Climate of fear: the IPCC’s new report

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. From London, I'm Jason Palmer and in.

New York, I'm John Fassman. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Valerie Pacresse once looked like a formidable challenger for the French presidency. Recently, however, her campaign has begun to sputter. Our Paris bureau chief explains why. And the United States Postal Service has been in financial trouble for years. That puts rural and small town post offices at risk of closing. Our correspondent explores what that would do to one small town in Vermont. And while the world's attention is on Ukraine, we pivot to look at another pressing global concern. But you can hear Fiona Hill, one of the world's foremost Russia experts, share her views on our sister podcast, the Economist Asks. First up though.

On any other week, the doorstopper of a report that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just published would have led the news the world over.

Our reports is a blueprint for our future on this planet.

I've seen many scientific reports in my time, but nothing like this. With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change.

This is climate injustice. We are in an emergency, heading for a disaster.

A little more than once a decade, the IPCC gathers up the work of hundreds of authors who are who have plowed through vast piles of scientific literature. Their effort this time looks at the world's vulnerabilities to climate change and its progress in adapting. Along the way, these reports have typically been a view of how bad the effects of climate change might get in the future. This one is about how bad they are now.

The second part of the sixth assessment of the IPCC report came out this week.

Rachel Dobbs writes about climate change for the Economist and is based in Singapore.

The first part that came out in August was about the physical basis, the physics behind what's going on with the environment and the atmosphere. This one is about the impact of climate change and who is most vulnerable to it. And about adaptation, there's also another part of it which is when the authors of the report meet with representatives of various governments to essentially sign off on a summary that everyone can agree on.

And so what is the summary view? What's the top line conclusions of this report?

The main takeaway is that climate change is happening now. It's affecting people's lives and livelihoods everywhere around the globe now. And it is happening more quickly and more extremely than we originally thought. All of these consequences have real impacts on both human and natural systems. They affect people, animals and plants.

What does that look like in practice, though?

One of the most striking figures from the report is that 3 billion people, so that's roughly 1 in 2 of every person in the world, are living in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change. All of this has the most impact on the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world. The study found that in the 2010s, mortality from floods, droughts and storms was 15 times higher in highly vulnerable regions. So that's places like low lying islands or cities around the coast than in the least vulnerable ones. Climate change is quite contributing to humanitarian crises. There's worsening food security and malnutrition, which is brought on by droughts and floods, particularly in Africa and Latin America. And all of this leads to people all around the world being displaced. These effects are so bad and so widespread that Antonio Guterres, who is the UN Secretary General, called the report an atlas of human suffering, which is pretty much right.

Well, there's the human suffering, but you mentioned the report also deals with natural systems as well. How, how are they looking?

So there are pretty bad consequences for plant and animal life and biodiversity almost everywhere around the world. Temperatures are currently at between 1.1 and 1.3 degrees Celsius, above pre industrial levels. At that point, some natural systems are approaching their capacity to adapt. Half the species that scientists looked at were moving towards higher latitudes or higher altitudes to cool down. There might be a little bit of selection bias there in that those are the ones that scientists tend to look at. Plants that we use for food and for fabric and for loads of other stuff are also under stress. And at 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is the warming target that we have set under the Paris Agreement and that we are going to struggle to reach. As it is, the report says that they think the number of terrestrial and freshwater species at very high risk of extinction will reach 9% and could go as high as 14%, which is obviously absolutely enormous.

And what does the report say about what people, what governments have been doing in the face of all this?

So something that's really interesting about this report, particularly compared to its predecessor, which came out in 2014, is that the previous IPCC reports mostly were forward looking. They were making predictions about the kind of adaptation that might happen, what kind of effects that would be. This is a report that is written from in the middle of it, both in the middle of us really experiencing the impacts of climate change, but also attempting to do stuff about it. So for the first time ever, we are able to really evaluate the ways in which humans are trying to cope with these changes. There are some areas where adaptation has already made a positive difference. One of those would be Ahmedabad, which is a city in Gujarat in western India, which has a really pioneering system for preparing for heat waves and extremely high temperatures, which includes early warning systems. They've changed the building materials that you have to use so that houses don't trap heat as much as there's all these protocols. They have these heat action plans which come out at regular intervals. And that has really helped them reduce the number of deaths that you see from extreme heat. And there are examples of initiatives like that which have been really beneficial. But what the report finds over and over again is that there is an adaptation gap, the gap between the amount of adaptation that we have achieved now and that we need both now and as the impacts of climate change get worse over the near and medium term, that that gap is getting wider and wider.

So how to close that gap, or at least stop it getting wider?

So the report emphasizes the need for what is termed transformational adaptation, which is adaptation of all of the systems that combine to create these kind of problems. Obviously, that kind of change is really difficult, particularly in certain contexts. So an example of this would be to do with extreme heat. Last summer, Linton in British Columbia recorded freakishly high temperatures of 49.6 degrees. At the same time, there were heat waves of 50 degrees or more in Iraq. Those kind of heat waves are actually much more common in Iraq. They are not so far above the norm. But during those heat waves, Iraqis were protesting against electricity cuts. And that kind of shows how the context that these countries sit in makes adapting to this kind of thing much more difficult. So Canada would have to undergo quite a big change, but it has the resources. In Iraq, they would need to overhaul attitudes, they would need to overhaul government capacity, they would need to overhaul institutions, they would need to get a lot more money, they would need to work on the electricity grid, these kind of things, which then makes change much harder to deliver. But those are the kind of problems that really have to be worked on.

So how do you suspect this report will land? How will it affect the discourse?

It's always pretty difficult to predict how these kind of reports are going to be received. I do think the fact that we are now getting a scientific view across loads of different areas from a problem that we are actually inside is important and hopefully will enhance knowledge and awareness and commitments to actually do something about a lot of these problems. The fact that this report talks about damages that have already taken place plays into a bigger argument in climate change negotiations, which is around this idea of loss and damage, which is whether or not the countries most responsible for releasing carbon into the atmosphere should have to pay the countries that are now really, really feeling the effects. We'll see if this report can give developing countries the kind of compensation that they want.

So for you, what do you think is the most important takeaway from this report?

One of the most important points that this report makes, and one that I will be interested to see how that translates into negotiations and kind of political action, is the need for adaptation efforts to happen alongside mitigation efforts. Previously, in quite a lot of climate change discussion, the need for mitigation so the need to reduce greenhouse gases has been emphasized over the need to adapt. And part of the thinking behind that was because we don't want to distract from the bigger mission, which is to stop temperatures rising above a certain point and therefore protect many, many future generations to come. But, but it has become increasingly clear that adaptation is going to have to happen alongside that in order to have a livable planet for both the present and the future.

Thanks very much for joining us, Rachel.

Thanks Jason.

For a lot more analysis like this, subscribe to the Economist to find the best introductory offer wherever you are, just go to economist.com intelligenceoffer.

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The clock is ticking for would be presidential contenders in France. The election isn't for five weeks, but the deadline for candidates to gather 500 signatures from elected officials and announce a run is tomorrow. Eric Zemaux and Marine Le Pen, the two top far right contenders, have only just passed the threshold. Others will have to drop out. French President Emmanuel Macron has been preoccupied with other matters, such as leading Europe's diplomatic effort to head off more in Ukraine. But there's one candidate who's had all her signatures sorted for weeks. After winning the primary of the Republican Party in December, Valerie Pecress recorded a big bump in the poll. But despite that early strong showing, her campaign has been sputtering. In this third installment of our French election series, we look at what Valerie Pecress declining fortunes could spell for the race to come.

I followed Valerie Picres as part of her campaign trail, which has taken her all over France. In fact, she's been one of the most diligent campaigners to a town in the Ardennes called Charlotte Mezieres, which is a small town in northeastern France. And there was a lot of hope and enthusiasm about her at the rally that I attended.

Sophie Petter is our Paris bureau chief.

I spoke to one woman who said she really believed that it was time for a woman president and that she was strong enough to take on that role. Another told me that she thought Vary Pecress seemed quite confident and that she really knew how to listen. I would say that overall, the people I saw in Charleville Messier were really quite excited at the prospect of electing France's first female president.

So who is Valerie Becresse exactly? What's her political background?

Well, Valerie Picquet is a very experienced politician. She's been around for decades. She has described herself as 2/3 Merkel and one third Thatcher. I think, you know, most people know her as being head of the Greater Paris region, the Ile de France. She was once universities minister under Nicola Sarkozy. She was also a budget minister. And she, like Emmanuel Macron, was educated at the elite civil service training college, the Ecole Nationale d'. Administration. This means that she is well briefed, she's quite serious in debate. Some people have nicknamed her the bulldozer. And she did very well in the debates in the Republicans primary late last year, which is what I think explains how she won the nomination in the end. And really, up until just a few weeks ago, she looked as if she was the most credible challenger to Emmanuel Macron.

And you say up until a few weeks ago. What's changed in the meantime?

Well, I think there's a structural reason, and that's that fundamentally Vary Picres doesn't really have a program that is that different to Manuel Macron's. She's instinctively part of the centre right. She was a sort of fairly moderate budget minister when she was in government. She is seen as someone who is fiscally conservative. She's in favour of tax cuts, as has he. And therefore the base that she's appealing to on the center right is pretty much the base that has already swung behind Macron. And that makes it very difficult. Yet the real problem she's had is that her party, actually its centre of gravity, sits to the right. And this means that she has had to or has chosen to take a pretty tough line on some of questions about immigration, identity politics. She has done more than nod to the party's right wing. And obviously in France, because there are these two very strong candidates on the extreme right, and notably Eric Zamore, but also Marine Le Pen. This means that she has tried to straddle a position that doesn't make sense to a lot of people. It's both moderate in some respects, especially on the economy, but when it comes to values and identity, she comes across as really very right wings.

So why has she taken this hard turn now? Is it just a matter of electoral arithmetic?

Well, I think that's part of the explanation, but in many ways, I actually think she has been always a sort of cultural conservative. She voted in the national assembly against the legalization of gay marriage back in 2013, and she even at one point proposed unmarrying gay couples if that law was ever passed. She's since backtracked on that. But I think she has a very much a family values cultural conservative that sits a little oddly with her more liberal economic views. And then I think the point that she has had to concede ground to the party's right has been really quite dramatic. At a rally in Paris quite recently, she even mentions the Great Replacement Theory. This is the idea that's espoused by Erich Zamore, that France's population is being overwhelmed by immigrants, and in particular Muslim immigrants. And it's a theory that is actually outside France, espoused by white supremacists. So the fact that you mentioned it in a quite ambiguous phrase was seen as pretty disappointing to some of those on the more moderate end of the centre right.

And so that turn in particular is what's led to her downfall in the polls.

I think it's a combination of the poor performance at this rally. She was also very oddly stilted and it was quite a wooden performance which surprised some people. And I think that she has just somehow failed to really make her mark on the French mind. The heart of this problem, it's both structural, it's a poor performance, and it's also somehow a failure to persuade the French that she's a serious candidate.

And what does that decline in the polls mean for the race more generally, do you think?

Well, of course, there are still five weeks to go, so I think, you know, anyone would, wouldn't want at this point to rule out there being further sort of shifts in the polls. But I think what we're looking at potentially is the failure of the centre right, you know, a major political family that has dominated French political life under the Fifth Republic, going all the way back to 1958, a failure to put forward a candidate that has a good chance of becoming a president. And this, in a way, is almost a mirror image of what's happened on the French left, which we've talked about before. As a consequence, you have Macron, who holds sort of this centrist position, and then you have the extremes. And that is what we saw back in 2017 when Emmanuel Macron was first elected. And we are increasingly seeing a repeat of that situation where you have a strong centre and then strong extremes, but the moderate sort of traditionally dominant political parties really struggling to exist. Of course, all of these dynamics may shift again once Emmanuel Macron finally declares officially that he is indeed running for re election.

Sophie, again, thanks for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

We'll turn our attention back to France in two weeks for the fourth episode in our series. You can find all of our French election coverage online@exterator.com France2022.

Express mail from your post office.

For centuries, America's postal service has aimed to do one thing. We deliver, we deliver. But in recent years, those deliveries have been slowed by the service's funding problems. Last month, the House passed legislation to shore up its finances, and next week, the Senate may do the same. This week, the Senate is also going.

To keep working to pass long overdue postal reform.

Even though the bills have bipartisan support, it might not be enough. And that could hit some small towns in America hard.

Elmore is a small town of about 900 people. It sits in rural Vermont, a state near the border of Canada. And it's so remote that there's very little cell phone coverage.

Rosemary Ward covers the northeastern United States for the Economist.

At the center of the town is this old building built in the early 1800, holding the local general store and a post office, which is the heart.

Of the Town, the store and the post office have always been the center of the community, really. Everybody loves the post office.

I was there to see Trevor Braun, who you just heard, who lives in the town, and Kate Gluckman, who works at the Elmore Post office and store.

We do money orders and we ship packages and mail. We have a lot of maple syrup producers and a lot of people who have online businesses that are coming very frequently. A lot of artists.

Kate told me that small businesses like Elmore Sugar House and Elmore Mountain Bread use her post office to send maple syrup and bread to customers. But the post office is under threat of closure.

And why is that?

Well, after the shop's longtime owner retired last year, the United States Postal Service didn't automatically renew the contract with the new owner. So locals were understandably unhappy about this move. They gathered together and wrote to their congressional delegation. Vermont's congressional delegation includes Senator Bernie Sanders, the former presidential candidate, and they asked Senator Sanders and the rest of the delegation to help them fight to keep their post office open. And the town themselves rallied and raised money to try and keep it open, and they had a really good outcome. Contract negotiations are now underway.

We're pretty optimistic that things will work out based on the response that they got from the community and the pretty angry response they got from Senator Leahy and Senator Sanders.

More generally, the United States Postal Service is earning a lot less than it once did. And as it struggles financially, smaller and rural outposts, particularly the contract postal units like Elmore's, could be in jeopardy.

And what's the source of these struggles? Why is the Postal Service running out of money?

Well, there's less money coming in. People aren't posting as many letters as they once did, even Christmas cards. People are emailing Christmas cards and photos now. And unlike other federal agencies, the post office does not receive direct federal funding. So it must rely on its own stamp sales and shipping revenue to fund itself. And it has huge costs. The biggest is its labor cost. It has to pre fund retiree health benefits for current and former workers for 75 years, something that no other agency has to do. These financial problems are the reason that on February 8th, the Postal Service announced a $1.3 billion loss in its most recent quarterly results, compared with a $288 million loss for the same period in 2020.

So as I understand it, the Postal Service receives no federal funding, but it is still subject to federal oversight. I'm wondering if there are any sort of efforts underway in Washington to help deal with its financial problems.

Well, after years, literally years of dragging its feet, Congress is at last paying attention. In February, with rare bipartisan support, the House passed a sweeping overhaul of the United States Postal Service.

The question is, on passage of the bill, those in favor say aye, those opposed no. The opinion of the chair. The ayes have it and the two.

Big points that they're changing. The legislation requires future retirees to enroll in Medicare and it drops the crippling pre funding requirement. And those two measures alone should save the service nearly $50 billion over the next decade. But the bill hasn't yet passed the Senate.

So what happens to towns like Elmore if the bill doesn't pass and their post offices don't survive?

Well, in Elmore particularly, people have to drive further to go to their post office. They may be forced to put mailboxes at the end of their driveways. And some of these people live like a mile away from the road. More broadly, the United States Postal Service and its customers can't afford to wait long for help. About 7 million Medicare recipients get at least one medicine through the post. 43% of voters cast their ballots by mail in 2020. And if you don't have some of those basic amenities, like the ability to get mail regularly, small towns like Elmore just don't stand a chance.

It's a bleak conclusion, but always great to talk to you. Rosemary, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you, John.

We can deliver express mail from your postal service.

We deliver for you.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. Drop us a line@podcastseconomist.com and you can.

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