Submission to the Local Authority Climate Action Plan (LACAP) - GRWG
Who We Are
The Galway County PPN Green Recovery Working Group wish to create awareness, understanding and engagement on climate change and biodiversity loss. We hope to support our Galway Communities transition to carbon neutrality, a sustainable just transition and green recovery, using the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a touchstone and a regenerative One Planet Living Framework. We are a group of PPN members and individuals with an interest in addressing environmental concerns in County Galway, in order to improve both people and planetary health and wellbeing, increasing happiness, resilience and sustainability for Galway Communities.
https://www.galwaycountyppn.ie/forums/green-recovery-working-group/
2. Climate Change Overview
We are really encouraged to see that there will be a Local Authority Climate Action Plan for Galway, the Galway PPN Recovery Group has highlighted the need for a Regenerative Action Plan for the County in order to support our communities to take the necessary steps to transition to low carbon life styles and restore our biodiversity and degraded ecosystems. The local authority has a very important role in Climate Action and should be strengthened and adequately financed to allow an appropriate response to the scale of the climate emergency. We do not believe that the council is adequately resourced to deal with the scale of the problem. The objectives of the LACAP are good, but more staff will be needed to work on the delivery of the plan and to integrate the plan within the workings of the council at every level.
Section 2.1.3.2 discusses Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) which are two climate change projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Draft LACAP report states that RCP4.5 represents an ‘intermediate emissions scenario’(with an average global warming of 1.4C between 2046-2045 ) while RPC8.5 represents a worst case scenario for Climate change (with an average global w-arming of 2C for the 2040-2065 period). As bad as RCP8.5 is, we do not believe that it can be considered to be a worst-case Scenario for the reasons outlined below. As for RCP4.5 we appear to be rapidly approaching the global average temperature range that was not previously expected to occur until 2050.
The IPCC reports are hugely significant and have a lot of weight because they carry the agreement of so many scientists that are leaders in their fields. As a consequence of this necessity for agreement they are also considered by many scientists to be conservative and cautious. All of the RCPs assume the existence of Carbon Capture Technologies at a massive scale. This technology is in its infancy, we have no idea if it can be scaled successfully and there is no market for doing so. Yet all of the RCPs have this built in assumption, which is very dangerous.
There are also big unknowns within the predicted pathways which are not just based on levels of greenhouse gases that we might emit but also on the sensitivity of the climate system. That is to say, there are many uncertainties around the concept of Tipping Points/feedback loops. A tipping point is a catastrophe involving thresholds beyond which there will be rapid transition to a new state. Many of our most important systems and habitats are very important carbon sinks such as the Oceans and Forests. If a forest such as the Amazon stops being a sink for carbon and starts emitting carbon that system would have reached a tipping point. If these systems switch from carbon sinks to carbon sources we may lose control of the climate system entirely. Similarly the Ice at the poles plays an incredibly important role in regulating the climate, whereby the more Ice that melts the less solar radiation is reflected back to space due to the albedo effect. If tipping points are reached, even if we stop emitting greenhouse gases rapidly it would be too late. In section 2.1.3.4 the draft LACAP report states that ‘feedback loops which would make the effects more impactful, could not be considered due to a lack of local modelling’ this is entirely understandable; however with such huge unknowns within projections the council should be adopting a more precautionary approach.
The diagram below shows 5 of the tipping points which could be activated within the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 or 2C. IPCC risk analysis has changed over the decades and Tipping points that were not expected to occur until 5C above pre-industrial temperatures are now expected to occur between 1-2C. This highlights how the science of Climate Change is evolving. Tim Lenton, (Chair in Climate Change and Earth System Science the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute) said that “Tipping points in the Earth system pose threats of a magnitude never faced by humanity,” and. “They can trigger devastating domino effects, including the loss of whole ecosystems and capacity to grow staple crops, with societal impacts including mass displacement, political instability and financial collapse.”
Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Centre at Pennsylvania State University, said the ‘extreme weather being recorded was exceeding predictions to a worrying extent’. James Hansen the Scientists who was one of the first to raise the alarm by testifying to congress has recently spoken about the doubling of the atmospheric energy imbalance in a new paper entitled Global Warming in the Pipeline he states that ‘under the present geopolitical approach to GHG emissions, global warming will exceed 1.5°C in the 2020s and 2°C before 2050’ (Hansen et al 2023). Indeed data from the Copernicus satellite has shown that ‘for the calendar year to date January to October, the Global Mean Temperature for 2023 is the highest on record at 1.43C above the 1850-1900 pre industrial average’.
explosiveren.jpg (800×530) (b-cdn.net)(Link for chart above)
The scale and urgency of the challenge that we are facing does not appear to have penetrated our perceptions sufficiently. Stakeholder buy-in is way too low within the public, within National Government and within Galway County Council Itself. A public information campaign is desperately needed and mandatory training for Council staff is necessary. We no longer have time to waste.
References:
Hansen J, Sato M, Simons L et al. Global warming in the pipeline. Oxf Open Clim Change 2023;3.
Schellnhuber, H., Rahmstorf, S. & Winkelmann, R. Why the right climate target was agreed in Paris. Nature Clim Change 6, 649–653 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3013
Sekera. J & Lichtenberger. A (2020). Assessing Carbon Capture: Public Policy,Science, and Societal Need. Biophys Econ Sust, 2020, 5. DOI: 0.1007/s41247-020-00080
IPCC, 2023: Sections. In: Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, H. Lee and J. Romero (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, pp. 35-115, doi: 10.59327/IPCC/AR6-9789291691647
Chapter 3 — Global Warming of 1.5 ºC (ipcc.ch)
Tipping Points - Online Course (futurelearn.com)