Reality check: We're off the 1.5-degree track. Live with it.

A report came out last week from the UN Environment Programme that became the latest body to call for the immediate suspension of oil drilling. The fossil fuel industry in the 15 largest producers are dangerously out of tune with the Paris Agreement, the report’s authors warned. Something needs to be done, like, say, the suspension of all oil drilling.

According to the report, the discrepancy between planned oil, gas, and coal production among the 15 leaders and the targets of the Paris Agreement is indeed striking. For example, planned oil production by 2030 is 110% higher than it should be under the 1.5-degree scenario of the Agreement. It is also 45% higher than it should be under the 2-degree scenario. By 2040, the gap grows to 190% and 89%, the report’s authors note.

Investments in fossil fuels, the authors continue with not a little outrage, are still higher than investments in low-carbon energy generation. Something must be done about this, too. This something, apparently, is cutting both the supply of fossil fuels and the demand for these fuels.

As detailed in the report, this simultaneous reduction of supply and demand makes for fascinating reading. The goal is to prevent oil, gas and coal prices from falling so much as a result of low demand that a reversal in the latter takes place, which is the way things normally work. The other goal is to prevent oil, gas and coal prices from rising too much as this would stimulate more production and hurt the economy. Here’s a quote:

Governments may be wary of being perceived as getting too directly involved in fossil fuel markets in a way that might increase prices for energy consumers. That is understandable, and fossil fuel prices that are too high can negatively affect the economy. However, the bigger, longer-term risk is instead prices that are too low. By enacting measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, and hence cutting fossil fuel demand, countries will already be pushing producer prices lower.

In other words, governments can make oil, coal, and gas too expensive for consumers in order to discourage demand. So far so good, governments are already doing this or at least trying to. But:

As an example of the problem of low fossil fuel prices, the International Energy Agency (IEA) recently found in its Net Zero by 2050 report that oil prices could head steadily downward toward USD 37 per barrel by the end of this decade, as nations move to low-carbon forms of transport such as electric vehicles. To ward off volatility and keep prices from sinking even lower, the IEA foresees that even fossil-fuel-rich states may need to purposefully limit supply, so as not to threaten the financial value of their existing deposits.

And one final quote:

Furthermore, constraining supply can help ensure that, as fossil fuel demand declines, prices do not get so low as to spur new consumption, undermining the path to net-zero emissions. Put simply, limits on supply can ensure that when increasingly stringent climate policy prevents a barrel of oil or ton of coal from being burned in one location, it is not instead burned somewhere else.

So, the idea seems to be to keep oil, gas, and coal supply in a complicated balance with demand that makes sure demand can grow no further but can only go down, along with supply. That’s one hell of a balancing act to put together and perform.

Like many other reports on the same topic, the UNEP’s document discusses all sorts of sub-topics, such as approaches to performing the above-mentioned balancing act and their pros and cons, as well as an in-depth look at various already available scenarios for emission reduction and how each of them could change the figures for oil, coal, and gas production as they stand now.

One topic the report does not discuss, however, is why these 15 governments still plan extracting massive amounts of emission-heavy fossil fuels instead of joining the Brussels and London crowds, and starting to plan for road taxes to offset losses from fuel duties.

Not only does the report not address the reason behind these plans for continued higher fossil fuel production, it also states that “Global fossil fuel production must start declining immediately and steeply to be consistent with limiting long-term warming to 1.5°C.”

Earlier this year, when I speculated in an article for Oilprice what might happen if we stopped pumping oil and gas immediately, Carbon Tracker’s Mark Campanale remarked in an email that there was no push for an immediate suspension of fossil fuel production, at least not from Carbon Tracker. Well, it seems there is one now, from the UN Environment Programme.

It’s probably highly redundant to write about the consequences of an “immediate and steep” decline in fossil fuel production. We are already seeing the consequences of not enough fossil fuel production resulting from gradual processes spurred by fundamental factors and the energy transition rush.

An adventurous part of me would like to actually see all global oil and gas production stopping for a week, just a week, for the world to wake up to the unpleasant realities of its energy habits. Another, bigger, part of me, however, knows that even the economic collapse that such an event would lead to will not discourage energy transition champions from their intention to electrify everything they can and then blame fossil fuels when the blackouts start.

The UNEP report looks at fossil fuel supply with such focus it completely misses the point of those planned production increases across fossil fuels. And the point is responding to growing energy demand. There are many complicated concepts in the world but the link between demand and supply, especially when it comes to commodities such as fossil fuels, is not among them. People need energy. The more people there are, the higher the demand for energy. The higher the demand, the more energy needs to be produced. The more reliable the energy source, the more widely used it will be. I apologise to all of you for putting things so simply but I feel they need to be put simply.

Fossil fuel production cannot start declining immediately and steeply. Right now, it’s growing so fast, any reversal would be the equivalent of a driver in training doing a U-turn on a busy highway because they suddenly wanted to go back. This, based on the information presented in the UNEP report, means that we have gone off the 1.5-degree track. Personally, I don’t think we’ll manage to stay on the 2-degree track either, not without heavy casualties.

So, once again, a report from an authoritative organisation demonstrates that organisation’s failure—deliberate or unwitting—to grasp the simplest reality of energy demand and supply. Once again greenhouse gas emissions are being pushed into our faces as the ultimate evil in and of themselves, and the root cause of all other evils, from war to famine, to loss of biodiversity. And the solution to this problem is, yet again, cutting oil, gas, and coal supply in favour of renewable energy that cannot respond to even current energy demand levels, let alone the higher ones that everyone is forecasting for the future.

Speaking of forecasts, some scientists have already warned we are already too late to do anything constructive about reining in global temperatures. Some would even argue we don’t need to do anything about these temperatures but these would be quickly canceled as climate change deniers.

What is hard to cancel is that last year, despite the pandemic and the energy demand destruction it wrought on the world, greenhouse gas emissions hit a record. They rose at a higher rate than the average for the last ten years, the UN said. And that happened during the year that many a renewable energy disciple celebrated as the year of wind and solar due to record-breaking capacity additions.

Another thing that is hard to cancel is the fact that carbon permits in the EU hit a new record of 65 euros per tonne because utilities rushed to coal to keep the lights on. That’s despite improving wind power output after the drought earlier this year. it’s also despite statements from Brussels officials and the head of the IEA that renewables are not to blame for the energy crunch. That’s two records now, and they both say the same: the world needs energy and will get it any way it can, even if that way involves greenhouse gas emissions.

According to psychologists, there are five stages of grieving. The first is denial and as historical records and living memory shows we have excelled at the denial of the fact that human activity affects the planet in more than one way. The last stage of the process, afteranger, bargaining and depression, is acceptance. There is really no alternative to that unless you get stuck at the anger stage.

Humankind is the dominant species of this planet. Our activities affect our environment — sometimes benevolently, most often malignantly (just think about the garbage we produce on a daily basis or the spread of invasive plant species in places they shouldn’t spread. Also emissions, of course). Sooner or later we would either have to accept this fact and live with it or, to be truly radical, opt out of living to cut emissions. After all, the global average carbon footprint per person is 4 tonnes, rising to 16 tonnes in the United States.