“Humanity walks on a thin layer of ice and this ice is melting fast. It is in these terms that the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, summarized the content of the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), presented on Monday. After the image of the window that closes on the possibility of saving humanity, that of the precarious ice that separates us from shipwreck. We no longer spare words, and for good reason.
It is interesting to observe the progression of warnings issued by the IPCC over the past three decades. In its first report in 1992, the group already expressed concerns about GHG emissions. Since 2001, the responsibility of human activity in global warming has been named. As early as 2007, warnings were raised about the future costs and consequences of inaction on GHG reductions. As for the six reports published since 2018, each time they reinvent the language of urgency to highlight the importance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era; the window closing, the ice giving way under our feet.
Some pointed out on Monday that the new report, which closes the cycle started by the IPCC in 2018, was undoubtedly the last in which we could still seriously aim for a course of temperature warming limited to 1.5 ° C. The subtext is however quite clear: this objective already appears (tragically) as a vestige of another era. It is now very likely that warming of 1.5°C will be reached as early as 2030 or 2035.
This threshold, it must be remembered, is terrifying. That too, the IPCC scientists have already said: beyond a warming of 1.5°C, the consequences on ecosystems are difficult to predict, so much so that now every tenth of a degree saved on the global warming matters. All of this is said in a context where the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is breaking records year after year and where the commitments currently made by the States lead us towards a warming of more than 3.2°C within a few decades.
Despite this, the new report was received with a ceremony that betrays a certain weariness. The report has indeed captured the headlines, made headlines in newscasts, given rise to a string of editorials, debates, anxious columns (including this one). The highlights were widely relayed on social networks with beautiful infographics. The consternation is well choreographed, well oiled — so well that the curtain closes as soon as the media cycle ends. We go to bed satisfied to have relayed beautiful scientifically accurate information.
Everyone knows it, we say it and we say it again, but this show is fascinating every time. We are literally told of the imminent bankruptcy of humanity; in these terms, with supporting data, in a future as near, tangible and palpable as the end of secondary education of your children, your own studies or your retirement, and that causes at best a vague consternation.
It is also curious to see how it is more and more normal to have integrated the idea that things will not turn out for the best. This is the implicit premise of too many future-oriented conversations: those who still have three, four, five decades, or even a lifetime to live, will experience a dramatically more unstable and violent world, where scarcity will be mitigated by an implacable and arbitrary sorting out between the lives that we want to save and the lives that we will sacrifice.
For citizens of the North, it is true that the question is not so much whether we will survive the climatic catastrophe, but rather how much blood we are prepared to have on our hands to preserve our security and respond to the needs of communities (which will be defined ever more narrowly).
This is the other discourse contained in Monday’s report: the corollary of the collapse of ecosystems and the destruction of living environments is the condemnation of a large proportion of humanity. Precisely the proportion of humanity that does not have the levers to turn the tide.
On a planetary scale, four out of ten humans are already in a situation of great climatic vulnerability. The IPCC also insists on the importance of placing social justice at the heart of climate resilience and adaptation policies. Equip ourselves with strong social programs, promote redistribution mechanisms, be attentive to the differentiated impact of the climate crisis on marginalized people and populations: a more resilient world is a world where the satisfaction of basic needs is more socialized. There is no viable future without strong and institutionalized solidarity.
Will decision makers be able to hear it? With us, nothing is less certain. Between the dodges of a Steven Guilbeault unable to name the oil elephant in the room and the triumphant tax cuts of a François Legault, everything even indicates the opposite. So the question remains: how much blood are we willing to have on our hands to preserve our way of life? What does that say about us?