Alejandra Borunda
Appearances
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
And Emily, there's another topic that's also been a source of big debate in the climate community and came up this year at the COP a little bit. And that is the number 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
It showed up almost 10 years ago in the Paris Agreement of 2015. And it was the number that a lot of countries agreed to try to keep below in the massive project of trying to limit global warming around the world. Okay. Unfortunately, it's getting uncomfortably close. And so there's a lot of chatter happening at conferences like these where people are starting to ask, is that goal even possible?
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
That is a great question, Emily. And basically in short, for many years now, but especially since this big special report by a bunch of scientists in 2018, scientists have warned that the risks of global warming could get substantially worse overnight. Once we go past that level of warming, that 1.5 C. Okay. This is Lila Warjawski.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
She's a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
So what she's talking about here is just that, like, you get past 1.5 and you get more of the bad stuff that we're already getting. Heat waves that are even more intense than those we're having now, which is kind of terrifying, honestly. Or stronger hurricanes, that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, no one wants stronger hurricanes, the ones this season were truly devastating. Yeah, exactly.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
And I think the other thing is that there's some even more alarming possibilities once we go past 1.5. Like, for example, if the Greenland ice sheet melts too much, the melt can actually become unstoppable. There's these processes that keep on going no matter what we do after that.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
I used to have a professor back in climate science grad school, and he just, he always would say that we're just running the world's biggest science experiment. Like, let's see what happens when you pump the atmosphere full of carbon dioxide. Let's all stick around to find out.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
We are pretty close. If you use the methods laid out in the IPCC, and that's the big scientific consensus report that comes out every few years, that tells us that we're at 1.3 Celsius of warming.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
Yeah. And I just want to be clear, that method has an issue. It's fundamentally backwards looking. Oh. It averages the observed temperature data from the last 10 years with models that look forward the same amount. But baked into that approach is this reality that it won't actually show us crossing 1.5 until a few years after that's already happened.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
Yeah, and you have identified something that many scientists are now working on because they also want to know more quickly. A new study actually just came out right before the COP meeting that uses an approach that is a little more snapshot-y, and it says we're probably closer to 1.4 C.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
And as we all know, talking about money is a famously chill and easy thing to do, right? Super chill. This is a really, really fraught topic.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
And I just, I know that sounds scary, but to be clear, that's not really how anyone thinks about this. It's just one year. And scientists know that temperatures bop around a lot because of things like El Nino or just like a randomly hot year. And so that's why they do that approach that looks at the longer term averages in the first place. But it's also not a great sign.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
It's so hard because the reality is warming past 1.5 really does present these real existential threats to a lot of people around the world. Like the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, for example, it could literally end up underwater if sea levels rise too far. And that's a real risk. The farther warming gets past 1.5 C. Here's Abraham Nassak in their Ministry of Climate Change.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
Yeah, but I think it's also important to know that passing that 1.5 level, it's not like falling off a cliff. It's more like we're playing a dice game that gets more and more loaded. Like the probability that bad things happen gets higher. Yeah, exactly.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
But I do, I like want to stress that it's not like we wake up one morning past this 1.5 level and have all of these things just like happen at once. Got it. Okay. Andrew Jarvis is a climate scientist at Lancaster University in the UK. And he's an author of that new study I mentioned before, the one that tells us that we're closer to 1.4 than 1.3.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
And he's like, honestly, it's very obvious what all of this should tell us.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
And there's this, like, other issue kind of lurking here, which is that no one wants to admit that 1.5 might be almost out of reach. I talked with David Victor. He's a professor of innovation and public policy, and specifically he focuses on climate policy at the University of California, San Diego. And he was pretty clear about it.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
Yeah, for sure. And I also find it helpful to remember that at one point, not too long ago, scientists were saying that like four degrees Celsius by the end of the century was on the table. But things have changed. The energy transition has progressed. So has other climate action. And all of that means that the projections, they've also come down.
Short Wave
This COP29, It's All About The Numbers
And now we're at somewhere around three degrees Celsius or maybe even less. That part's up to us. It's not perfect at all. It's not ideal, but it is progress.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
Or maybe you're in one of the thousands of communities that are trying to prepare for disasters, you know, like hurricanes or wildfires, and you apply for federal funding, that's completely changing too.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
Yeah, so if you checked the weather on your phone this morning, you interacted with NOAA. These are the scientists that make the weather forecasts. They track hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and droughts. They help warn people about those things. They make nautical charts to keep ships from running aground. They track space weather to make sure commercial flights are safe.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
They manage fisheries. They protect species like whales and corals. I could keep going. They do a lot.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
Yeah, so staffing is definitely one thing. Hundreds of people have been fired so far. We know that's already affecting weather forecasting in some parts of the country. It's delayed the opening of some fishing seasons, which is a big deal for coastal communities. There are plans to essentially eliminate one of the research wings, you know, along with other climate work across the agency.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
And there are more budget cuts on the way. So a draft proposal from the White House for 2026 would reduce NOAA's current budget by more than 25%.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
Yeah, so the budget proposal would keep funding even for the National Weather Service, right? That's the weather forecasting part. But, you know, in practice, they've been hit hard already because of those people that have been fired. And some scientists think they're already seeing weather forecasts get less accurate.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
Yeah. So there's a lot of funding that the federal government provides for preparing for disasters. A lot. FEMA has awarded more than four and a half billion dollars since 2020 to help communities prepare. You know, these are grants they've already told communities that they're getting. They're on the way. But now they've been canceled. OK, so what were these grants for?
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
OK, yeah, here's an example. So there's this tiny community of Depew, Illinois. They have a big problem, which is when it rains a lot, it causes flooding and it floods their sewage treatment plant. It gets inundated with water. And that means people may not be able to flush their toilets. Daniel Hoffert, the village president of Depew, told me about it.
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Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
Yeah, you need that sewage to run. Exactly. Because if the plant isn't working, the sewage actually backs up in the pipes. It even spills into the basements of people's houses. And in past storms, they've had more than 100 houses that were affected. Fixing it means moving the wastewater treatment plant to higher ground. And that's expensive, you know, $25 million.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
And Hofford says it would take them decades to collect enough tax revenue because, you know, only about 1,500 people live there. So he applied to FEMA for this program specifically for projects that prevent disaster damage.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the idea is you pay a little bit now so you don't have to pay a lot more later. And studies show that it really is cheaper to prepare infrastructure for disasters instead of just paying to rebuild it after a disaster hits. So this grant program, it's called BRIC, Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities. It was actually started during Trump's first administration.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
And it kind of marked this big shift that disaster experts have been pushing for for decades. But now, you know, it's being canceled. So what will that mean for the community of Depew? Yeah. So they had been told the grant was already awarded to them. They've been working on it. They've been planning and preparing for years. And Hoffert was actually expecting the money this year.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
Yeah, I mean, Hoffert says they're looking for any other option at this point, but there just aren't a lot of sources for funding like that. The federal government really has been key for rural communities like his. What is the Trump administration saying about why these grants have been canceled?
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
So FEMA put out a statement saying the program is canceled because it's ineffective and part of an effort to root out waste and fraud. And, you know, Hoffert takes issue with that.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
And his community is definitely not alone. There are many local governments and tribes that were told they had grants, they were on the way. And that's for things like, you know, tornado shelters and schools and preparing communities for wildfires.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
Yeah, there's a lot of concern about that as well, because FEMA needs a lot of people to respond when disasters hit. The agency has already lost more than 200 people. It's expected to lose hundreds more with the Trump administration's efforts to shrink the agency. And Trump has said he maybe wants FEMA to go away completely.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
And that could affect how many people will be available when those hurricanes and wildfires hit this summer.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
Yeah, and I think a lot of this is a question of who pays, right? Because we know climate disasters are getting worse. They're going to continue to get worse. If we're not studying it, if we're not preparing for it, those are costs that people will face in some way.
Short Wave
Will Trump Unleash Energy Dominance Or Damage?
And so it's a question of whether the federal government is there to support that or whether it's states and local communities that are going to be left kind of paying for that in the end.