Many of us will remember the Washington-based neo-conservative think-tank Project for a New American Century, which argued for and brought about President George W. Bush’s disastrous and fraudulently justified invasion of Iraq.
PNAC’s neoconservative think-tank successor, the Heritage Foundation, has produced Project 2025, an even more extreme policy agenda for the administration of Donald J. Trump. Some of its ideas have already been adopted by Trump, including the deportation of undocumented immigrants, anti-abortion and anti-contraception measures, and the replacement of federal civil servants with conservative political appointees.
Project 2025 also argues for the political control of the Department of Justice and the FBI, the abolition of the Department of Homeland Security and even of the Department of Education.
Most worrying is Project 2025’s plan to reduce environmental and climate-change regulations in favour of fossil-fuel production. Given the United States is the world’s second-largest carbon emitting nation (after China) this would have a profound effect.
More, it advocates not only the US withdrawing from the Paris Accords (as Trump did last time) but withdrawing from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the platform for climate-change negotiations. As climate experts tell us, “America’s absence from this vital forum would hinder the world’s ability to curb emissions, given its position as the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, and biggest oil and gas producer in history. Therefore, the goals of the Paris Agreement - to maintain a liveable world - would be out of reach without ambitious mitigation efforts from the United States, inspired by its commitments to the world resulting from international climate negotiations. The withdrawal of the United States from the UNFCCC could also lead to other prominent emitters stepping back from their responsibility to reduce emissions, to the detriment of both America and the wider world.”
The Paris goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C this century is already out-of-date, due to countries’ (including our own) slowness to take the necessary actions. We (the human species) are now facing 3°C of warming and we will only be able to hold to this limit if we significantly increase efforts.
This means prioritising our climate mitigation and adaptation policies and actions. If we don’t do this, then large parts of Planet Earth will become uninhabitable.
The impact of that on the networks of international trade on which New Zealand depends, on human migration, and on our ability to feed ourselves will be catastrophic. The standard of living and quality of life we currently enjoy will not be available to our grandchildren.
If Project 2025 is a nightmare scenario for the climate, Mission 2025 offers hope. This is a group of American mayors, governors, chief executives, business leaders, investors and citizens who are urging national and local governments, businesses, industries and others to act boldly to address the challenge of climate change.
They argue that is it a scientific imperative to hold on to the Paris target as a lever to “embolden governments to set more ambitious plans and accelerate implementation”.
Mission 2025 points out that we have the tools for this. Energy technologies have reached the point at which fossil-fuel alternatives aren’t viable: ‘‘Falling costs of clean technologies and the proven feasibility of other sources mean governments’ upgraded national climate plans can be at least three times more ambitious than existing versions.”
They point out that wind and solar are meeting over 90% of global power demand growth, and that the world now invests twice as much in clean tech as it does in fossil fuels. Forty percent of passenger vehicle sales in Europe are electric (a target abandoned by our current government).
But this transition to a lower-emissions world only works if governments seriously get behind it.
“Scaling these solutions so they benefit citizens around the world will require governments to set appropriate policies to give business and private capital the confidence to invest at scale.”
Next year New Zealand, along with all the other signatories to the Paris Agreement, will submit updated plans for dealing with climate change. Hopefully the climate deniers in the coalition will not drive us towards a Project 2025-style response.
Currently the government has decided to focus on adaptation, not mitigation – on dealing with higher temperatures, not trying to prevent them. Will the plans we submit to the United Nations follow this same course?
The coalition is also single-mindedly focused on the financial bottom line, saving costs even if it means the social consequences are severe.
Hopefully it will realise that climate change is a financial tsunami: the higher the temperature, the higher the costs. The consequences of a 3°C temperature rise will probably be beyond our financial capability to address.
Or will our submission pick up the challenge and opportunity offered by Mission 2025 and prioritise emission reductions to get as close as possible to the 1.5°C target? Will we at least pick up on the hope offered by Mission 2025 and put in place actions towards a 2.5°C target?
As Mission 2025 puts it: “We urge all leaders to seize this decade-defining opportunity to secure the long-term success of our national economies, our people and our nature.”
• John Drummond is an emeritus professor at the University of Otago.
