With the Earth’s Life Support Systems in Peril :Fossil fuel financing continues unabated.

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The news was flashed all across world’s media – the year 2023 was not only the warmest year on instrumented records (available for about the past 170 years), but was calculated to be the hottest in the past 100,000 years – from ice core and other data proxies. As the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reported – “2023 was the warmest year in the 174-year observational record. This shattered the record of the previous warmest years, “2016 at 1.29 ± 0.12 °C above the 1850–1900 average and 2020 at 1.27±0.13 °C.” . The global average near-surface temperature in 2023 was about 1.45 C higher than the pre-industrial average! he scientific assessment is that we must not exceed 1.5 C above pre-industrial by the year 2100! But that is not the only disturbing news. The Sea Surface Temperatures across the world’s oceans and seas in 2023 and the first 9 months of 2024 have broken records too, fuelling massive rainfall-flooding  events and large destructive storms one after another, whether in our vicinity in the North Indian Ocean, or in the Atlantic or the Mexican Gulf region.To add fuel to fire, the most comprehensive assessment of the state of the Planetary boundaries (how close critical Earth systems are to breaching safe operating space), published in 2024, shows that Six of these Nine critical boundaries are near or outside their ‘safe operating space’. .  The latest (nuclear) bombshell in this series of scientific loud alarms is the assessment paper in Oxford Academics, by a large group of earth scientists: “The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth“  It is well worth a close look at the report, by everyone who wishes that a habitable earth should be continuing to support, not only humans but also the life of millions of other species.  Let’s reproduce the first paragraph here, just to bring forth the extreme urgency (sometimes, even panic) felt by the world’s top Earth Systems scientists :-

“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis. For many years, scientists, including a group of more than 15,000, have sounded the alarm about the impending dangers of climate change driven by increasing greenhouse gas emissions and ecosystem change (Ripple et al. 2020). For half a century, global warming has been correctly predicted even before it was observed—and not only by independent academic scientists but also by fossil fuel companies (Supran et al. 2023). Despite these warnings, we are still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an all-time high, the 3 hottest days ever occurred in July of 2024 (Guterres 2024), and current policies have us on track for approximately 2.7 degrees Celsius (°C) peak warming by 2100 (UNEP 2023). Tragically, we are failing to avoid serious impacts, and we can now only hope to limit the extent of the damage. We are witnessing the grim reality of the forecasts as climate impacts escalate, bringing forth scenes of unprecedented disasters around the world and human and nonhuman suffering. We find ourselves amid an abrupt climate upheaval, a dire situation never before encountered in the annals of human existence. We have now brought the planet into climatic conditions never witnessed by us or our prehistoric relatives within our genus, Homo (supplemental figure S1; CenCO2PIP Consortium et al. 2023).”

The primary reason for all these extreme aberrations of the entire connected Earth Systems is very well established, decades ago, as also expressed by the above report – “Human-caused carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases are the primary drivers of climate change. As of 2022, global fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes account for approximately 90% of these emissions, whereas land-use change, primarily deforestation, accounts for approximately 10%.”.  

When the question is of survival of a liveable Earth as homo sapiens knew right from their origin about 250,000 years ago, one would think that the governments, corporations, financial institutions in particular – those who are in the driving seats of today’s worlds trajectories, would act to curb the driver that “accounts for 90%” of the causative factor, and move the global economy away from fossil fuels, put policy and systemic barriers for additional fossil fuel extraction and burning and to phase these out at the earliest. After all, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has long given the red lines, that to be within even a 50% chance of keeping within 1.5 C above pre-industrial temperatures, a 45% reduction in green house gas emissions is imperative by the year 2030 – primarily carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning. 

In reality, we find the situation far from these critically needed actions. After the Paris Agreement was signed, following the December 2015 Paris Climate conference CoP-21, fossil fuel based CO2 emissions have increased each of the years from 2016 to 2019, only falling in 2020 due to world-wide COVID lockdowns etc. – According to an article by WRI, “Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are on track to again climb to a record high in 2019, according to a new report from the Global Carbon Project, putting the world at risk of catastrophic climate change due to these heat-trapping gases. This is further evidence that the plateau in emissions growth between 2014 and 2016 was short-lived: emissions from fossil fuels grew 1.5% in 2017, 2.1% in 2018 and are projected to grow another 0.6% in 2019. This growth is at odds with the deep cuts urgently needed to respond to the climate emergency.” 

To shift away from the fossil fuel dependent economy and to transition to a renewable, non-carbon based economy, there are two simultaneous actions needed to be pursued on a global scale, in a sustained manner – cutting all financing and subsidies to the Earth-destroying fossil fuel sector, and a massive increase of financing to the renewable energy sectors, to energy efficiency and energy demand reduction measures across the board.  The International Energy Agency (an OECD organisation) in its report “Net-zero Roadmap… Progress in the clean energy transition”, says – “Energy sector CO2 emissions remain worryingly high, reaching a new record of 37 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2022. Instead of starting to fall as envisaged in the 2021 report, demand for fossil fuels has increased – spurred by the energy crisis of 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and so have investments in supply.”.  The Emissions gap Report 2024 by the United Nations Environment Program UNEP says – “The report looks at how much nations must promise to cut off greenhouse gases, and deliver, in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), due for submission in early 2025 ahead of COP30. Cuts of 42 per cent are needed by 2030 and 57 per cent by 2035 to get on track for 1.5°C. A failure to increase ambition in these new NDCs and start delivering immediately would put the world on course for a temperature increase of 2.6-3.1°C over the course of this century. This would bring debilitating impacts to people, planet and economies.”  

Has the financing of fossil fuels been stopped by the world’s financial institutions? Is the financing of Renewable energies increasing as per the urgent needs? It’s an infuriating and scary truth that the answers to both questions are – NO. In a report published in may 2024, the Rainforest Action Network quoted from the “Banking on Climate Chaos report” that – “Banks financed fossil fuels by $6.9 trillion dollars since the Paris Agreement; $705 billion provided in 2023 alone; JP Morgan Chase, Mizuho, and Bank of America are worst 3 funders” . )  Working on the same issue of fossil fuel subsidies and continued financing, Climateactiontracker says –  “We cannot save a burning planet with a fire hose of fossil fuels,” said the UN Secretary-General António Guterres at COP28. Current financing trends show that we are not moving in the right direction when it comes to fossil fuels. G20 countries and banks are actively funding fossil fuels. 

Today, the world spends over USD 13 million per minute on fossil fuel subsidies to keep the costs of using dirty fuels reasonable for the average consumer. The amount spent on renewables, which are already cheaper even without subsidies, is nearly four times lower.

This comes at a time when scientists say that 60% of existing fossil fuel reserves within active fields and mines should remain unextracted to keep 1.5°C in reach. In that sense, the world already has far more oil, gas, and coal than it can afford to burn. Yet, governments, banks and institutional investors continue to pour billions into new fossil fuel projects.”. 

There are estimates of minimum annual financing / investments needed in renewable energy systems for an effective and quick energy transition, and that comes to about USD 5-6 trillion every year. The actual annual global investments in RE hardly totals around USD 1.3 trillion. Even the somewhat conservative International Renewable Energy Agency IRENA reports – 

“Global investments in energy transition technologies must more than quadruple annually”, says the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

• In total, the world needs around $35 trillion for transition technology by 2030, Reuters reports.
• IRENA called for directing planned fossil fuel investments toward renewable energy technologies and infrastructure.”      

Given this continued refusal to recognise the extreme alarms being repeatedly issued by the largest bodies of scientists, month after month, the fossil capitalism keeps expanding and exploiting the earth to its maximum capacity.  The governments of the world, barring a handful of the most threatened nations, are also playing the same game of fossil-growth.  In face of this epoch defining crisis and continuing extreme greed leading to massive devastations, only a worldwide people’s movement for drastic change can save us all (humans and many other life forms together) from extreme loss of Earth’s life support systems.  Whether anything like that is coming, in the time left before the Earth systems Amplifying Feeedback loops trigger several Tipping Points, is a lefe and death question. 

Soumya Dutta, works with MAUSAM (Movement for Advancing Understanding on Sustainability And Mutuality), and SAPACC (South Asian Peoples’ Action on Climate Crisis) (soumyadutta.delhi@gmail.com)