Giving Compass' Take:

• Richard Heinberg argues that the climate solutions suggested in the 2018 IPCC report will never be implemented at scale because of cost and other factors, preventing humans from curbing climate change. 

• How can funders help to overcome the barriers to scaling these solutions? What can be done to improve technology to help improve scalability? 

• Learn how to find and fund scientific research. 

The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, drafted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at the request of the United Nations to explore the differences between a 2 degrees Celsius maximum target for global warming and a 1.5 degree target, and to identify ways to achieve that lower target. The reason for working to limit warming below the more ambitious threshold is that a number of low-lying nations (on whose approval the Paris Agreement depended) will literally be underwater if temperatures rise beyond that limit. As solutions, the report discusses ways to capture and sequester carbon dioxide, or ways of pulling CO2 out of the air. The report also suggests that we can continue to grow gross domestic product (GDP) while decreasing energy use.

I call these solutions "magic" because they are unlikely to accomplish much in the real world except to distract our attention from the necessary work of cutting emissions. Each has been shown to be a pipe dream at scale, even if—as in the cases of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), biomass-to-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), direct air capture of CO2 (DAC), and air-to-fuel conversion technologies—pilot projects have succeeded in demonstrating that the technology works.

Here's why that's unrealistic.

The new report relies on the prospect of decoupling energy from GDP. Take this passage, for example: "[E]nergy demand lower than present day, together with strong growth in economic output until the end of the century, is found in scenarios with shifts to more sustainable energy, material, and food consumption patterns." In other words, if we switch energy sources and become vegetarians, we can achieve lots of economic growth while using much less energy. Despite this happy vision, decoupling energy from GDP has proven elusive in the past, and there are good reasons to think it will remain so.

Why all the conjuring and sleight of hand? Because policymakers have effectively asked scientists to do the impossible. No politician in a wealthy country wants to inform constituents that further economic growth is unachievable. And no international agency would deny hundreds of millions of poor people the hope of bettering their lives through economic growth in the developing world; that growth is built into the U.N.'s sustainable development goals, which are hardwired into the IPCC scenarios.

Read the full article about climate solutions by Richard Heinberg at Pacific Standard.