The past few weeks have been rather bleak for the climate outlook. Day after day, the environment becomes a collateral victim of the ineptitude of a war against Ukraine that is destructive of human lives and materially devastating. Moreover, day after day, the fight against global warming is subordinated to the primacy accorded to economic growth. Between thanatocene and anthropocene…
The environmental magazine Reporterre sums it up nicely. This war of Vladimir Putin against Ukraine already has its share of drama, death and destruction. And among the collateral victims, “the environment could find itself in the front line, as the Russian bombings and the clashes have already caused serious pollution and significant degradation. With contaminated waters, fires and radioactive leaks, Ukraine risks becoming an emblematic case of what historians call the “thanatocene”, an era of destruction and ecocides that originated in war.
The term “thanatocene” is attributed to the historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz. The proposal, formulated in 2013, raises by a notch or two the damage to the environment and the seriousness of the consequences of human presence and action, the influence of which is already circumscribed in the concept of the anthropocene.
Already, on April 25, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction returned to this last theme by calling humanity to order, issuing the warning of a “spiral of self-destruction”. In its report, the UN noted that these disasters resulting from human-induced climate change – and from an underestimation of the risks, which leads to inadequate action – would multiply at great speed.
While between 350 and 500 medium- and large-scale disasters have occurred each year over the past two decades, that number is projected to rise to 560 per year — or 1.5 per day — by 2030, it is projected. . Disasters whose scale and intensity are increasing.
The report laments a misperception of the risks associated with natural disasters, attributed to a certain complacency, feelings of “optimism” and “invincibility” which take the form of an “underestimation” of the risks, perhaps we read in a text from Agence France-Presse.
Two days later, the UN published another report, this time devoted to agricultural techniques and unsustainable land use. It is emphasized in its Global Land Perspectives that food chains are responsible for 80% of deforestation and 70% of freshwater use worldwide — and that they are the main driver of species extinction.
It is added that at least 70% of the planet’s ice-free land has been converted for human use (infrastructure, habitat, agriculture) and that most has been degraded, which increases CO2 emissions.2. “The report assesses different scenarios by 2050. In the absence of restoration and protection of agricultural land, if nothing is done, an additional 250 billion tonnes of COe2 could be released into the atmosphere, about four times the current annual emissions of greenhouse gases, ”continues AFP.
The World Meteorological Organization, which also depends on the UN, made its contribution on May 9 with a bulletin indicating that there is a one in two chance that the average global temperature will be 1.5 ° higher. C to that recorded in the pre-industrial era for at least one of the next five years. It is reminded that we have reached 1.1 degrees of global warming; IPCC experts anticipate crossing the threshold of 1.5 degrees at the start of 2030, and 2 degrees by 2040.
Meanwhile, China announced on April 28 the abolition of customs duties on its coal imports. Caught last year with power shortages, the world’s biggest GHG emitter set out to restart its coal production and ordered its mines to produce “as much coal as possible”, reads a text from the report. AFP. Coal-fired power projects have also been massively launched in 2021 to meet its energy needs and support its post-pandemic economic recovery. Overall, China’s coal consumption increased by 4.9% last year.
Then India followed by announcing on May 6 the lease of a hundred dormant coal mines, all in response to an unprecedented heat wave.
World’s third largest emitter of CO2, India depends on coal for 70% of its energy needs. And the government wants to increase domestic production — which is already at a record high — by more than 50% over the next two years to support post-pandemic economic recovery. It is estimated that the country’s coal needs will double by 2040.
Tough weeks for the climate, they said.