2016 – A Historic Year?

We’ve only just reached April, and yet 2016 seems to be promising to be a truly historic year.

Politically and environmentally, there are some trends which are threatening to bring about significant and extensive change.

The first historic event is the meteoric rise of Donald Trump. As a non-politician, he has galvanised support from millions of apparently disenfranchised Americans with his peculiar – yet familiar – brand of arrogance and vilification of the ‘other’. Regarding climate change, Trump is no different from any of his fellow Republican candidates in being a sceptic, and vowing to overturn Obama’s Clean Power Plan, and to wheel back from the US’s Paris COP21 commitments. Whether or not Trump wins the election in November, his popularity is decidedly worrying, and will no doubt draw the Presidential debate to the right.

Closer to home, the EU referendum in Britain looms ever larger.

While the debate goes on about the political, economic and military implications that a ‘Brexit’ might entail, as far as environmental policy is concerned, independence would ensure the removal of some of our most significant protections. As a member of the EU, our largest emitting companies are obligated under the ‘Emissions Trading Scheme’ which requires them to reduce overall emissions overall and pay for polluting. The EU also requires products sold in the UK are also required to meet energy efficiency standards, and decisions such as the banning of incandescent lightbulbs have led to significant demand reductions and energy savings for consumers. Although in a poor state, our fisheries and air quality is also protected by EU regulation. Without these supra-national influences, environmental regulation would be subject to greater fluctuations in political will as a result of changing governments. Whilst the current administration has been widely criticised for creating instability with inconsistent and uncertain energy policy in the UK, at least the EU provides some continuity and a baseline for environmental responsibility for those of us seeking stronger action on climate change.

Ironically, many accounts have shown that the UK’s contribution towards environmental policy on the EU stage is remarkably progressive, with DECC (at least under the Liberal Democrat Ed Davey) pushing for higher emissions reduction targets, and playing a central role in the Paris COP21 negotiations in 2015.

Another major geopolitical phenomenon due to fill our news bulletins this coming summer is the so called ‘EU migrant crisis’. With the situation in Syria showing no signs of improvement, southern states of Europe are likely to see another mass movement of people, possibly even larger than in 2015. Some commentators linked the migration to climate change impacts, particularly caused by food shortages, which of course is never possible to prove, but would indicate that last summer’s ‘crisis’ could increasingly become the norm. Germany’s policy of accepting migrants seemed to ease the problem last year, and we must hope its ‘open-arms’ policy continues this summer. As an aside, this truly historic move from the Merkel government has received far less credit than it deserves in the British media – being discounted as driven by their ‘need for jobs’ for example.

It is a matter of debate as to which of these three geopolitical events deserves more of our concern and attention. Meanwhile, in 2016, the effects of climate change have now surely arrived, with February surprising even climate modellers by far exceeding all records as the warmest month since global surface temperature has been measured since 1850 – a record that was only just set by December 2015. On top of this, today a report was released indicating that the impact of ice melt from Antarctica has been underestimated by computer simulations of future climate impacts, leading to potentially far higher sea level rise. Impacts such as these will surely drive a positive feedback loop with some of the issues discussed above – migration, food shortages, and even greater nationalism. On the positive side however, there are some promising trends, with China’s use of coal dropping, and renewable energy reaching 24.7% of electricity generation in the UK in 2015, and overtaking coal for the first time. And on a personally exciting note, today also marks the release of the Tesla Model 3, which could prove to be a turning point for the mass adoption of electric vehicles (if only I had £20k to spend). If you don’t know much about Tesla, I highly recommend this very fun and readable article.

2016 is only 3 months old, but we’ve already seen some ground-breaking events and a lot of worrying, and some exciting trends. It will be fascinating to see how the rest of the year unfolds.