by Jean Jouzel
At Copenhagen the large emerging countries made promises along the lines of the Bali commitments and even a bit beyond. The proposed plans are significant for China (40–45% reduction of emissions by point of GDP in 2020 compared with that of 2005), India (a similar commitment to that of China but at 20–25%), Brazil (decrease of 35–40% of emissions compared to the level foreseen for 2020), and Indonesia (decrease of 26% compared to the level foreseen for 2020). The only developed countries to commit to the Bali roadmap were Norway (decrease of 40% compared to the 1990 level) and Japan (total decrease of 25%). But this was not the case for the United States (decrease of 17% compared to the 2005 level or a decrease of 3% compared to the 1990 level, to be confirmed by legislative decision), or for Europe, which remained committed to a decrease of 20%, whereas a voluntary position taken on an objective at 30% would perhaps have helped unblock negotiations.
We strongly doubt that the revision of the Copenhagen agreement anticipated in 2015 will enable the objective of a warming limited to 2°C compared to the preindustrial climate to be upheld. This agreement was definitely adopted the following year in Cancun, but the 2011 Climate Conference held in Durban was again extremely disappointing. The second phase of the Kyoto Protocol, scheduled to start in 2013, will be launched but has been endorsed by only Europe, Australia, and a few other countries (representing about 15% of the global emissions). On the positive side, the idea of a platform to be completed in 2015 was launched at Durban with the goal of beginning in 2020 that would encompass 100% of the world’s emissions. It has also been decided to trigger a process to close the gap between emissions anticipated in 2020 and emissions compatible with the 2°C target. This process will be made in light of the conclusions of the fifth IPCC report, which, for scientific aspects (Working Group I), will be published in 2013; the reports by the two other groups and the synthesis report will appear in 2014. Regarding the scientific approach that concerns us most directly, no article that has appeared since the publication of the fourth report seems to challenge its conclusions, which foresee that there will be an unavoidable warming that will become increasingly difficult (if not impossible) to control if we delay the implementation of an ambitious policy first of stabilization and then of decrease in greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale.
A Necessary Adaptation
The control of emissions must thus necessarily be accompanied by measures for adapting to climate change, which it seems impossible to avoid. Societies have long experience with managing impacts connected to meteorological or climatic events, but they will face a new situation in the coming decades. What is more, vulnerability to climate change can be exacerbated by other challenges resulting, for example, from current climatic anomalies: poverty and unequal access to resources, food uncertainty, globalization, conflicts, or certain illnesses. It is clear that the ability to adapt is strictly connected to socioeconomic development and that it is unequally distributed among societies and within them; but even societies that have a high capacity for adaptation remain vulnerable to climate change, to the variability of the climate, and to extreme climatic events. In fact, many options for adaptation are available in different sectors: water resources, agricultural practices, infrastructures and habitat (in particular in the coastal regions), human health, tourism, and transportation.
France has a national strategy for adaptation to climate change, one developed within the framework of a large commission led by the Observatoire National sur les Effets du Réchauffement Climatique (ONERC), which implicates various sectors of activity and civil society.5 This strategy is organized around four great goals: to act in the interest of public security and health; to reduce inequality before risks; to limit the costs and derive potential benefits; and to preserve the natural patrimony. More than forty recommendations have been formulated that touch on the development of knowledge and observation, on information and sensitization, on control, and on mechanisms of financing. They also concern the prevention of risks of which a large number must be reexamined, as well as water resources and various sectors already cited: health, biodiversity, agriculture, energy and industry, transportation, building and habitats, tourism, banking, and insurance. Finally, they concern various geographic realms: the city, coast and sea, mountains and forests.
Neither on the global level nor on European or national levels does adaptation constitute a panacea for climate warming; it must accompany measures to improve and not to substitute. Many inhabitants of the planet, in particular those living in regions with temperate climates, can selfishly say to themselves that by 2050 they will be able to confront climate warming using only adaptation measures. This would be doubly selfish since by the end of the century adaptation will be increasingly difficult, even impossible, and not just for future generations but for young people who are already alive; as we have seen, a certain number of regions will be henceforth vulnerable to climate change. Fortunately that selfishness does not seem to be common and France, and all of Europe, proposes, at least in writing, an ambitious policy aimed at a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
The “Grenelle de l’environnement”
In France since the beginning of the 1990s, many reports examining the various aspects of climate warming have been written by the Académie des sciences, by various government committees, by various associations or interest groups, or following parliamentary initiatives; other reports dealing more specifically with energy explicitly take into account the climatic dimension. Moreover, the law of July 13, 2005, established the direction of France’s energy policies and defined its strategy in the battle against an increase in the greenhouse effect: “The struggle against climate change is a priority of the energy policy which aims to diminish by 3% per year on average the emission of greenhouse gases in France. Consequently, the State is developing a ‘climate plan,’ updated every two years, presenting all the national actions in place to fight against climate change. Furthermore, in that fight, which must be conducted by all the States, France supports the definition of an objective of dividing by two the global emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, which necessitates taking into account the differences in consumption among countries, a division by four or five of those emissions for developed countries.”
This is the Factor 4 concept. In France it was introduced by Jean-Pierre Raffarin, prime minister at the time, during the opening session of a plenary meeting of the IPCC held in Paris on February 19, 2003, and has since then been discussed in various reports.6
The objectives of the Grenelle de l’environnement, the result of a commitment undertaken by Nicolas Sarkozy with ecologist associations, are much broader since they aim to take into account all environmental issues. The initiative was launched on May 18, 2007, by Alain Juppé, then minister of Ecology, Development, and Durable Management (Médad); Jean-Louis Borloo assumed responsibility for it when he succeeded him to that post as state minister. The name “Grenelle” harkens back to the Grenelle social agreements of May 1968, whose format that of the environment more or less adopted in aiming to gather all those involved around one table. In this spirit, each working group was composed of eight members from five groups: the state, local groups, employees, professional leaders, and nongovernmental environmentalist organizations and professionals. Six discussion groups were initially put in place, four dedicated to the great environmental themes—climate-energy, biodiversity and natural resources, health and environment, durable agriculture—and two cross-groups, one dealing with institutions and governance, the other with ecological development and competition. Then two subgroups were added, one devoted to genetically modified organisms and the other to waste.
One of us, Jean Jouzel, was called upon to preside, jointly with the economist Nicholas Stern, over the first working group called “Fight against climate changes and master the demand for energy.”7 Seen from the inside, we can testify to the excellent mind-sets and the quality of the contributions and discussion—as well as to the obvious enthusiasm, wh
ich was the mark of these meetings organized from July to September 2007 with a view toward developing proposals. Those involved locally (through regional meetings) and the general public (through the Internet) were then able to react to the measures proposed. Then those measures were discussed during a round table on October 24 and 25, 2007, and whose conclusions were then drawn at the Élysée by Nicolas Sarkozy, who committed himself to ensure “that all the specific, concrete, and consensual conclusions can be put to work.”
This working group very quickly assumed the Factor 4 objective and adopted the intermediary stages set for 2020 by the European Council: reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, or 30% in the case of what was promised by other industrialized countries; lowering the consumption of energy by 20%; and using renewable energy for 20% of the total energy used. The discussions were not always easy, but they were constructive enough so that we developed a set of measures which, if they are put into place in a voluntary and effective way, will be able to put France on the trajectory defined on a European level and then, we strongly hope, on that of Factor 4. All these measures8 were agreed upon by the majority of members of the group, even if some have been met with reservations or opposition; the only point of extreme disagreement was the future of nuclear plants.
More than thirty operational committees were established to prepare legislative documents that were examined by legislators in the law called Grenelle I, which was voted on in 2008. A second law, Grenelle 2, voted on in 2010, concerns more directly the application of measures to be put into place and part of them already put into effect. We must note that these only partially represent the ambition of the proposals made in 2007. But we retain the hope that France will continue to be a driving force in the future in the preservation of our environment, and more specifically in the fight against the greenhouse effect. Just after his election in 2012, the new president, François Hollande, launched a national debate on energy (“La transition Energétique”) and plans to reactivate the Grenelle de l’environnement under a slightly different format. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
PART FOUR
THE POLES AND THE PLANET
CHAPTER 16
The Crucial Place of Research
In this book we have traveled the white planet, the one formed by the ice, which for the most part is found in the polar regions. We have gone deep within the inland ice sheets, in Antarctica and Greenland, to discover the wealth of the glacial archives. The warning sign we have been given cannot leave us indifferent: in this new era, the Anthropocene, humans mark the environment of their planet with their imprint and above all the climate in which they live. Our message aims to help convince citizens and policymakers of the urgency of the measures that must be taken to respond to the challenge of climate warming and the degradation of our environment because we must act and not simply endure. In immediate terms, the scientists of the International Polar Year have listened to the ice, including the fragile shelves, which has an impact on our near and more distant future. We will first talk about research before describing the rise in pollution, then we will look at the connections between the poles, the planet, and our societies.
We will return to our white planet by discussing a theme that connects them, that of the growing influence of research. We will recall the importance of the contribution of fundamental research, essential to an understanding of the mechanisms that rule our climate, to predict its evolution and to provide a correct evaluation of the uncertainties associated with it. The quality of this fundamental research and the effort led by the scientific community to construct, through the IPCC reports, an easily accessible collective assessment have, moreover, constituted a point of departure for the process undertaken to fight against climate warming.
We would like to point to the multidisciplinary nature of the research concerned with climate change around which mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and geochemists, and specialists in the biosphere and in past climates, come together; when we see the impacts of the warming to come, this should also mobilize ecologists and specialists in biodiversity, public health, and agriculture, as well as researchers in the human and social sciences and economists.
We should recognize that the objective of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and mastering energy constitutes a true challenge, whether on the horizon of 2020 or 2050. Climate specialists can contribute to that goal by reducing the uncertainties surrounding the evolution of extremes and climatic variability, the carbon cycle, the sensitivity of the climate, the risks of surprises, the regional characteristics of climate change, and the different impacts that will be associated with them. Specialists in the human and social sciences, economists, and legal experts will play a key role in implementing measures aimed on the one hand at stabilizing the greenhouse effect at an acceptable level and on the other at adapting to the climate warming with which we are faced. Added to this, of course, is the need to develop the technology necessary to reach the set objectives in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and energy mastery throughout all the implicated sectors: transportation, energy, housing and urban planning, waste, agriculture, and sylviculture.
The scientific community involved in the study of snow and ice provides an increasingly important contribution to a knowledge of our climate, alongside specialists of the dynamics and of the chemistry of the atmosphere, oceanographers, and specialists in the biosphere. This contribution involves sea ice, glaciers, ice caps, large ice sheets, and even permafrost; our community is concerned with their past, present, and future evolution. The growing importance of this contribution is also well recognized on the international level because, since 2000, the World Research Program on the climate has made the study of the interactions between the climate and the cryosphere one of its beacon programs, the Climate and Cryosphere (CLIC). Furthermore, the evolution of our white planet is at the heart of a number of potential repercussions of climate change that affect sea level, water resources, geopolitical issues, and aspects tied to the fauna and flora, tourism, and even the future of populations and the economy in certain regions around the Arctic Ocean.
Beyond a better knowledge of the evolution of our climate and the various impacts of climate change, the polar regions offer data for many other areas of research, from the observation of the interior of the Earth or the cosmos to following the composition of the atmosphere and the way in which the ozone hole will be reduced in the coming decades. The research opportunities are enormous, and the entire community of polar scientists became strongly involved, between 2007 and 2009, to ensure the success of the Fourth International Polar Year (IPY).
A Short History of the Polar Years
This IPY follows three initiatives taken to explore and study the confines of the Earth. The first took place in 1882–83: twelve countries organized thirteen expeditions to the Arctic where they benefited from the data collected from fifteen observatories.
In 1932–33 the World Meteorological Organization was interested in the poles not only for climatology but also with regard to the magnetic field and northern lights. Forty countries participated in it; a network of stations were established in Arctic and sub-Antarctic regions.
The International Geophysical Year (IGY) 1957–58 was then proposed by physicists. When proposing the IGY, physicists had the idea to benefit from a peak in solar activity to study the connections likely to exist between the Sun and terrestrial phenomena, such as the magnetic field and northern lights, and between the Sun and the gases present in the upper atmosphere. The IGY used new techniques developed during World War II and benefited from the launch of the first satellites. That polar year was remarkable for several reasons. For the first time, under the patronage of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) and science academies, twelve countries set up forty-eight stations in Antarctica, four of which were in the interior of the continent. Observatories and fieldwork would enable scientists to study the atmosphere as well as the ice sheet. During the cold war the IGY was a hu
ge scientific success and led governments to sign the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, which dedicated that continent to peace and research—a status that remains unique in a world that is always agitated by many conflicts.
That status owes a great deal to the involvement of scientists who, at the initiative of the ICSU, established the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SCAR) in 1958. In the beginning this committee brought together twelve countries; it now includes forty and plays an essential role in the impressive development of research in Antarctica. The situation is different and more complex in the Arctic. Although each of the countries bordering the North Pole (Canada, Denmark, the United States, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden) has over time set up observatories there, the conflict between Americans and Russians impacted international collaboration throughout the cold war. It was a speech by Gorbachev, which in 1987 led to the disarmament treaty, that finally opened the path to broad cooperation that a bit later was solidified by the creation of the Committee for Sciences in the Arctic; here, too, research was integral to a more political structure, the Arctic Council, which was created in 1996.
During the IGY the launching of the first satellites—Sputnik, then Explorer 1 and 3—enabled the discovery of the Van Allen Belt, as well as an understanding of the formation of southern and boreal lights, by demonstrating that the particles of solar wind are channeled in polar regions by force lines of the magnetic field. The impact of these high-energy particles with the gases of our atmosphere leads to the formation of high-altitude lights, between 100 and 1,000 kilometers high, visible on a clear night in the form of wonderful sheets. Our planet resides inside this shield.