of CO2 dissolves into the oceans over 20-200 years. Between 1900 and 2010, seven times more fresh water has been drawn, with 60% river water diverted for human use. There are nine aquifer hotspots around the globe at risk of running out of water altogether.

On the land, 40%+ of agricultural land is degraded. Topsoil in the Iowa farmbelt has halved to 15cm and the US is losing topsoil 10 times faster than it should to be sustaining, while China and India are losing topsoil 30-40 times faster. There are 121m tones of fixed nitrogen in the soil, twice the natural rate. Landfill has reached 1.3bn tones per annum, and in the US alone 35bn plastic bottles of water are thrown away yearly. The US recycles 1-2%. Nobody knows how long it takes plastics to degrade but it could be one million years.

Governments should, and must, do more to combat this existential threat to all our lives, but the sums are pitiful. National governments spend an average 0.4% GDP on the environment. The 2017 US EPA budget is 0.04% of GDP. The EU budgets 0.2% of GDP on environmental protection and pollution abatement

How much should we be spending? The United Nations recommends an eightfold increase to 0.5% global GDP on biodiversity protection, and 1.5% GDP on environment and the poor. Lord Stern said we needed to spend 2.0% GDP on climate change and 2.0% GDP on sustainable development goals (Global Spending Watch).

The environmental status of Earth presents an existential threat to our very existence, yet we are doing almost nothing to combat it. In the Second World War, the UK spent 53% of its GDP defending its existence. The USA spent 41%.

Frankly, if we don’t grip this, Stephen Hawking’s apocalyptic threat will become reality. By 2050:

CO2 emissions will reach 473 ppm in the troposphere (NOAA)
The rainforest will gone in 50/100 years, (NASA/Hadley Centre)
Animals 28% extinct (International Union for the Conservation of Nature)
50% all molecular forms of life extinct by 2100 (EO Wilson)
Five times more plastic than fish in the oceans (WEF)
70% coral reefs will be dead (NOAA)
50% increase in fresh water exploitation (McKinsey)
Topsoil gone in 60 years (UN/FAO)
2.5 times increase in landfill to 3bn tons
People trapped in slums double to 2bn

Can we really afford to let this happen?

Note: I am indebted to Angus Forbes, founder of the Commons Floor, for the information in this article. He gave a recent talk on the subject and this is my report of that talk. Next week I’ll discuss Angus’ views on how we stop the planet’s environmental destruction.

The Commons Floor is a project aiming to get the financial services industry involved in the protection of the ecological and societal commons, i.e. a healthy planet and eradication of slums. The vision is for the financial services industry, as the largest white collar transnational industry in the world, to build the best intelligence network that is working to further the cause of the commons.