Trump can’t stop global action on climate (he can’t even stop American action)

Even the Paris agreement reflects this move towards voluntarism: unlike previous global climate treaties, it requires each country to put forward a pledge, but allows the detail of the pledge to be ‘nationally determined’. This allows nations to choose the actions and opportunities that suit them best – most are seeking to boost their economy through the creation of new industries and jobs, improve public health and become less dependent on energy imports.

It seems to be working – the renewables stream has become a flood. As the Financial Times’ respected environment correspondent Pilita Clark reported in May:

“After years of hype and false starts, the shift to clean power has begun to accelerate at a pace that has taken the most experienced experts by surprise. Even leaders in the oil and gas sector have been forced to confront an existential question: will the 21st century be the last one for fossil fuels? It is early, but the evidence is mounting. Wind and solar parks are being built at unprecedented rates, threatening the business models of established power companies. Electric cars that were hard to even buy eight years ago are selling at an exponential rate, in the process driving down the price of batteries that hold the key to unleashing new levels of green growth.”

It’s estimated that:

• Almost three-quarters of the $10.2 trillion that will be invested globally in new power technology by 2040 will go to renewables, as the cost of solar and wind power plummets and the number of electric cars on our roads soars.
• Solar is already as cheap as coal in many industrialised nations, including Germany and the US, and the cost of solar electricity is expected to fall a further 66% by 2040.
• Over the same timescale, the cost of onshore wind is expected to drop by 47% and offshore wind by 71%.
• The perennial problem of storing energy from renewables for use in peak times is being addressed by the development of utility-scale batteries. According to Morgan Stanley energy analyst Stephen Byrd:

“Numerous key markets have reached an inflection point where renewables will have become the cheapest form of new power generation by 2020, a dynamic we see spreading to nearly every country we cover.”

The encouraging news just keeps on coming:

• In July, France’s environment minister Nicolas Hulot revealed a plan to ban all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040, and said France will no longer use coal to produce electricity after 2022.
• The parliament of Catalonia has recently passed a law aimed at reducing emissions by 65% by 2040 and 100% by 2050. Businesses will be taxed $10 for each ton of carbon dioxide emitted rising to $30 in 2025.
• Norway is the latest country to endorse Under2, a global coalition of national and sub-national governments committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions toward net-zero by 2050, which now includes 177 jurisdictions on six continents that collectively represent more than 16% of the global population and 39% of the global economy.
• Many nations are meeting environmental targets that once seemed optimistically ambitious well ahead of schedule².

There’s a long way to go before we can say we’re living in a world powered by renewable energy. But it seems like the tipping point has been reached. Investors and innovators are getting filthy rich; the technology is making exponential leaps forward; and the hard work’s no longer being left to national governments, which have struggled to balance the green agenda against competing interests and the pressures of domestic electoral politics.

As Tom Hale, an environmental policy expert at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government, says:

“The commitments made by sub-national governments and private companies, if delivered, could remove as much carbon from the atmosphere by 2030 as the 190 pledges nation states made in Paris. That could potentially close as much as two thirds of the remaining “emissions gap” we face to get the world onto a trajectory to limit global warming to two degrees or lower this century.”

The momentum is surely now unstoppable, and in ways that should please both left and right. In the end, it won’t be state enforcement that will save our climate, or Al Gore’s latest film on the subject, An Inconvenient Sequel, which has just opened in the UK³. Instead a healthy coalition of public, private and voluntary has come together out of commercial self-interest, community spirit and political imperative.

Thankfully, for the planet’s sake, it doesn’t look like anyone, including the current, thankfully temporary occupant of the White House, can get in the way.

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Chris is a former head of comment at the Daily Telegraph and is Scotland Editor of the New Statesman. He believes Britain badly needs a new party structure and a proportional voting system.

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