The significance of 1.5 degrees Celsius

Air date: 6/21/23
Record date: 5/25/23

 

Climate change is in the news just about every day now, but if you're not up to speed on the latest climate science and want to know where we're headed as a planet, a good place to start would be the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s 6th Assessment Report, which was published in March of 2023. As the planet rapidly approaches the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold for global warming, there's a growing sense of urgency among those who believe environmental disaster awaits us on the other side. In this podcast episode, we discuss the IPCC's report and what it and the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold means for businesses.

Guest

David Edsey
Climate Director
Zurich North America

David Edsey is Zurich North America's Climate Director, responsible for identifying and developing insurance products and service solutions to address climate change mitigation and adaptation and providing thought leadership on climate change risk, mitigation and resiliency strategies. David has been with Zurich for 15 years, recently as Product Manager on the Property Technical Underwriting Team and prior to that as Senior Coverage Counsel with ZNA’s Claims Legal group. Prior to joining Zurich, David worked for over a dozen years as a litigator and coverage counsel at several Chicago area law firms representing the insurance industry. David graduated from the DePaul University with a bachelor’s degree in English and secondary education. He also received a juris doctor degree from Loyola University Chicago.

Host

David Hilgen
Future of Risk podcast co-host

David is Editorial Content Manager for Zurich North America, working primarily with the company’s brand journalism site, Future of Risk. In addition to co-hosting the Future of Risk podcast, he works on external communications in support of Zurich’s sustainability efforts, manages media interactions with Zurich spokespeople and writes articles and opinion pieces. He joined Zurich in 2015 and has more than 20 years’ experience in insurance communications. He previously worked as a newspaper writer and editor and, briefly, as a waiter. His hobbies include tennis, bicycling and listening to jazz music. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and a dog named Jazz.

Episode transcript

DAVID HILGEN: Climate change is in the news just about every day now, but if you're not up to speed on the latest climate science and want to know where we're headed as a planet, a good place to start would be the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, which was published in March 2023. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change compiled the report based on the content of three working group assessment reports and three special reports. As the planet rapidly approaches the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold for global warming, there's a growing sense of urgency among those who believe environmental disaster awaits us on the other side. Welcome to Future of Risk presented by Zurich North America. I'm David Hilgen. Our guest today should be familiar to dedicated followers of the podcast. David Edsey is Climate Director, Sustainability Underwriting for Zurich North America. He joins us for the third time to discuss climate change, the latest IPCC report and the significance of 1.5 degree Celsius. David, welcome to the podcast.

DAVID EDSEY: Thanks, David, and thanks for having me.

HILGEN: David, I've been reading about the impacts of climate change for years. So, I like to think I know a few things, but the IPCC report is densely packed with information. For those who haven't read it yet, and it is available online, can you attempt to unpack it for us?

EDSEY: I'll give it a try, David. First of all, it's probably, worth emphasizing the authoritativeness of this report.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: It's very well respected. The IPCC has been around now for 35 years. It was established by the World Meteorological Society and the United Nations Environmental Program.

HILGEN: OK.

EDSEY: In this latest sixth assessment report, it's approved by 195 countries, as well as thousands of climate scientists and policy experts from across the globe. So, what it represents is really a broad consensus on climate science. As you mentioned, this is a synthesis report. There's really nothing new. It takes all of the reports from the entire sixth assessment cycle, which has been going on for about five years. It summarizes them into this final sixth assessment synthesis report.

HILGEN: OK.

EDSEY: So, this is going be the last report until we get to the seventh assessment reports, which will begin to be assembled in another five to seven years. This report is pretty dense. There's no way I can unpack the whole thing on this podcast but let me try to summarize a few of the main points. Again, we've all heard this, but I think one of the key messages is that the global surface temperatures now, have risen to 1.1 degrees Celsius above where they were about 150 years ago.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: That is 1.1 degree, and that's about 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit. That's an average across the whole planet. So, it's actually 1.59 degrees Celsius higher over land, and about 0.88 degrees Celsius higher over the ocean. So, most of us live on the land, so we're experiencing that 1.59 degrees Celsius increase. So why has it risen? It is because humans have emitted about 2,400 gigatons that billions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1850, and 42% of those emissions have occurred just since 1990.

HILGEN: Wow.

EDSEY: And of course, those emissions are largely from the burning of fossil fuels and humans have caused other greenhouse gases to be emitted at volumes that were never seen before in the pre-industrial world other than carbon dioxide and that's namely methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: So as a result of the concentration of these greenhouse gases in our atmosphere they're higher than they've been in millions of years.

HILGEN: OK.

EDSEY: CO2 is now present at 410 parts per million. Before industrial times, it was pretty steady at about 280 parts per million.

HILGEN: OK.

EDSEY: Methane and nitrous oxide are also now present in the atmosphere at much higher concentrations than any time in the last about 800,000 years. So, it's this increased concentration of gases in our atmosphere that's heating our planet. It’s worth noting that, just for perspective, the depth of our atmosphere where most of these greenhouse gases are retained, it's only about five to 10 miles high.

HILGEN: OK.

EDSEY: So, as my, I have a nephew that works at NASA.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: He gave me this analogy. It's kind of like a tissue paper wrapped around a bowling ball. That’s about the thickness of our atmosphere. So, the point is that, you know, we've been emitting all of these greenhouse gases into the air, and it's not limitless. It's actually very thin and now you know we're starting to pay the price.

HILGEN: That's interesting. I'm now looking for my bowling ball and some tissue just to make real that analogy. It's an interesting analogy. By the way, I have a nephew-in-law who works at SpaceX. He’s a rocket scientist in the family.

EDSEY: We will have to get them together.

HILGEN: <laugh>. So again, interesting analogy. Does the IPCC report address how much more carbon we can emit before reaching dangerous limits?

EDSEY: Yes, it does and that's referred to as our carbon budget.

HILGEN: OK.

EDSEY: So, we hear a lot of talk about keeping global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2 degrees Celsius, which is about 2.7 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: So, what the IPCC report does address, is the carbon budget to keep global warming within those limits. That's really that 1.5 to 2 degrees. That’s what climate scientists say. We need to keep global warming to, if we're going to keep life in our planet, recognizable, to what we're used to. So, climate scientists have determined that for every thousand gigatons of CO2 emitted, and again, that's billions of tons. Global temperatures will rise about 0.45 degrees Celsius, or 0.8-degree Fahrenheit. So, for context, global CO2 emissions have been hovering around 40 gigatons for the last 10 years. They're starting to level off a little bit at 40 gigatons. I mean, they've been going up to that amount.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: You know, for the last 150 years we still haven't started to go down, but at least we started to level off a little bit. So, co2 remains in the atmosphere for between 300 to a thousand years. So that's why scientists talk about this carbon budget because CO2 stays up there so long, there's a limit to how much carbon we can keep burning until it gets really hot down here. So, the IPCC report says that beginning in 2020, the remaining carbon budget to keep global warming beneath 1.5 degrees Celsius, is 500 gigatons. To keep it beneath two degrees Celsius, it's 1,150 gigatons.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: So, if you take 40 gigatons a year, if we stay on that trajectory, we'll hit 1.5 degrees of warming at about 2032 and 2 degrees in about 2050. Of course, another big variable are these other greenhouse gases methane, nitrous oxide, and the fluorinated gases. I mean those gases are much more potent at trapping heat than co2. I think methane is like 28 times more potent than co2, and nitrous oxide is 265 times more potent than co2. So, the amount of those gases can also cause a lot of variability and when we will hit the 1.5 degree or two degrees Celsius of warming.

HILGEN: Yeah, and by methane, we're talking about a lot of sources, including the cows who are passing gas in the field. One of the sources.

EDSEY: That is absolutely correct, David, I think methane is about 60% of the methane is from human causes. About half of that is from agriculture in including cows.

HILGEN: Yeah. So, the World Meteorological Organization is now predicting though that the world will reach 1.5 degrees Celsius mark by 2027. I'm not sure how accurate that prediction is but it’s well ahead of prior predictions. If that should happen though. What's next?

EDSEY: Yeah. That news just broke within the last two weeks.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: The good news is that what the WMO is predicting is only temporary. So, what they're saying is it due to El Nino weather patterns that are going to be developing later this year.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: The continued greenhouse gas emissions that there is a 66% chance that the 1.5 degrees threshold will be reached within one of the next five years. It’s not going to be permanent. So, we may hit that 1.5 degrees warming in say three years, but then we'll fall back down to maybe, you know, 1.2 or 1.1 where we are right now.

HILGEN: OK.

EDSEY: Another study, however, recently published just at the beginning of this year, it was in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They use climate models and AI in their research and they found that the world is on track to reach 1.5 of global warming by the early 2030s.

HILGEN: OK.

EDSEY: That's pretty consistent with the numbers I was just talking about earlier with the carbon budget, but to your question about the impacts.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: I mean, we're already seeing pretty severe impacts at 1.1 degree of warming.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: You know, sea levels have risen about eight inches already above 1900 levels and is expected to rise another foot by 2100. We’re also seeing more intense rainfall, bigger and wetter hurricanes, droughts, melting polar ice caps, glaciers, mountain ice caps are melting, and that's resulting in shrinking of inland lakes and rivers. Yeah, you know, Lake Mead being the example I think that we're all aware of, and of course more extreme heat waves. So as warming gets beyond where we are now or even beyond 1.5 or two degrees, scientists warn of these tipping points that may be irreversible within the next hundreds or thousands of years. Some of those tipping points are things like species extinction and biodiversity loss. You think about all the creatures on this planet. They’re here as a result of thousands or millions of years of evolution to adapt to a life on a planet that has a relatively or had a relatively stable climate for hundreds of thousands of years. Now, all of a sudden, within the last 50 years, climate's thrown out of whack, it's getting warmer, and a lot of those creatures aren't going to survive if it gets warmer than 1.5 or two degrees Celsius. You know, other tipping points are ecosystem loss. I mean, particularly forests, loss of coral reefs.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: Per the IPCC report, at 1.5-degree warming, we are going to lose 70 to 90% of coral reefs.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: At two degrees warming, more than 99% of coral reefs will die off. So that's pretty scary when you think about, you know, coral reefs really being the place where so many fish and sea creatures are present.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: You get away from those corals and the coral reefs are basically the rainforests of the ocean.

HILGEN: Yeah. That's a good way of putting it.

EDSEY: Other tipping points the Antarctic ice sheets, the Greenland ice sheets are likely to be lost past two to three degrees warming. Sea level rise, of course, is going continue to remain high for thousands of years. Of course, you know, the more frequent wildfires, longer wildfire season, more extreme rainfall, intense heat waves and droughts.

HILGEN: In addressing climate change and global warming. Where should we be focusing our efforts on now? What things can we be doing now that will get the best bang for our buck, as they say?

EDSEY: Yeah. Well, to answer your question, I really have to give a plug to one of my favorite NGOs and that's Project Drawdown.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: Because that's what they do and you can find them at drawdown.org.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: So, Project Drawdown are scientists, and other professionals that have answered your question, David, about how can we get the best bang for our buck as far as mitigating climate change? They start with the science and they look at what are the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions? And then they list, the 50 or so optimal climate solutions, and they describe them and also provide what are the potential reductions in greenhouse gases achievable through this solution over the next 30 years or so.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: So just to highlight some of the things we can do immediately that will have a positive effect, a very significant positive effect on climate change. I mean, first the restoration and protection of tropical rainforests, and also temperate forests.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: Our rainforests are really the primary carbon sinks on our planet. I mean, they sequester billions of tons of carbon dioxide. Over the recent decades, they have really suffered, extensive clearing fragmentation, depletion of the biodiversity, largely from making room for agriculture and from mining.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: One of the best solutions is really to restore, and replant those forests, to protect the existing forests. That also has great co-benefits to, to the biodiversity in those areas, and also it benefits the local populations. Another immediate thing that we can do that will have a great effect on reducing global warming is methane leak management. As I mentioned earlier, methane is much more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat about 28 more times. One of the good things about methane is that it only stays in the atmosphere for about 12 years. So, it has a much shorter shelf life than carbon dioxide, which stays up there for hundreds or thousands of years. So, if we can turn down the tap on methane, we could actually see real positive effects on global warming just within 12 years. One of the areas that we can address, again, there's a number of sources in methane, but one of the largest sources is, methane escaping in our gas and oil supply lines through leaks. Also, through voluntary releases that occur in operations bleeding methane from these supply lines. So, if we can fix the leaks and put a cap on these voluntary releases it can make a very positive and immediate impact on mitigating global warming.

HILGEN: Interesting.

EDSEY: Otherwise, David, I mean, obviously we need to continue transitioning our energy, our transportation, our homes and buildings away from fossil fuels and into electricity from renewable sources.

HILGEN: Yeah. So, you know, the ways that businesses operate, so a lot of what you're talking about is fueled by businesses. So, the way they operate can have a huge impact on climate change. So obviously it's important that they play part in reducing these greenhouse gas emissions, but there seems to be a lot more at stake for businesses than just helping to save the planet. Like for instance, what are some of the ways that climate change, these rising temperatures can actually hurt businesses?

EDSEY: Well, to start according to the World Economic Forum, about 50% of global GDP depends on nature.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: So, the climate crisis and the biodiversity ecosystem crisis are linked as the climate crisis threatens ecosystems. Which our economy as a whole is being threatened.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: The world, I think has already lost about 69% of its wildlife population in the half century and that's a scary statistic. Apart from ecosystem decline, climate change will threaten businesses differently depending on where the businesses are located and what industry we're talking about.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: I think it's likely that all businesses are going to be affected in one way or another by climate change. The obvious effect is going to be increased more severe weather events which are going to affect physical locations. In addition to drought and shifting water resources there's also the transition risk.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: That is affecting many businesses as the economy moves away from fossil fuels. The oil and gas industry, of course, is the most exposed to this transition risk. Some estimates are that 1.4 trillion in oil and gas assets are at risk of becoming stranded assets are becoming worthless.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: That's going to have a larger effect on our economy, than just the oil and the gas industry, because our financial system is so heavily invested in fossil fuels. So, although climate change, obviously poses huge risks to our economy and companies operating within it there's also opportunities presented in combating climate change that are enormous.

HILGEN: Yeah.

EDSEY: As new technologies and industries emerge to decarbonize the different sectors of our economy, energy, transportation, buildings, industry, and food, it's going to create new opportunities in markets.

HILGEN: Yeah. Well, I think the real winners in the business world will be those that recognize the need to transition and are preparing for it.

EDSEY: Exactly.

HILGEN: So, David, I want to switch over to some of the work you're doing at Zurich, specifically the employee climate interest group you've been leading for a couple years. Can you tell me how that came about and what you hope to accomplish by bringing Zurich employees together to discuss climate change?

EDSEY: Yeah, thanks, David for mentioning that. The group is almost two years old now. We have about 150 members made up of employees of Zurich in North America. The purpose is just largely to share and to educate the members on climate change science. We also look at laws to mitigate climate change and commercial developments in response to climate change. Additionally, we talk about everything that Zurich is doing in response to climate change. As far as our net zero commitments in our operations, in our investment portfolio, and in our underwriting portfolio. Finally, we also in the group discuss what we can do in our own lives, in our own households, to make a positive impact on climate. A subgroup just emerged from the climate interest group called “Go Green at Home” and what they're doing is recommending different green products to Zurich employees. So, I'm pretty excited about that.

HILGEN: Well, yeah, it's always, those are some of the most interesting parts of the meetings. I've attended, most of the climate interest group meetings I can. It's always encouraging to see so many of our colleagues share their passion for climate issues. Well, David, thanks for joining us again on the Future of Risk podcast. It's always a pleasure talking to you.

EDSEY: David, thank you. The pleasure was all mine, I hope to come back again sometime.

HILGEN: Thanks also to our listeners for tuning into Future of Risk. I'm David Hilgen.

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